CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

How the loss of my mother, and the loss of my daughter taught me so much about motherhood

Miami Herald - 5/6/2022

What can I say about Mother’s Day that hasn’t been said before? What can I write that hasn’t been studied and quoted endlessly? Probably little, and maybe nothing. And yet I feel I have so much to express about my mothering, my truth, if only I could find the right words to coax into the semblance of a sentence.

This holiday marks the second without my daughter and the 19th without my mother. In the aftermath of those losses, I’ve learned that we don’t always know best the people we love most. You can live with someone for years, argue, break bread, provide care and exchange gifts, and still learn something about them when they’re gone. It’s the nature of humans, I suppose, to hold the wildest dreams close or to bury a past that’s best forgotten.

Several years after my mother’s death, her older sister, also dying of pancreatic cancer, told me how, as young children, they had fled over the Pyrenees to France during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. I had never heard that story and couldn’t confirm it with anyone. Those of her generation who remained nearby, few and frail, didn’t remember or weren’t living in Spain at the time. But I was so fascinated with that tale that I spent two days researching the history.

Oh, how many questions I wish I could’ve asked her!

In a similar manner, I’ve heard stories about my daughter from her four brothers. Some are funny, some frightening, but all are revelations about someone I knew well but who was also, paradoxically, a mystery. Which goes to show that, at times, we don’t notice what’s right in front of us. At times — if I’m going to be honest here — we don’t bother to connect at a deeper level, consumed as we are by the relentless minutiae of our lives.

Now, it’s too late to make amends with two women I loved and lost, with two women who influenced the way I mother. I cannot talk to them today or tomorrow. Or ever. Surely there’s a valuable lesson in here for me. For all of us really, mothers, fathers, children, siblings or whoever would like to claim a strong family tie.

This Mother’s Day finds me ruminating about what motherhood has taught me — and what I have yet to learn. Lately, this impromptu drill has centered on the idea of missed opportunities, on all those times I failed to connect or, worse, ignored others’ attempts to do so. This makes me sad, sure, but it also offers me a second chance. There are people I love who I can still visit, phone or text. I hope they feel the same way, in reverse.

My children are grown now, and three live several hours away, a thorn of absence that scratches and stabs my heart. I wish they were closer. I wish I could see them every day. I wish I knew more about their aspirations beyond the regular 9-to-5. But this geographical distance is part of the cards I’ve been dealt. I have no choice but to accept and play the hand.

Every once in a while, however, I remind them of my expectations. Sometimes I do this brazenly, as when I gave them coffee mugs emblazoned with Call Your Mother. Sometimes I wheedle my way into their flitting attention. “You weren’t hatched from an egg,” I grumble. They laugh good-naturedly, but I’m not sure they understand, not in the way profound loss has ensured I do.

Mothering and being mothered has taught me that raising children means making peace with a duality like no other. Even as they die, even as they move away, the children we raised and the mother we loved remain ours forever. In life, the trick is in finding the balance between holding tight while also letting go. With death, the challenge is recognizing that physical absence, however painful, can never erase the intangible that binds us.

Ana Veciana-Suarez writes about family and social issues. Email her at avecianasuarez@gmail.com or visit her website anavecianasuarez.com. Follow @AnaVeciana.

©2022 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.