A dear friend shared this today and it sent me down some weird road of thoughts. I decided to share them here. SIDE NOTE: This friend also lost her mother when her mom was 42; my friend was 24 and pregnant with her first/only child at the time and struggled greatly. We actually met each other exactly one week after her mom died and it may have been the first real healing that I had with my own loss, even though we met seventeen years after I lost my own mom. We sort of navigated being "motherless daughters" together and she is absolutely one of my closest and dearest friends, to this day. At any rate, this is what she posted: "I think when someone you love dies, at an early age, you learn how short life is and how precious your time is. I always think I'm terms of how many years till I'm 42... I don't have much time to waste on temporary people/ situations. Like I realize I could live to be old, but also I could not... anyways I'm officially on one of those self-discovery journeys people have."
I can relate. My maternal grandmother died at 41 (I was ten months old), my mom died at 42 (I was 19). The running joke (not joke) was that if I made it to 44, I would officially break the cycle (I am now almost 48). 42 was super hard--not because I was aging, but because it really hit home how young my mom was when her life was cut short. She was just a babe, really--so young. 43 was even harder--I had officially outlived my mom. To be honest, I never even expected to make it to 40--let alone 48. But 42 and 43 were so very, very hard just because of the realization of how young she really was when she died.
After reading "Motherless Daughters" by Hope Edelman, it all made sense... Why my mom sort of went "wild" in 1991. She had just hit 41--the age her own mother died at. She gave her kids to our dad, she sold everything she owned, and she took off to CA with a 24 year old man that would kill her a year and a half later--it was all so out of character for her and it broke all of our hearts. "Motherless Daughters went into depth with this phenomenon--I guess it is exceedingly common to sort of "break" the closer we get to the age of their death. It is a documented struggle for most women and for many men when they reach the age that their father passed, as well. I had no idea. And neither did my mom--she was just doing what felt right at the time.
Being aware of this phenomenon can help break the pattern. I was keenly aware as I hit 41 that I may make bad choices, odd choices, or have a "mid-life crisis" of sorts--so I was able to monitor my own activities and keep myself in check. The truth is it all messes with your head so hard, from so many different directions. Grief is complicated as it is--add in this junk and you can legit lose your mind. I don't share these things to suggest that her experience will be the same--I share them because I have stood in similar shoes--it's hard as hell. And absolutely, it gives you a unique perspective on life--maybe even a better perspective, because you do understand how short and how fleeting it all is.
I am sharing because my friend is not alone and there are many of us out there. That was how I measured years, as well--since my mom died, everything in my life has been measured in "mom years". When I hit 33--I was keenly aware that my mom had three kids at that age and also had a stroke. Even now, when I watch older shows like The Patty Duke show or Bewitched, I automatically do the math and think about how old my mom would have been when each episode aired and what she may have been doing at that age. When I scroll through movie choices and see the year each one was released--I automatically ask, was my mom still alive? Did she have a chance to see this movie? If it is after her death, I am keenly aware of the movies and shows she would have enjoyed and feel sorrow that she did not have a chance to enjoy them. I think this is part of grief--I don't know if other folks do it to the extent that I do, but the reality is there isn't a day that goes by without some reminder of what we have lost. I think the reality is that it never stops hurting--we just learn how to function better as time passes...
