This Mother’s Day marks just over two years since my mother died. At 91, it wasn’t unexpected. She was one of the increasing number of Australian nonagenarians born in the 1920s and 30s. Her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were fortunate indeed to have had her around for so many years.
The growth in the rate of Australians living into their 90s has raised the age of “orphaned” baby boomers. I knew my time with her was running out, and was grateful for the benefit of 60-plus years of her wit and wisdom.
When I was in my late 20s, I recall a 65-year-old friend feeling embarrassed by the intensity of her grief at the loss of her elderly mother.
“It’s just that I’ve lived so long with her in my life,” she said. The idea of numbers of years spent together as proportionate to the magnitude of loss was novel to my younger self. Three decades on, I understand. I was a grandmother who had just been made motherless. I felt the loss of my mother as keenly as any child would.
I was conscious of my good fortune while feeling the absence of 60 years of safe harbour. Despite the relentless advance of dementia and ill health in her final years, my mother remained the wisest and best human I knew.
I’d always thought grieving would come naturally. I hadn’t been sure what that looked like but I imagined that when my time came, I would know how to do it.
When my father died, I diverted my grief to attending to my mother. While she was principal griever, I could keep myself busy watching over her. When my mother died it was different. My children regarded me as principal griever and I was utterly unprepared for the role. I kept myself busy, looking away when the memories drifted in unbidden and deftly sidestepping the solicitations of others.
“I am fine as long as you don’t show me any sympathy,” I would say. I was brittle and brisk. And busy – too busy to be falling into a heap. And yet …
A fortnight after her death, I was in her rose garden gathering two weeks of blooms in a bucket. I found myself weeping at the futility of picking roses for a mother who could no longer derive joy from them, who would no longer open her eyes from sleep, take a second or two to focus on the riot of bright orange, yellow and pink and look to me for confirmation it was indeed her garden that produced these glorious blooms. I found a second bucket and kept cutting the roses, tears flowing unchecked down my face. My sister found me there and wrapped her arms around me. We didn’t need any words. No one understood better than she: we had travelled the path together.
Our mother’s death brought with it a profound sense of loss and, given her precarious state of health over the past two years, an overwhelming feeling of relief. Until the end, although it had been a struggle, we managed to keep her in the home she had lived in for 60 years, looking out on the garden that had given her so much joy. And we had been lucky enough to have shared those years with her. Every Mother’s Day is a reminder, if reminder were needed, of our good fortune.
Grieving at any age is a simple concept. The bereaved grieve the loss of their loved one: there has been a loss, someone has died, and those left behind must live with the loss. So grieving is living with loss – no more and no less. You can do it noisily and visibly, or with barely a ripple on the surface. But you don’t have to do it alone.
