I’m in a yoga class, and tears are dripping down my face like a leaky faucet. Hip openings, in my case, lead to grief openings. I try to hide them. There are only four of us in the class. But there it is, the grief resurfacing. I had tucked it away so deeply that I had thought that it had disappeared. But here I am, and it is too.
I am back in England for a stay, following my academic husband. Am I a modern woman, my life in the shadow of another’s? In the shadows, the grief surfaces. Nearly 20 years ago, we were in England chasing my husband’s pursuits, and I was in tow, then with our two young children, when the news arrived, terminal cancer, my mother. Valium was my life support until we could make our way back to Kentucky. My husband conserved his drug supply and feared I’d developed a love of valium. It was a particularly hard pill to swallow, not the drug, the terminal cancer news, because nine years earlier, my brother died unexpectedly after a surgical procedure, and five weeks later, my father’s heart gave way—unable to survive the loss of his only son.
In the years after my father’s and brother’s deaths, my devotion to my mother was complete, airtight. And hers was total, as it always had been, to her family—for those of us remaining, my sister and me, and my husband. I took on the responsibility to be present and to keep the family alive—that is, to have children. She relished her movement into grandmotherhood. We have a photo, a still life as it were, of her sitting at our kitchen table with my son who was maybe two or three at the time. Individually, but jointly they are licking their popsicles to manage the summer heat, pure joy oozing from the photo. I also still see her walking up our sidewalk carrying her homemade lentil soup to nurse us back to health after battling the flu.
Even while she was dying, she mothered and grandmothered with unflinching devotion. She maintained her hawk-like maternal vision. On one occasion, I was outside of our house talking to a “friend.” My dying mother, who at that point was living with us, ran from the house, interrupted the conversation, and implored me to come in the house. She intervened because, she told me, this woman was no friend to me. She counseled me while she was making her transition, advising who was friend or foe to me. “They’ll never be a friend to you,” she’d tell me, trying to impart insight before her passing. Every assertion she made proved correct over and over again.
She saw to my well-being even while dying. At one point, the pressure overcame me, caring for a dying mother and small children at once. I was weeping in my bedroom apart from where she was staying, but she rose from her bed, came to my side, stroked my hair and apologized for the heartache. It was at this point that she decided it was time to move back to her own home to die. I’ll never forget. We were pulling out of the driveway, returning to her home, when out shot my five-year-old son in front of the car, blowing kisses goodbye. “He knows he’ll never see me again,” was my mother’s response. She was right. She was a consummate nurturer, but our time with her was limited.
I responded to her death in both healthy and unhealthy ways. I let in way too many people, even after her warnings, who did not have my best interest at heart—trying to fill the void and empty spaces left by the loss of so many family members. I bought too many pieces of clothing, hoping to fill an insatiable desire. And I acted like the grief wasn’t there or rather I was beyond it. It was easy to do because times were busy as I was nurturing children and other people’s stories, as an independent sociologist/oral historian. I carried others’ sorrow rather than indulging in my own, a diversion. It worked for a time. But there were moments when fissures surfaced in the façade. When my daughter would periodically assert, “I wish I had known your family,” the weight of what had been lost could not be ignored. I was reminded of all the unconditional love that would have been showered on my children that died with my family members. The countless times that I was in the company of others who competed with me and/or my children and let me know that we were not on the same team, but rather competing ones—as though in a tennis match. I longed for more “team” members.
I tried my best to keep the sorrow at bay. I hardly have any pictures of my family members displayed around the house, and I infrequently told stories about them. I ignored death anniversaries because it hurt too much, and as I said, I was trying to keep the grief at bay. Times were busy. I was in the thick of nurturing.
What’s odd is the extent to which I aspired to deny not just the grief but that I was a nurturer or that I spent my days nurturing. It’s ironic because what I longed for the most was my mother’s nurturing support. But I had ingrained the ethos that nurturing work lacked value. Years ago, I was in a local boutique chatting with the owner/friend when another customer known to the owner entered the store. The other customer deemed herself as a psychic of sorts and took one look at me and said, “You are a nurturer.” I protested. I was so much more than that. I was a feminist, and in my limited conceptualization of feminism believed that feminists don’t nurture, their time is better spent on more important, larger enterprises. But the psychic was right and in some odd way, I had denied both nurturing and grief while in their clutches.
Everything crumbled with the pandemic—my pretense that grief was my past, not my present, and that nurturing was secondary for me. The pandemic represented death to me (and to many others) or the threat thereof. It didn’t help that my daughter developed a chronic illness in 2020. It was her illness, but I fell apart. Illness equaled death in my estimation, and worse-case scenarios lurked everywhere. I developed “my profession,” as I’ve come to call my worrying habit, disaster on the horizon or on the brink. The trouble is that the profession is all-consuming. I have projected illness (devastating ones) onto my children, my husband, my sister, and mostly myself. I have no faith that the worst won’t happen because it has before. In the most distorted sense, worry affords control and is a form of nurturing.
Not surprisingly, my nurturing reserves have emptied out. There’s nothing left, especially when nurturing translates into worrying. I suppose it works out, because my kids are grown and need me on an ad hoc basis. The stories I’ve collected are out in the world, no longer needing to be tended to.
Now that intensive nurturing has evaporated, what remains? What I have found is that the grief has resurfaced, presenting itself as unresolved grief. I sit in an English café connected to no one, but the grief, realizing that I have to indulge what I have been avoiding—delving deeply into the hurt and pain—owning both the grief and that I have spent my adult life nurturing others. I learned the nurturing moves from the best, my mother. The very acknowledgment that I am a nurturer, modeled after my deceased mother, took 20 years of grieving to grasp.
Articles are for informational and self-help purposes only. Articles are not meant to provide specific advice for your specific situation. They should not be treated as a substitute for psychological, behavioral health, medical, financial, relationship, or career advice or as a substitute for consultation with a qualified professional. Nothing in any Article is intended as a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, healthcare provider, opinions or other information.
The opinions expressed by the author and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of Mother’s Day Magazine. Mother’s Day Magazine is not responsible for the accuracy of the information supplied by the author. The Terms and Conditions are incorporated herein.