Missing Mom
By: Ron Baxendale Ii
Tags: Love, Grief, Mothers Day, Parents, Moms

Twenty-one years ago this May I wrote “Honoring My Mother” for my neighborhood newspaper. The column was a gift to my mom for Mother’s Day, a way to thank her for everything she had done for me. I ended the piece by reflecting upon the recent deaths of my aunt and maternal grandmother, the pain and loss suffered by my cousin and my mom, and my good fortune in still having my mom with me.

But life happens, as they say, and death, which I hoped would keep its distance, took my mom sooner than I ever expected. On the first day of December, 2012, my mom died of peritoneal cancer. Her death came as somewhat of a surprise when it really shouldn’t have: My mom had been complaining about discomfort on her right side since 2008, but doctors repeatedly found nothing, even telling her at one point that her symptoms were imagined. Then, suddenly, in August of 2012, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 peritoneal cancer. Three months later she was gone.

My mom and I were very close, and I’ve had a difficult time adjusting to life without her. Even though I knew my mom would die someday, I never even came close to imagining how hard it would be to actually lose her. Now I know firsthand the intense pain and grief that comes with the loss of a parent — the same pain and grief suffered by my cousin and my mom back in 1999. And only now do I know, seven-plus years after my mom’s death, that my grief was compounded by the ideas of those around me — the deep-seated notions that an adult man should not be close to his mom, should not be devastated by her passing, and should “get over” her death quickly.

Several months after my mom’s death, for example, a colleague likened me to his stepson: “Another one with problems is Cory. That guy is on the phone with his mother every Sunday night.” Another colleague, a bit later, told me that he thought of me when reading a news story about a person who continued to have “trouble” dealing with the loss of a parent. And then a neighbor gave me an article that suggested that grief that does not dissipate quickly is unusual and may, perhaps, require medication. These remarks and gestures were not intended to hurt or offend, I know. But they were, nonetheless, careless acts that betrayed my friends’ true feelings about my grief and relationship with my mom and needlessly added to my distress.

Through grief counseling, however, I discovered that the loss of a parent is the most difficult and stressful event in a person’s life and that while everyone grieves differently, grief is never an easy process for anyone. I also discovered what I knew to be true all along: there is nothing wrong with an adult child being close to his or her mother and missing her intensely after she has died and is no longer near.

Perhaps the gift I’m offering on this Mother’s Day is a message of assurance to anyone who wants or needs reassurance: It’s okay to be an adult and love your mom, miss her, and grieve as long as is necessary. The intensity and duration of your grief is testament to the closeness and quality of your relationship with your mother — a relationship that some, it seems, have never experienced and do not understand.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my mom. And I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to say that I still love her and miss her and appreciate all the things she did for me and gave to me. I hope, then, that this column written for this notable day is another way of continuing to honor my remarkable mother, Shirley Baxendale.