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August 27, 2006
Today is my Mother’s birthday. She was born in Bluefield, West Virginia on July 11, 1948.
In 1982, when she was my age, she had three daughters. I was eleven and my sisters were 6 and 5. I remember a lot about how she was when I was eleven. My dad was in the Navy, away from home at least 6 months of the year. When he was home, he was distant and quick to anger much of the time. So my mom had to be a single parent.
She was so good at it. It’s beyond amazing to me as an adult to think about all it would have taken to raise three children, one with special needs, while physically alone half the time and left with no emotional support from her husband. She maintained a household, two dogs a cat and a full time job. She never complained, or broke down or skimped on mothering us. She was independent and self-sufficient and funny and energetic and kind. The cancer that would ultimately take her life had probably not started growing yet when she was 34.
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 15 and she was 38, the September of my Sophomore year. She battled for 2 1/2 years, going in and out of remission twice, until the cancer metastasized to her brain in my senior year of high school. She died at 40 sending me into a total free-fall two months short of my prom, graduation and 18th birthday.
As I have moved through my life without her and struggled through milestones, personal triumphs and tragedies, I find myself drawing parallels to my mom. How old was she when I was born? How were we alike at 22, 30, 34? How are we dissimilar? I look for her face in my reflection. I listen for her voice when I hear my own. I have no basis for comparison except my memories and those of my sisters. We often remember things differently and remember different things. Inconceivably, she’s been gone now for the same number of years she was in my life.
I spent my 20’s searching desperately for something and never finding it. For a long time I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I realized what was missing around the time I turned 27. I found a really great therapist and made a committment to getting the most from my time with her. She helped me crack into the shell I had built around my heart, my head, my entire self. I owe that woman my life, if not literally, then in too many figurative ways to count.
I was yearning for the kind of intimacy that comes from the unconditional love that you get from a mother. I didn’t love myself at that point, unconditionally or otherwise and I certainly had no clue how to mother myself.
I searched for belonging with a few serious boyfriends and even a husband who turned out to be the exact opposite of what I needed. I habitually scanned the faces of strangers for some spark of familiarity, something that would click into place like a missing puzzle piece. This is something I carry forward to my life today. Not quite unconsciously, I look for a connection that I know (academically) I won’t find because it doesn’t exist in this world for me anymore, yet I don’t stop myself because it’s habit, and also because it doesn’t hurt me the way it once did. For a long time after she died, I think I was truly expecting to one day see her face in a crowd.
I wandered semi-blindly, emotionally speaking, through an entire decade of my life. When I try to remember the person I was then the thing that strikes me the most is how frustrated I felt all the time. Nothing ever seemed to work for me. I didn’t know enough about myself to be able to fake it and it showed in my interactions with people. I held everyone at arm’s length because I didn’t have the energy to try to pull myself together and be someone who could be a friend, or a girlfriend. I was terrified to love anyone because I couldn’t bear the agony of losing them, even if losing them just meant they were moving away or we were breaking up. Everything seemed final and permanent to me then.
I tried exhaustively to supress all feelings, but in the end the only emotion that really got buried was joy. I still felt the anger, the sadness, the frustration. Only I felt them to a greater degree. My rage and pain were worn on my sleeves. The idea that the fates owed me something to make up for the injustice of leaving me motherless and essentially fatherless bubbled close to the surface all the time and jangled like raw nerves at the slightest provocation.
I was fortunate enough to realize in my late 20’s that what I was doing wasn’t working for me. That I was torturing myself needlessly and things could be different and so much better. I think there are people in the world who never learn that lesson and that is both frightening and sad to me. I feel incredibly lucky.
So I decided I deserved to have a future. I worked hard. I grieved the loss of my mom and the loss of myself. I began taking tiny steps to regain bits and pieces of the person I was and the person I knew I could be.
I’m still working hard at it. That’s part of the reason I started this journal. It’s one of the things I do for myself, because it’s so much more simple now to know what I want and need and to not deny myself those things. The word that best describes my life as it is today is redemption. I got a second chance. I gave it to myself.
It is by far the best gift I’ve ever received.
~ Tammie
Reprinted with Permission
August 28th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Beautiful.
I know where you are. I’ve been there. My mom died when I was 17 and I haven’t been the same since. And every year on her birthday, I revisit the emotions that envelop my heart, re-feel the sorrow that her death has brought on…Thank you for sharing your story and you ‘journal’.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Oh Tammie, honey - I am so sorry you had to grow up so fast like that. I know you miss her - especially now with so much to share. She would be so very proud of you - and so happy with the life you have forged. All I can say is please allow the large circle of women you have surrounded yourself with to try and fill up some of those holes. Of course it s not the same - but you are our friend, and we love sharing what wit and wisdom we have with you. And when your wee one arrives - you can share this memory with her; and hopefully, in doing so - touch that part of your mother that lies waiting in your heart.
August 28th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Through reading your blog and meeting you in person, I got an inkling of your inner strength and purpose. I admire your decision to make changes and to follow through with what you needed to do. Thanks for writing your story.
August 28th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Thank you for sharing this, Tammie…it’s a long, hard road to walk and I commend you for finding what you needed for yourself in the wake of such loss. I hope I can do the same as well.
August 28th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
amazing how those dates sneakup on you isn’t it. Hang in there. Ironically, my mother died on July 11th 98
August 30th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Tammie, this is beautifully written and self-aware. I am impressed and happy for you that you were able to recognize your “dysfunction” and figure out a way to heal.
September 11th, 2006 at 5:17 am
I’m so glad I’ve found this website. My mother’s still alive, but with pancreatic cancer, I know I only have - at most - a few brief years left with her. My decision was that if they were able to operate on her, then it was time I get pregnant (and, after 6 months, I am!). My mother also lost her mother to cancer at about my age. I feel like I’m caught in a double bind of a future of parenting with out my mother (who is ‘closer than my life vein’ to me, as she says) and quite possibly doing the same to my children. And yet, I don’t want to waste my life (and hers) in anticipation of the pain - or maybe it’s anticipatory pain I have. Now I pray she at least lives to meet her first grandchild….