Question of the Day | 05/05/2008 8:38 am

Have you turned into your mother? If so, how?

Read more about: Mother, Mother's Day, Relationships

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Terrific Book - Oh my gosh - I only read it to be polite to the person who suggested it and it helped me understand my loss. I just didn’t see myself as a “motherless daughter.” I still miss mom and that book helped me to understand that it was okay. Yeah it is important to get going again and not to dwell on the bad things life hands us but it is perfectly normal to miss someone as long as it doesn’t impede one’s responsibilities. That hole which is ripped open when someone close dies never does close completely. In fact, it opens up a little wider at some moments and then shrinks back. Understanding that helps me explain coping with loss when people who have lost family members ask me “does it get easier” - my answer is yes and no and then I describe the hole (open and shrinking). I sometimes mention an example from the book - one moment you are fine and then you walk across the street and you see something that reminds you of the person gone or you want to call them with a funny story - there goes that hole in our life opening up again…but then eventually you smile…accept the feeling that you can’t give the person a call and go forward with the rest of your day. Anyway the book is great and I am glad you remembered to mention it here. It is timeless actually.

By CJ McDonald on 05/06/2008 1:03 pm

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CJ- Thanks for your great explanation….I have had that feeling many times of walking down the street happy as can be reveling in the beauty and weather…and then whammo. See or hear or smell something that reminds you of a person who is gone, and instant transformation. I keep meaning to but haven’t read “The Power of Now”…but this month saw an interview with the author, Ekert Tolle, about his latest book New Earth….his ideas came across as very quantum theory kind of thing—which I believe in totally. And so now that he has a book related to global transformation I’ll buy it. His interview reminded me that we become our story, and any story can be slanted to the degree you really understand the ‘why’ of it. Am always wondering why and how people chose from the long continuum of adjectives to conceptualize identical experiences in different ways. You’re right. For a long time I was accompanied by an invisible, King-Kong sized grief monster everywhere. Smiling at dinner with friends, very engaged in life, they didn’t see the monster under the table or sitting in the corner, shape-shifting, amorphous and always there. I was always aware of him, fed him, attended to him and kept him healthy and fat. Then literally one day years ago was sitting in my Nob Hill apartment watching Oprah. It was Spring, the windows were open, could hear someone playing the piano next door. The housekeeper had just left and everything sparkled and the room was filled with Casablance lilies. On one level I was really happy and glad to be for once, sitting on the sofa doing nothing but watching TV. Dr. Phil was on with a family that had brought the mother who was barely alive to them because her daughter had died five years earlier and she was paralyzed with grief. I froze and held my breathe. My grief monster in the corner looked at me expectantly. Dr. Phil said, what if your grief binds her spirit from going free, and what would she want you to do and feel, would she want you to be this unhappy, could you recognize the grief each time it hits you and replace it with love and gratitude, and make that the strongest thing. Easy to say, I thought. But really at that instant my grief monster lost it’s power over me. It flew out the window and went away. I didn’t need to lug around that enormous weight. Quantum physics proves we are all connected…that there is no division between the spiritual and physical world. I will always miss the people who are missed…sheesh I miss my mother in advance…but I do try to replace that loss or fear with love and gratitude and that changes the entire story and the energy of it. As long as we are alive we are hopefully growing, and mostly in comprehension, and reading everyone else’s story here boosts that growth. I wish there was time to respond to everyone…for me it seems rude to be enlightened or touched by something and let it go unremarked….

By zut alors on 05/06/2008 2:41 pm

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I can’t believe it but I look exactly like her! :) I wish I didn’t because I don’t look like her when she was young, I’ve turned into the older version of her. She is quite a high achiever and not very motherly. I don’t feel relaxed w/her and I hope our sons won’t ever feel like that. I’ve always been very tender towards our sons, the complete opposite of my own Mum. I feel respect for her, treat her as I should and bite my lip. She can be really rude and spiteful to me. Thank goodness we don’t live in the same country. I make a huge effort not to be like her. My mother-in-law and my Dad’s sisters have been more like mums to me.

