The people we love become part of us, and losing them means losing part of your identity. Trying to adjust to life after loss means we often feel unsteady almost like a chair without a leg…we know we’re missing something and it’s hard to function correctly. It’s normal to feel this way, and important to recognize what role the person played in our lives. Often loss makes that poignantly clear. Grieving is essential. However, learning how to function and re-calibrate after grieving is crucial to finding hope and healing after loss. This is part of my story of re-calibrating after losing my mother.
Losing My Mother
I was living in Beijing, China when I received a phone call on a Saturday morning from my sister. “Mom isn’t doing well—the hospice nurse thinks she only has a few days left.” I hung up the phone. My mother had been battling cancer for 4 years. I knew she wasn’t doing well, but I hadn’t realized the end would come so quickly. I was panicked I wouldn’t make it back before she slipped away. I boarded a plane that morning and sobbed all 24 hours to Denver. Bless my sweet seat companions. Every time I had a layover, I called. She’s still here. I didn’t relax until I had her cheek to mine and I was squeezing her hand.
It was a bit of a shock to see her so gaunt and wasted and in a hospice bed in the middle of the living room. The last time I had seen her, she and I had gone for a walk around the trails in our neighborhood. Now just breathing was laborious for her. Each night for the next 6 days I wondered if it would be her last. I was lucky enough to get to minister to her—to rub her feet, to read her biblical text, to lay next to her, to laugh with her. I tried to soak in every minute and detail of her presence up until the moment she took her last breath. For more on losing my mom see God Loves Broken Things: Accepting our Brokenness.
I did not anticipate the emptiness and longing I would feel as I watched my mother lie lifeless on the bed or be wheeled out of our home. The day of the funeral, I was numb. People were so wonderful and so supportive, but it all seemed like a bit of a blur. It seemed surreal that I was at my own mother’s funeral, shaking hands of people we loved, laying a flower on her casket. And then it was time to leave. Her earthly remains disappeared.
Looking for My Mother
I knew she was gone, but I still needed her. By default, I still kept going to the space she occupied for me emotionally and would find her gone. I felt adrift and off-balance. Some days I’d pick up the phone to call my mom…..and remember she wasn’t there. I had always written little ideas or funny things I wanted to share with mom on post-it notes around the house to tell her next time I talked to her. I found myself still writing them for a while. But then I stopped.
My mother was my emotional calibrator. When I needed encouragement or to laugh about something humiliating, I could almost hear her voice as she’d quote Anne of Green Gable, “Girl you do beat all.” When I went home, I would re-charge my emotional and personal history battery. It helped me remember who I was and how I wanted to be. But now I just slowly lost battery and wasn’t sure where to recharge.
Where should I look to find a model of the woman I wanted to be? The mother I hoped to become? She was gone. I watched other women her age, but not having access to their thoughts and personal doings, I felt at a loss.
Are You My Mother?
I knew I still needed anchoring and mothering. But I didn’t know where to find it. I felt like the little bird in the PD Eastman children’s book, “Are you my mother?” At times I looked for her in others. I sometimes tried to find her in my husband, my sisters, my dad, my friends. They were all amazing, and sometimes they did fill her space in my soul for a moment. I read her journals, I read books I knew she had read and loved. I made her recipes. Other times I looked for her in my memories or in her legacy. What would she do if she were here. Sometimes looking for her helped, but other times it made the empty space she had occupied feel larger and hollower.
Losing Me
I felt my new identity was wrapped up in her passing. I felt disconnected from people who didn’t know about it. Little things un-related to my mom felt heavier and harder. I was irritated more easily with my family and others. They were not my mother. And I felt resentful they weren’t. Of course it wasn’t their fault, or even mine—it was part of the grieving process.
It was a dark time. I cried myself to sleep many nights. The emotions would well up at strange times—like a song on the radio, or her handwriting sprawled on top of a recipe I was making that said “delicious.”
I remember sometimes the feelings were so raw it was difficult to own them. I was a busy mom with a new baby, two older children with their own needs, I was preparing for an international move and trying to carry on with normal life responsibilities. Life kept going, but the construct of life I had always depended on wasn’t there. I had to keep going but with more heaviness. Sometimes I would shove the difficult feelings down when I couldn’t process them. I wanted to process my grief. I wanted to own it. But part of me didn’t know how.
Significant days like Mother’s Day, the day of her passing, and her birthday were the hardest. I remember sometimes being sick of the pain and wanting it to stop. And, then other times not ever wanting to feel “over it,” as it seemed like that would diminish the significance of the loss. I wanted to find my mother, but I didn’t know how. For more on grief see Hope Is the Thing: Getting Through Grief.
Finding New Mothers
I Found My Mother in Me
In this longing and looking for my mother, and often not finding her, I discovered something. She was not the only source of love and strength and peace. I realized I am stronger and braver than I thought. But I had to walk farther than I’d ever walked before to know it. In the midst of an international move to Mexico I found my mother—in me. I remembered the grit she showed as she re-landscaped our front yard one summer, or walked herself into another chemo treatment. But I had to summon the courage to try. I found the courage and strength to walk by children to school past drug deals and guards with machine guns. I found the courage to take my children to doctors in a foreign language and how to do white-knuckled Mexico City driving.
I Found My Mother in God.
I found that He is closer and more merciful than I knew. But I had to reach out and remove the obstructions of pride and laziness preventing me from feeling his love. I had my 3rd daughter just a few months after my mother’s passing. I needed my mother. I wanted her there. The spirit helped replace the longing and acute pain with peace. When I needed a confidant I began falling to my knees to pray to my father who loves me perfectly. Isn’t that really our journey here anyway—to learn to fall to our knees?
I Found My Mother in Others.
I found that they are more loving and vulnerable than I expected. But I have to let them come close to my heart and I have to change my expectations. No one will ever fill that entire role. But people can fill tiny bits of her. When we arrived to Mexico City, we had no furniture. My husband and I were ordering furniture for our home for the first time since we were married. I scoured design websites and looked for deals. I was so excited when it finally came—I wanted someone to be excited with me. I called my neighbor downstairs and she came up to celebrate with me. It was just a little space she held, but it was enough.
The absence of my mother, left a hollow part of me. I still miss her fiercely. I will never fully replace her, but in trying to fill that space, I have found so many mothers… a closer relationship to God, deeper friendships, courage, and so much personal growth.
Re-Calibrating After Loss
Mourning is something each of us do many times in our lives—not just when we lose someone we love, but when we lose a job, lose part of our health, move or a friendship changes etc. It’s important to grieve and recognize the absence. Often it is that noticing that gives us a deeper appreciation for what we’ve lost. After those feelings have become less acute, it can be so healing to begin noticing the amazing compensatory blessings God places in our paths to help fill those spaces. He does fill them.
Fill the Gaps
What loss have you experienced?
1. Consider writing down how life has changed because of that loss, what is missing with that person or that thing gone? It can be so healing to recognize what a significant contribution that person had. Often it’s hard to fully realize without losing something.
2. Can you see any way it has been filled in different ways? If you aren’t sure, become curious and begin looking. You may find some compensatory blessings.