Tag: Mother’s Day

Posted on

A Letter to the Moms of Newtown on Mother’s Day

Your kids have not been forgotten.  I think about you and them most every day.  December 14 will always hold a new significance for me and so many others.  The day that changed your life forever, making it at times seem unrecognizable, no doubt, has in some small way touched me, too.  I am so very sorry for what was so brutally taken from you on that day — your child and your innocence.

Mother’s Day is Sunday.  My guess is that this is not a day of joy or celebration for you.  You will not be fussing over where to get brunch or wishing you had more time for yourself.  You probably have too much time for yourself these days.  Too much time to think and feel and mourn.  There may be no comforting you this first Mother’s Day without your child.

You probably see the commercials, hear the ads touting the question, “What’s for Mom this Mother’s Day?”  Buy this necklace!  Eat our food!  Smell our flowers!  It can be oppressive.  I, too, have a young child that is not with me on this day.  She is gone for entirely different reasons, illness and not violence.  But her absence gives me a glimpse into the loss you may feel and how the frequent reminders of MOTHER’S DAY we see and hear do nothing more than turn up the volume of our grief.

I pledge not to forget you or your children.  I pledge to recognize the impact their violent death has had on me.  I pledge to reject the belief that standing in solidarity with mothers who are mourning the loss of their child from guns is somehow a political statement.  I pledge to remember what was taken from you on December 14, 2012.

Charlotte Bacon

Daniel Barden

Olivia Engel

Josephine Gay

Ana Marquez-Greene

Dylan Hockley

Madeleine Hsu

Catherine Hubbard

Chase Kowalski

Jesse Lewis

James Mattioli

Grace McDonnell

Emilie Parker

Jack Pinto

Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi

Jessica Rekos

Avielle Richman

Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

It is so important to say the names, your child’s name.  May you always speak them, because if you don’t, no one will.  May you find a way to honor them and their years on this earth.  May you only know compassion as you figure out how to move forward without your child.

That, I fear, will be the tricky part.  In the days after December 14, people everywhere, moms especially, were stricken by what happened in the halls and classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary.  It was unfathomable.  We held our kids tighter, fed them ice cream for dinner, showered them with the kisses you yourself could no longer dole out.  We cried on those first days dropping them off at school, worried if they would be safe, wondering if any of us would ever feel safe again.

And then, like life, we moved on.  Dinners needed to be made, clothes needed to be cleaned and folded, bills needed to be paid, groceries needed buying.  Life moved on, as it always does, even in the most devastating of times.  I still see you.  Despite the dinners I make, the clothes I fold, the bills I pay, the groceries I buy.  Despite the busy-ness of my days, I see you.  I remember you.  I will not forget.  That life moving on business is yet another of the cruel things you have encountered.

Somehow your children, with their backpacks and soccer balls and art smocks, have become symbols for all of America, a dividing line of sorts, in the proverbial sands of gun legislation.  Politics has overtaken the empathy.  For that I am truly and deeply sorry, ashamed almost.  I know your children are so much more than symbols.  I wish everyone understood that.  I am sorry if this national discussion your tragedy has sparked diminishes them in any way.  Your children and their lives are so much more than a tipping point.

Be strong, mothers of Newtown.  Choose hope.  Choose to believe that your grief will not always be so consuming.  Choose to honor your children in whatever way makes sense to you.  Choose to understand that allowing laughter and love and light into your lives will in no way dishonor your child’s memory.  My wish for you is the same thing I wish for myself and all mothers missing a child on Mother’s Day.  Peace, strength, hope, joy, and love.  These are the things that will nudge you forward, not away from your grief, but in a more comfortable spot within your grief.

I see you this Mother’s Day, and I remember your children.  

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Posted on

The Other Side of the Mother’s Day Coin

Retro Moms

Mother’s Day is Sunday.  Sigh. 

For me, Mother’s Day is like Valentine’s Day for the broken hearted, Christmas and Thanksgiving without family, and New Year’s Eve at home alone.  All on the same day.  You know those holidays manufactured to make you feel badly?  Yeah, that’s Mother’s Day at my home.  No need to play your violin, as every day stings a little for me.  I’m mostly used to it. 

This is my ode to those of us who struggle at this time of year, when the media turns to images of pretty young moms embracing their kids or older matriarchs beaming with pride over her tribe.  We’re encouraged to up our consumption of flowers and brunch and manicures.  For a few weeks in May, everything turns 50 shades of pastel (and from what I hear, 50 shades of another color is what moms are really hoping for this Mother’s Day).  Here’s to us, folks, the ones who turn to puddles in the middle of May. 

