Beloved Mother
By Barb H
Cold wind buffeted us as the casket was lowered. The rabbi recited psalms and prayers in Hebrew—words falling like gentle drops of rain—as family members, one by one, sank the shovel in a mound of dirt and poured it on the box below.
A short drive away, my parents and grandparents rest in the same vast, midtown cemetery. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
A small group of us watched, friends huddling together as a brisk flurry kicked up dry leaves. We pulled our scarves and wraps tighter around our shoulders. I glanced toward our dear friend of some 47 years, veiled in the loss of her mother, imagining what she was processing.
She looked beautiful even in her grief—lovely, true, as she always is. A magnificent mother of two thriving young adults, she’s so loved by her family, her husband, and by us.
We have been friends since our early teens, before we had periods, broken hearts, birth control, careers, husbands, and children. When fun meant hot summer days by the pool, birthday parties, and sleepovers where we snuck out to t.p. a boy’s house in warm night air.
Shared secrets and struggles forged our friendships through middle and high school, before college sent us in different directions. Before life. Before weddings. Before burying our parents.
I took a breath—remembering the pain of losing my adoptive mom, and leaving her behind in the ground nearly 25 years ago.
The mother we celebrated this day was the quintessential mom. She loved her family fiercely and had room for those her daughter befriended. Welcomed into her home, she lavished us with hospitality, a heartwarming southern kind, and to some of us in our friend group, she was like a second mother. There. Present, a listener, and happy to give advice if needed.
I didn’t think I needed a second mother.
I thought all mothers were … an adult female role model in the home, cooking meals, running car pool, hosting parties, going to work, gathering the family, dutiful to parents and spouse, polite and kind, popular with friends, central even to her social circles. Yet, often distant from exhaustion and keeping up appearances, hiding her tears, self-doubting, at a loss for words, often unavailable emotionally. Well, to me. Like my mom, the most vivid picture of motherhood I knew.
It was me. I was the reason we were detached. A teen, unseen, too much. Confused.
Wrapped in wordless grief. Wildly fragmented by rejection and heartbreak.
Missing faceless people I’d never met. Not related. A stranger. Pretending. Searching.
So tired of adapting, trying to connect, feeling estranged, right there at home.
But this mother who was so beautifully eulogized by her son-in-law, in authentically true accolades, was one who I thought I didn’t need, didn’t reach out to, couldn’t trust because of my own issues with bonding. When that first connection is severed with the umbilical cord, can a child ever truly bond and feel safe with another?
I seek attachment, approval, and being needed. But bonding?
Did I ever feel safe in the bond of my caregivers—just as me, just breathing?
Why did façade and distance feel more normal than connection? Could my friend’s mom sense I needed real connection? My younger self surely knew to sit in chaos rather than ask a mother like her into my confusion and primal pain—for which I had no words and couldn’t describe, had I tried with all my might. Would she have seen me?
Would she have embraced me a few years later, without shame, and helped me find my way when I was pregnant and essentially alone? Could her embrace and her salt-of-the-earth guidance overcome rootbound-rejection deep in me?
Would familiar kindness be able to silence the roaring noises snuffing out my agency like a smoldering ember?
Maybe a second mom would have offered sweet wisdom I needed rather than the repeated rejections that summer of ‘84. Stern shame and silence severing me from family, friends, and finally my own infant daughter.
What if I had let her in? What if I had called? Would I now grieve this precious mom knowing she’d offered me strength and wisdom to preserve my family, a young mother and her child?
I think I would. She held that power, that grace, that receptive kindness. On that sacred day of gathering, embracing, weeping, praying, and remembering, we honored her soulful goodness.
The kind I didn’t feel I was worth.
