A few years before I had the chance to become a mom, I lost my mom. I was at her side when she passed, but it took me a long time to process the feelings. In some ways, I think I’ll be processing them forever, but becoming a mother myself helped me take a new look at the whole experience. The following is a reflection I wrote a few years back, five years into losing my mom and two years into becoming a parent.
Standing at my mother’s deathbed was one of the most surreal experiences and at the same time, one of the most punishingly vivid ones I’ve ever experienced. Terrified, reeling. Feeling like my feet were anchored to the ground and that time around me had come to a standstill while the world outside flashed by at break-neck warped speed. Every sight was piercingly sharp and clear, yet at the same time, blurry, fuzzy, and practically upside down or backward for all the sense it made. Was I angry? Sad? Was this even real? The wind was knocked out of me. I was cut off at the knees. But I was still standing, still doing, still going forward. How was I still going? How was anything still going?
It came my turn and I went in to give her hugs and kisses. I can generate a list of the loving things I’m sure I whispered to her. But truth be told, I can’t remember a thing I said. The only thing I remember as I lay my arms across her was a desperate, aching, hungry feeling that no number of hugs, no amount of kisses, would ever be enough. I could feel my anchor slipping away and with it was leaving the bottomless supply of affection that had nourished me for my whole life. And I could not believe that when I finally could bring myself to step back, that affection would be cut off forever. I wanted to hug and to keep hugging and never let go. But I knew that I couldn’t hold on to her.
Eventually, I found the strength to step back. Our gathered crowd sat and quietly waited. Her breathing slowed then stopped. At some point, I felt a phantom gentle breeze, the tenderest release like someone letting out a contented sign in their sleep. I could feel she was gone, and I turned to my mom’s best friend and saw her nod and whisper, “She’s gone.”
I never expected to feel that intense aching hunger for hugs and kisses again, or at least not for a long time. But that changed when I became a mother myself. As my first daughter settled into life on this planet and I settled into the job of being her mom, I would go to kiss her goodnight at night and kept feeling something tugging at me, something I couldn’t put my finger on. One day I finally realized, it was that same aching hunger. My love for her is so profound, so consuming, that even when I spend every waking moment with her, I feel like I can’t get or give enough love. There, of course, isn’t the finality that I experienced at my mother’s bedside. But the unquenchable desire for one more kiss, one more squeeze is there all the same.
Becoming a mother myself retroactively gave me an understanding of my mother’s own love for me. I always knew she loved me and loved me a lot. But I had no idea how much until I felt it for my own child. I long for more hugs and kisses before saying goodnight for the night. Did my mom feel this ache I feel the day she cried in the street when I walked my parents to the car after they left me at college? Was it what made her tiptoe through the halls of our home at night whispering “Goodnight I love you” once per child on her way to bed? Was it why she wore sunglasses to pretend she wasn’t crying every time I left for the airport at the end of a visit home from living away in DC?
My mom really loved me. In some ways, I almost feel regretful. I didn’t know the true extent of what I had until after it was gone. In some ways, it makes me feel untethered. The story of my life was written by a deep and endless love and the person who held all that is gone now. But there’s another side, too. My mom built me and my life (and the lives of everyone she ever loved) with so much care and affection and warmth. What I feel for my daughters is the extension of that legacy. My children can know her through the love and care she instilled in me. And if nothing else, I’m always just going to give them one more kiss before bed.
You have done your mom proud. When my first child was born, my father said to me, “Now you know how we felt when you were born.” Truly, it is love so beyond anything that can be imagined. Beautifully expressed. Keep hugging.