The Mother of All Transitions

Years ago I read a book called Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss with the desire to better understand my mother, whose own mother passed when she was just under 4 yrs. old.

It did indeed shed some light of understanding for me. Additionally, it helped me gain insight into some of the experiences I’d had as a teenager after my father passed. At the time I felt the book could have been called “Fatherless Daughters” or “Parentless Kids”.

Today, a week and a half after Fern’s passing, I took a trip to my library and re-borrowed Motherless Daughters. One of the first passages I read was so stark, so raw, and so utterly motherly that I am sure I did not get quite the same hit when I first read the book. How could I? My mother was still living.

I can clearly see why it was not named those other titles (although I suppose it could also be Motherless Sons?). I’d like to share the passage with you, and perhaps it will also provide you with the comfort of knowing your supreme greatness, simply because you had a mother:

“There was an emptiness inside of me – a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love so pure, unconditional and strong as a mother’s love. And I will never be loved that way again.”

For me, this explained so much of what I had felt, yet no doubt took for granted, for 52 years. My mother had it for less than 4.

We are blessed indeed, those of us who have had the gift of a mother well into our adulthood. And although our mothers are no longer of the physical realm, whenever we need that dose of love without conditions; love, no matter what we’ve done; love, in the moments we feel the least lovable, we can close our eyes and summon the love that we know is still there for us until the end of time, through the eternal spirits of our mothers.