By M S on 05/06/2008 10:57 am

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My mother died when I was 7 yrs. old and my paternal Grandmother became my “mother figure” after that. I don’t know if I’m like my mother but I have only good memories of her. I think my Grandmother had the most impact on me, growing up and was very different from my mother. My mother was, from my memories of her, gentle, kind, physically loving and played with me, spent time with me, listened to me, talked to me, rather than at me and I loved her then and now. She was a small woman, barely 5 ft. tall, so I’m not like her physically. My Grandmother was a wonderful person, too, but in different ways. She wasn’t physically affectionate, but I knew she loved me in many other ways that she showed me. She was strong and brave and did so much with so little. I’m sure I must have been a burden to take a child in at her age and take care of me all those years, sacrificing her needs for my wants. I admired her, loved her and respected her. She is responsible for any of the good in me that I have become. I only hope my children will have good memories of me. On Mother’s Day, I think of both of them and honor them in my heart and prayers.

By JJ GB on 05/06/2008 11:27 am

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I hope all of you will hang in with me…this is so hard for me. I’ve been reading all the things being said about Mothers and I have laughed at some and cried with some of you. The question…have I become my mother? My daughter says YES — I thank God for that. To understand how I feel and why I feel that way I must digress…. My mother was married at 16 — I was born when she was 18. She never finished high school, however, she was so full of common sense. She never met a stranger — everyone loved her. She was tall, beautiful with black hair and eyes. Her sense of humor was infectious. My father adored her. They were a striking couple — I was raised in a house full of laughter, love, joy and devotion. I remember watching my parents touch each other and kiss — I never heard them quarrel — I never heard a cross word between them. My mom and I were best friends when I got to my teenage years — we shared a love for clothes — we shared stories — we would talk for hours when I came home from a date. That talking for hours and that sharing between to alike souls extended after I married. My husband loved my mother because of her warmth and caring. His mother was a cold fish — my mother welcomed him with open arms and he fell in love with her and my entire family as well. She was diagnosed with Altzeimer’s Disease when she was 63. The first stages weren’t too bad and we worked around her disease. Later, however, during one of our visits, when we were leaving, she took me in her arms and wept like her heart would break. I cried all the way home. The next time we visited my mother didn’t know who I was — she just kept looking at me with sad eyes. I knew then that I had lost my mother forever. She lived with the disease for 20 years. My father took care of her until the day she finally, mercifully left us to go to a better place. As I write this the tears are running down my cheeks. She died 4 years ago — on Mother’s Day. My dad died 2 years later. I will never forget her…I just hope I will always be like her. I love you mom — Happy Mother’s Day.

By Lady Gator on 05/06/2008 11:30 am

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Lady Gator— I can picture your mother from the vibrancy of your description, and understand that deep connection that can happen esp when you’re so close in age. My son was born when I was 17 and we had an ideal threesome like your describe. Everything was endless, fun. To see someone slip away from that aliveness, and for her to know she was slipping away….how tragic and how unfair. And how lucky for her to have your dad. My son’s father died long ago in an flying accident, and my son lives in Europe…and miss him so much…look forward to relocating there this year and your post make me realize even more the urgency of doing so now. When Robbie was young we did everything together—incredible fun. What a lucky woman you are to have had a mother like that! You conjured her beautifully, her spirit is very much alive. Thank you….bless you.

By zut alors on 05/06/2008 2:56 pm

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Lady Gator, your story touched me so deeply. Those must have been hard years for you and your family. That would be so much to live through. She sounds like she was a wonderful person, it would have been nice to meet her. I lost my mother in 1995. It was a total shock. Heart attack that took her very quickly. My father slowly passed away in 2001 - he was 94. I realize, although I miss her every day, it cannot be so hard as what it must have been for you and your family. I read about other mothers and so many of them sound like mine. I guess we were loved by very fine people.

