Category: Grief

Who am I without my Mom?

Published on by gailbartlettharrisLeave a comment

From the moment I was born, I had an audience; an adoring fan club who wanted the world for me and was prepared to sacrifice much to help me get it. That doesn’t mean life was perfect and nor was she, but it did mean that I started out with an irreplaceable advantage : unconditional love.

Through life’s trials (and there have been many) she was my best friend, my mentor, my partner in crime, my mirror and my lighthouse. She was a powerhouse of fight in my corner when I needed it and the most delightful and happiest of company under blue skies.

I miss her; understatement personified.

The road of grief can never be predicted and I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t have a destination. Once loss happens the grief travels with us and never leaves. Some days, it is damp and cold beneath our feet and on others, it is a gentle companion watching the breeze catch the leaves.

Lately, I have wondered who I am without my Mother.

Who am I without the expectations she had of me?… whether it be something she expected that I would do, a direction she expected me to take or an emotion she knew I would feel. Do I go the way I always would have gone, or does that change now that I don’t have the audience of parental ‘knowing’? Are there ways of my being that shift? Are there traditions, behaviors or directions that I held just for her? And, if so, what happens to them now? Do I discover one direction was indeed all my own or do I realize it had something to do with what she wanted for me or what I wanted for her?

Grief asks me these questions. What irony that I wish Mom was here to help me reply.

Boomerang Daffodils

Published on by gailbartlettharris1 Comment

On a neglected table in my garden sat a rather ordinary black flower pot. Covered in the remnants of rainfall, leaves and a little green algae, it has lingered unobtrusively within sight but out of mind. It’s true that for many summer months I had forgotten what plant used to live there. I guessed that my wild bursts of green thumb enthusiasm (closely followed by serious lack of maintenance) had found another victim.

At one point I remember considering using the sombre reciprocal for a splash of live mint on my kitchen windowsill, but in a moment of unusual clarity I had considered my classic lack of follow through and decided against it. I had almost unceremoniously emptied the contents into the back of the compost bin. No! Who am I kidding? I almost tipped the contents under a bush at the back of one of the flower beds!

About two months ago (on a ‘let’s really look at what’s going on in the soggy garden’ walk) I noticed some little pointed leaves shooting through the soil. I didn’t know what they were but was happy something had survived.

Today the same little pot sits on the table right outside my lounge window. Almost a dozen bright, joyous miniature daffodils greet me every morning and every evening and many repeated moments through the day. When I look at them, they fill me with a complicated joy.

You see, these daffodils used to live in a green plastic pot with a ribbon around it and a plastic little sign that read ‘Happy Mother’s Day’. I can remember arriving at her door with them on a Mother’s Day morning and the look on her face when she saw them. At some point before her death last year, she must have asked me to store the bulbs for her.

They say that the love you give comes back to you. More than a year after her death, my mother offers my love back to me. When I see them, I am so happy I bought them for her, so happy that they gave her joy. I am bereft that she isn’t here to see them with me; that I can’t laugh with her about a forgotten little garden pot filled with algae and moss who sprung forth with a display deserving of a Chelsea Flower Show.

Theye are living sunshine, bittersweet beauty.

 I drink them in. I drink them in for her. I drink them in from her.

 “Look Mom…. Daffodils”