  • For those of us who’ve lost a mom (suck it cancer, stroke, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, insert dastardly disease here __________________);
  • For those of us whose mom is sick (see above disease culprits);
  • For those of us whose mom didn’t know how to be a mom;
  • For those of us who wonder who our “real” mom might be;
  • For those of us who feel guilty about that;
  • For those of us with two moms (bonus!), but with double the above troubles;
  • For those of us who have a mom, but don’t much like her.

It’s tough to not have a Mom.  Mine died when I was pregnant with my first child.  She was a great Mom, like butter that could be hard or soft, but went well with everything.  She was my family’s glue, our Switzerland in the midst of garden variety familial dysfunction.  With her gone, my family is altered to the point that it is almost unrecognizable to me.  Now we’re a group of islands looking at one another in the distance.  I miss you Mom.  I understand you better now.  I’m so sad for the family that was and know you must be, too.  I hope you are in a better place, enjoying your granddaughter, with a book and a cigarette, and a Coke close by. 

  • For those of you who’ve lost a child through illness;
  • For those of you who’ve lost a child through accident;
  • For those of you who’ve lost a child to drugs or addiction;
  • For those of you who’ve lost a child at birth;
  • For those of you who’ve lost a child through miscarriage;
  • For those of you who try and try and try to conceive, but can’t;
  • For those of you who wish to adopt, and are waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting;  and still waiting;
  • For those of you who wish to adopt, but can’t afford it;
  • For those of you who don’t wish to be a mom, but feel the scorn that so often creates;
  • For those of you who mothered so well that your kids done grown up and left you, for you, too.

I am so grateful to have Mary Tyler Son to care for and fuss over.  He was born in the midst of my daughter’s cancer treatment and I have a distinct memory, near his first birthday, two months after my girl died, of seeing him for the first time.  Really, truly seeing him — separate and independent from grief and sadness and his sister.  Seeing him.  I am so grateful my eyes were open to his joy and wonder.  I thank my lucky stars every time his toddler antics get the better of me.  And I think of those mothers that are reflected above, gals that are still mothers, women who will always be mothers, but with no one to mother.  I hold you close this Mother’s Day and I think of you.

  • For those battling their own illness;
  • For those battling their own addiction;
  • For those mothering, but who probably should not be, for a thousand different reasons.

I think of you, too, this Mother’s Day.  One of the most amazing things that has come to me through writing has been hearing from different moms whose struggles look nothing like mine own, but who identify with the struggle itself.  A reader wrote to me in the midst of her own illness, when we were in the thick of Donna’s.  She was hopeful, but excrutiatingly aware that her children, her daughters, would most likely grow up without her.  She was right.  I learned later that she had died in the midst of transplant surgery.  And now her girls are motherless, grappling with their own sadness this Mother’s Day.  Another reader wrote to me about her addiciton and how reading about Donna made her see her own toddler, neglected through that addiciton, in a new and necessary way.  She is now clean and sober over five months.  That mom has a shot at a real and joyous Mother’s Day, and I wish her the best.

This post is for all of us on the other side of the Mother’s Day coin.  Kraft och omtanke to you.  Strength and consideration instead of flowers, or brunch, or manicures.  Soon it will be Monday and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Blue Jays

 

Posted on

Donna’s Cancer Story: Mother’s Day

This is the fourteenth of thirty-one installments of Donna’s Cancer Story, which will appear daily in serial format through the month of September to recognize Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.  Each post will cover one month of Donna’s thirty-one months of treatment.

Donna in restaurant

When you go through cancer treatment with your child, you meet some of the best people you will ever know.  The oncologist who cared for Donna is a man that to this day I want to sit across from in a bar and talk about what he does for a living.  His work is sacred and difficult and heart breaking and life affirming and joyous all at the same time.  On any given day he might lose a patient, but save another, or several even.  You hear about those with jobs that are life and death — police officers and fire fighters and soldiers.  Add pediatric oncologist to that list.  Stew is my hero.  He wears silly ties and sings while walking down the hall and he does this without affect, or being ridiculous.  I respect him immensely. 

