When Your Mother Dies

You won't be alone with the ache of Mother's Day without her. You have a sisterhood to support you.

This essay began as the most popular editorial I ever wrote for Chatelaine, Canada’s premier magazine for women. It was taped to fridges, passed on to friends and carried in wallets until it fell apart. Twenty-nine years later, here’s an expanded version, my Mother’s Day gift to you and anyone you know who is missing her mother.

---

Around the time my mother died, the tender words of other women enveloped me like a quilt stitched by many pairs of hands. Longtime friends, mothers of friends and friends of colleagues, these women had one thing in common: Their mothers had died. “It was 40 years ago,” one said, “and I still think of her every day.”

My mentors prepared me for the passage rite ahead. In my mother’s deserted house, as I stuffed endless garbage bags with bric-a-brac that she had saved and no one else would want, I knew other daughters had faced the same heart-piercing duty. I belonged to a sisterhood now—one every woman must eventually join unless her mother outlives her.

Baby showers herald the transition to motherhood. Roses, greeting cards and invitations to lunch honor mothers every May. Yet despite our culture’s motherhood mystique, no rituals mark the psychological journey we daughters begin when our mothers die.

The loss of either parent cuts deep, but mothers shape most women’s lives like no one else. In most families, it’s Mom who keeps the baby book and hands down Grandma’s stories along with the vintage china. As Hope Edelman points out in her bestselling Motherless Daughters, still a touchstone after more than 30 years, maternal tales and heirlooms “transform the experiences of [a woman’s] female ancestors into maps she can follow for warning or encouragement.”

Even if you don’t miss the mother you had, you’ll miss the one she could not be.

What your mother served for dinner (or didn’t), whom she married (or divorced), the work she chose (or had forced upon her)—such things tell a daughter what it means to be a woman. Whether you model your choices on hers or cringe at the thought, whether she nurtured or neglected the girl you really were (as opposed to the one she thought you should be), your mother is your North Star. Even if you don’t miss the mother you had, you’ll miss the one she could not be.

Bereaved daughters talk about the void a friend of mine calls “mother hunger”—the wish that a wise older friend would adopt you, the pang of envy at the sight of a mother and daughter laughing together over lunch. Years passed before I stopped asking, “Why those two and not us?” A cousin of mine couldn’t sleep without hugging a pillow; a friend kept the silk robe her dying mother wore long ago in the hospital. In my own bottom drawer I used to keep my mother’s flannel nightgown, which buttoned to the neck and flapped at my ankles, to wear when missing chilled my heart. My husband rolled his eyes at the sight. But the threadbare warmth of that nightgown took me back to my mother’s kitchen, where the chocolate chip cookies were always homemade and no tragedy or triumph of mine seemed complete until she weighed in.

If your mother still plants trees and presides over holiday dinners for the clan, if she runs campaigns or a company, you may wonder how much longer you’ll have her and what you’ll do when she is gone. You’ll do what we all do: Mourn hard and slowly. You’ll come to accept the yearning that blindsides you when something wonderful happens—a baby’s birth, a diploma—and your mother cannot share it. But don’t be surprised if you find yourself breaking new ground.

I often wish I could call my mother. Her number is alive in my fingertips.

I know a woman who married for the first time, in her 50s, after the death of a sickly and demanding mother. Then there’s the long-time homemaker who didn’t seek a job until her mother died—and reached the top of a cutthroat profession. A motherless woman need not fear her mother’s disapproval or domination. Psychologically speaking, she sits at the head of her own table.

My mother was dying when I told her I had set my sights on the top job at a top magazine. In her swaggering prime, I might have lost my nerve. I’d have dreaded her spiel on all the reasons I would crush the competition. Wondered whose dream this was, hers or mine. On her deathbed, she listened as she never had before. Could she still hear me? With her hand in mine, I asked what she thought. I didn’t expect an answer; she hadn’t moved or spoken in weeks. As the room grew dark, I felt a gentle pressure on my palm. My mother, squeezing my hand.

When I landed the job, people told me how proud she would be. The only pride that mattered was my own. In her lifetime, I felt a little smaller than life.

She died just before I turned 40. After 35 motherless years, I still wish I could call her. My own number escapes me in a flustered moment; hers is alive in my fingertips. I never asked her which butcher’s stall, of all the options in St. Lawrence Market, sold the only capons worthy of her table. Never asked her to label old photos in which all the girls wear their hair in victory rolls. I’d like to introduce her to Tana French, whose noir mysteries she would relish, but she died 18 years too soon, age 67. On each birthday I count the years I had and she did not. My next birthday will take me to nine.

When I hear that a woman I know has lost her mother, I do what other women did for me. I write a note, share a memory, offer whatever help I can on her path to her mother’s empty house. Sometimes I paraphrase what a friend said to me as my mother neared the end: You can still talk to your mother. And if you focus your attention on her memory, you’ll know how she’d reply. The essence, not the spiel. It might surprise you how consoling one word can be.

---

Readers, it’s your turn to speak from the heart about the woman who formed you. Is mother loss a current grief, a former passage or a worry at the back of your mind? I’d love to hear from you and I promise to reply.

My mother, the dauntless Fredelle Maynard, inspired my first memoir, My Mother’s Daughter, some of my favorite posts. She ghostwrote a column for Dr. Joyce Brothers (and gleefully detested the first celebrity shrink); made a surprising sacrifice for finding love in her 50s; and dazzled in the classroom while teaching Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”

Poke around—it’s all free to read. Paid subscriptions delight me, but the choice is entirely up to you. As long as you keep reading and commenting, I’ll be here writing.