Mom’s been gone over 22 years now. I still miss her.
I miss dad too, gone for 19 years.
Sucks to be an orphan.
Oh yes, do I. She died two years ago, I was with her when she died, and I think about her every day. She was the person I was the closest to in all the world, and no one can fill her absence.
Ok, guys. I get the message. Calling my mother today and going to schedule a dinner this week. She’s 82. Has always been a good mom.
Four years for me, but the rest is the same. I was really lucky I got there before she died and got to talk to her. We had already had our goodbye on the phone so when I saw her I just acted casual. She fell asleep like she was napping (a favorite activity of hers) and slowed down and stopped 1/10/10.
I love her so much. You had to know her, she wasn’t one of those larger than life personalities that it would be obvious you would like and love, but she was faithful and strong and she loved me too. I like to think she was my perfect mom, maybe she wouldn’t have been someone else’s but she was mine.
Just to show how strong she was, she was suicidal most of the time I was growing up but I never knew that. She was always there for me and she never let me know she was in pain. When she got sick around Christmas of 2009 with a terrible backache, they put her in the oncology ward. Why would they do that? My father tells me she had a growth in her breast for at least ten years that she never got diagnosed or treated. First I heard of it. It spread throughout her body and what killed her was her lungs filling up.
I know it may seem perverse to some but it just shows me how strong she was. She was a devout Catholic after being converted as a teenager, and her words to me were “I wanted to go for as well as I could for as long as I could, and then go home”. ETA: Her greatest fear was to “linger” – so I am very glad that she wasn’t badly sick for very long. She told my father to take care of me because I am “such a good person”. I can’t agree with that but I can try to live up to it!
I can’t really believe she’s dead even though I watched it happen.
Oh yes. Mine only died about six weeks ago so I don’t guess it’s surprising. But yesterday was as hard as the first days and I can’t explain why.
She drove me nuts the way only moms can, but that woman had.my.back.
My sister is hugely supportive and wonderful and I know how lucky I am to have her, but she’s not my mom.
My heart goes out to those of you who have or had moms you don’t miss. I hope you’ve made relationships that offer you the kind of connection we mom missers had with ours.
8 years for me.
I miss her and my father and my brother Tom.
I miss my sister more. My mother wasn’t an asshole, but she really wasn’t all that fond of children, so there wasn’t a lot of touchy-feely warmth growing up. My sister, on the other hand, took care of me when I was very young, while my mother worked two jobs. She basically gave up her teenage social life for me and was always a sympathetic ear. At least I was able to say goodbye before she died late last year.
I miss my mom mostly because it took her a very long time to grow up. The mother I knew for most of my life was cruel, stupid, judgmental, amoral and just not a very nice person. Mostly she was dumb and mean, the kind of person who once spent three hours yelling at me because I was ten and I broke a glass.
In the last five years of her life she finally grew up. She was a kind and loving grandmother to my eldest child, awed by my accomplishments as a writer and a pleasure to speak with. It is that last woman I miss sometimes so much it is a physical pain. It was a gift given between us, the one that finally probably allowed me to grow up and let go of the pain of my childhood. I mourn it wasn’t mine to keep longer.
My mother died when I was 23, and my dad when I was 27. I remember thinking with a profound sense of loss, “I’m an orphan,” even though I was grown and married. It was a strange feeling.
I’m glad for you. My mom’s mom was horrible to her when Mom was little, but was a fun Nana to me. And my mom never tried to sour me on Nana; she was just happy that Nana was nice to me.
My mom was one of those good mom/bad moms and it’s been three-and a half years. I still think of her nearly every day.
She did a pretty good job for someone who probably didn’t want to be a mom at all. So I can understand a lot of things I didn’t understand while I was growing up.
I’m often thinking, “I should call her and tell her____________” and then I remember she’s gone.
It helps to know other people have to deal with the loss, too.
It was 14 years on December 2, 2013. Yes, every single day. Wish I could have just one more day with her.
My dad has been gone since 1983.
Yes, it sucks royally to be an orphan.
I miss my mom. We had a weird relationship (not much at all in common) but she was a good mom and one of the more interesting people I’ve known in my life, so yeah, I miss her. She died in 2011, fairly suddenly.
I miss my dad too–he died a little over a month ago, on Christmas Day, at 81. He and I got along great, and I had lots in common with him. Since I don’t have a big family on my side, I’ve been feeling pretty alone lately. Fortunately I have a spouse I love and who loves me, but there’s been more than one time over the last month where I wake up in the wee hours and can’t shake thoughts about what I’d do if something happened to him. Not fun.
I don’t know if it still counts as being an orphan when you’re in your 40s, but if it does, it still sucks.
This thread is making me all weepy.
My mom died when I was a baby and I don’t have any memories of her. I miss her and I regret that I never got to know her.
I miss her, but my aim is improving.
Now if we’re talking mothers-in-law, yes, I do miss her. She died 14 years ago this month. A fine old Chinese lady who was only ever a permanent resident in Thailand. As per tradition, she even performed the marriage ceremony for my wife and me.
Grandmothers? My maternal grandmother I was very close to despite the essentially evil nature of her daughter, my mother. She died 19 years ago. her I miss very much. My paternal grandmother died way back in the 1960s when I was only eight years old and had seen her only once or twice years before. I barely remember her. Sadly, she died while on her way from California to visit us in West Texas. A sudden heart attack on the train. I do recall arriving home from school to find my father’s car in the driveway and thinking Grandmother must have arrived early, because she wasn’t due for another day or so.
But mother? No way.
My mom and my mother-in-law both died suddenly four years ago, my mother-in-law in March and my mom in May (on Mother’s Day, actually). I miss them both very much, and I still sometimes wake up from dreams in which I’ve been talking to my mom and have to remember that she’s gone.
It gets better, for the most part, but not in a linear way. There are days that I miss her just as much as I did the week after she died, but those days aren’t as frequent as they used to be.
*I am the street of your childhood,
I am the root of your being,
I am the pounding rhythm
in all that you’re yearning for.
I am your mother’s grey hands
and your father’s worried mind,
and I am the light, wispy web
of your earliest dreams.
I gave you my somber gravity
one day marked by wild despair,
and I sprinkled sadness in your heart
one night of pouring rain.
One time I struck you down
to properly harden your heart,
but I also tenderly raised you up
and wiped away your tears.
It was I who taught you to hate,
and I taught you meanness and scorn,
I gave you the strongest of weapons,
be sure to use them well.
I gave you those watchful eyes
that will always mark who you are,
and if you meet someone with the same gaze,
you should know that he is your friend.
And should you hear purer notes
that strike a fairer song,
you shall long in your heart
for the broken and halting sound of my voice.
Though you wandered so far and wide,
though you may have lost sight of your friend,
—I am the street of your childhood,
I shall always know you again.*
(Childhood Street by Tove Ditlevsen, from “Lille verden,’ 1942; translated for The Impact of Attachment by Susan Hart.)
My mother is the reason I hope there’s not an afterlife.