Donna with Stew and Tara 

The nurses we worked with are some other ridiculously gifted and compassionate individuals.  Each day they go to a job where they will hook poison up to the IVs of kids from infants to teens.  They clean vomit and diarrhea and other unfortunate things on a crazy regular basis.  They see families, day in and day out, faced with the worst trauma they will ever experience.  Parents in the middle of this level of stress are not always the easiest folks to interact with.  But, somehow, these nurses provide comfort, laughter, food, support, professionalism, smiles, hugs, five minutes alone with your kid so you can run to the bathroom — whatever it is you need in that moment.  And they do it with grace. 

And then there are the other families.  So many other families that come from all walks of life.  Cancer parents are every color, religion, size, class, shape, etc.  Cancer is the great equalizer, it does not disciminate.

Some families you click with, and some you tolerate.  Children’s Memorial, where Donna was treated,  is an older hospital with semi-private rooms.  Soon they will move into their new digs, a skyscraper shrine to pediatric health that will open next year, but with Donna, there were humble digs.  Humble, tight, semi-private digs.  You get to know your roommates pretty quickly. 

When Donna was in the midst of her chemo, I spied another Cancer Mom across the playroom and immediately had a mom crush on her.  (Note:  always use capitals when addressing Cancer Parents, because, Lordy, are they worthy of your respect.)  I was instantly curious about the little boy toddler at her side and smitten with how his onesie  went unsnapped at the bottom, allowing the IV tubes to trail out behind him.  Clever!  I like clever people.  He was adorable and she looked like the best friend I hadn’t been introduced to yet. 

I took care of the introductions myself on our second or third sighting.  We clicked instantly.  Her son had recently been diagnosed with AML, the less fortunate type of leukemia.  We laughed together, admired one another’s kids, discovered we had gone to the same college.  She and her husband were beautiful and loving parents to both of their sons.  It was always a bonus to see them in clinic or on an inpatient stay.

At the beginning of this month, they learned that their young son, Gabe, had relapsed.  My heart sank for them.  My fear reignited for Donna.  When you become a Cancer Parent, it is hard to separate another’s losses or joys from your own.  You are so intimately connected because of the intensity of what it is you share — the hellish knowledge of fear — that you feel what they feel and vice versa.

Gabe’s status changed quickly and within weeks he unexpectedly died.  Suddenly.  Gabe was gone.  This was not right.  But it was. 

On Mother’s Day, Gabe’s would be/should be second birthday, we went to his wake.  There were no birthday candles, only hundreds of people gathered to pay their last respects.  We stood in a line that stretched out the room that was bursting with people.  There were children running and playing and nurses we recognized and beautiful Gabe at the front in his coffin.  He was lovingly surrounded by some of his favorite things.  It was the first time I had ever seen a child in a coffin.  I am grateful that when I think of Gabe now, it is smiling and laughing and taking laps with his Dad around the nurses station, his onesie and IV tubes trailing behind. 

When we got close to the front of the line and Gabe’s Dad saw us, he jumped out, protectively took us aside, and told us we should not be there, we should not see Gabe like that.  How on earth he felt protective towards us on this day of tremendous loss speaks to the kinship Cancer Parents feel towards one another.  Later, Gabe’s Mom spoke a few words to the folks gathered that were warm and kind and loving.  I marveled at her strength.  I kept wanting to go hold her hand while she spoke and hug her and comfort her. 

I wrote this later that night in Donna’s journal:

“There is survivor guilt tempered with fear tempered with the strangest sense that the world has turned upside down and inside out.  Someone at the service referred to Donna as a “success story,” and we both cringed a bit.  With cancer, there is no certainty.  A Cancer Parent knows you never know.  Instead, you learn to set a place at the table for this beast.  Sometimes you talk to it, sometimes you yell at it, mostly you try to ignore it.  Cancer is not a polite house guest.  It overstays its welcome, never cleans up after itself, and you always know its there — even on the best of days.  And when it gets what it came for, today it was a beautiful boy who should be celebrating his second birthday, it still remains.  You would think it would have the decency to leave.  It doesn’t.  Cancer will forever be with this family, just as it will be with ours.  Like a bad tattoo.”

This was a difficult day.  I needed to do something life affirming before returning to Donna.  I asked Mary Tyler Dad to stop at the Target on the way home.  As I suspected:

Pregnant

One mother was saying goodbye to her son, I was being introduced to mine.  It was Mother’s Day, but for a Cancer Mom, that is not always a day to celebrate. 

Tomorrow:  Back to Work