By Frannie Em on 05/07/2008 12:14 am

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February 8, 1965 - my mother became a single parent after my father died in a plane crash while traveling on business. In 1981 or 1982 we were given an assignment in my high school English class - we were to write about our hero. Everyone else chose a public figure but the only person I could write about was my mother, Harriet McDonald. When my father died I was 6 months old and the youngest of the 6 children Harriet and Dick had together. The oldest was starting the second semester of his freshman year of college. I could re-write that essay today but it would take up a lot of space. Mom was my best friend who had my love and respect. All of her children went to college, 2 served their country (and returned) in Vietnam, one has his masters and 3 went on to become parents of some very fine individuals. Mom was so smart and she seemed to always choose the right thing to do. This surely sounds like someone I have placed on a pedestal. But for anyone who knew her they know I my description is accurate. Once, a complete stranger to us pulled me aside and something like, “your mother is quite special isn’t she.” I knew it but how did he - I still don’t know. In the days after the 9/11 attacks one of my brothers and I were talking and discovered we had a similar thought - we wished Mom were still alive so she could help some of these families as she too went through a similar loss and had a family to raise. Actually she had a family to raise in a new state as she and dad had moved to New York just weeks before I was born. Mom was an incredible role model. Long before Nike she was teaching me to “just do it.” She had faith, grace, smarts, good humor, a sense of adventure, and style. Harriet McDonald - a woman who led by example. I hesitate to even post this as it has been written in haste but I could only hope to have turned into my mother. I am thankful that I realized the type of person I was dealing with early on in life. I have no regrets about my relationship with mom. To all of you single mothers out there - your kids are going to be fine.

By CJ McDonald on 05/06/2008 12:37 pm

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PS - Ms. Thomas, if you read this, my middle name is Jude. Cheers.

By CJ McDonald on 05/06/2008 12:45 pm

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CJ—My son’s father also died in a light plane crash….I only had one child and thought if I got that right I’d have done a lot. Having raised six children well your mother definitely sounds like a hero to me too!! It’s amazing the power of determined women, isn’t it?

By zut alors on 05/06/2008 3:09 pm

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Yup! Enjoy Sunday!

By CJ McDonald on 05/08/2008 9:01 am

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I’m more like my grandmother. I think that’s how it really goes. Grandma and I understood each other without explanation. Mother and I, on the other hand, were at loggerheads most of the time. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have loved to be like her. Daddy and Mom looked like Bogie and Bacall, so they dressed the part until they were in their ’50s. She had a pair of green aligator shoes and a matching bag that were to die for, e.g., and they both wore hats. They loved to dance. But wait, we were talking about her. She could do virtually anything she set her mind to, and she was totally full of surprises. I didn’t know until I was 28 that she could fly a plane, for example. In her early 80s, I bought her a computer, and she had intendo as well. She was the Super Mario queen. And she played chess on the internet with her granddaughter. She was always alive until the day she died, funny and charming, irritating, and demanding, moody and irracible, and always insisting that I could be more. I hated that, and it was a totally great gift. The greatest gift she ever gave me, however, was a simple one, and totally profound. In her 50s, she decided to face her dragons, and change. And she did. It was the first time I had ever seen someone through force of will and strength of character change. More than her gardening gift, her touch with all creatures great and small, her teaching abilities, her artistic nature, her determination to “not be a fool,” all of it, this one thing is what I cherish most — there were things about her that she found unacceptable, so she changed them. She’s been gone since 1996, and I miss her every day.

By Mugsy Peabody on 05/06/2008 1:21 pm

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Hi Mugsy, I liked the part about closeness with your grandmother. My granddaughters and I are the presidents of each others’ fan clubs. Their mother, my daughter, is not the least bit amused by Margaret Mead’s observation: “The reason children and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”

By georgia fatwood on 05/06/2008 4:06 pm

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My mother lived to be 100. She resides in me like a comfortable old home and although I turned out to be a very different kind of woman, I have many of her characteristics. Here is a piece that seems appropriate for this discussion. Clever men create themselves, but clever women, it seems to me, are created by their mother’s cosmic pull, not their lip-biting expectations or their faulty love. We want to please our mothers, emulate them, disgrace them, oblige them, outrage them, and bury ourselves in the mysteries and consolations of their presence. When my mother and I are in the same room we work magic on each other. I grow impossibly cheerful and am guilty of reimagined naivete and other indulgent stunts, and my mother’s sad, helpless dithering becomes a song of succor. Within minutes, we’re peddling away, the two of us, a genetic sewing machine that runs on limitless love. It’s my belief that between mothers and daughters there is a kind of blood-hyphen that is, finally, indissoluble. ––––––Carol Shields

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 05/06/2008 1:33 pm