One of My Longest Relationships is with Grief

Grieving My Mother Who Still Alive

I thought I would be emotionally grounded on Mother’s day, but grief has a way of showing up unannounced. The grief that is coming up for me now feels extremely piercing to my eyes and isolating to my spirit.

My mother is alive, but I’ve been intensely grieving her for the past couple of years, and preparing to grieve her my whole life.

I grieve for the type of mother I wanted her to be. The mother I could share the happenings of my day with, share my latest crush, go to her for advice, and in return, she would tell me about her life, who she was before having me, and her life in Haiti.

I am deeply thankful for the moments where we shared laughs, when she told me she liked my outfit and hair, and I do miss the moments when she would stare at me across the kitchen table and say my name. Then, I would get annoyed as she would watch my every move, but I miss her remembering me.

I tend to say that my mother was physically present my entire life, but elsewhere emotionally and mentally a lot of the time. I didn’t get to hear her stories from her, I sometimes heard it from my dad and brother. I feel a bit hurt, excluded, and lonely that they got to experience earlier versions of her, but I see those versions in her photos.

I grieve the memories and conversations I won’t have with her on the earthly realm. Honestly, I’ve been grieving the memories and conversations we never had since I was a child. I grieve my younger self who received the version of my mother who was deeply exhausted emotionally, physically, and spiritually. She had me at 47 years old, bringing me safely earthside with brute courage and strength, but it placed her in life-threatening situations. She experienced an uptake of complications from her diabetes and had her first stroke after my birth. These life-threatening circumstances led to time away from her as a newborn, as she was in the hospital recovering, and I was elsewhere being taken care of, as told by my dad.

I’ve seen her health decline progressively during the course of my life. So, it was very real for me as a child to know that my parents will not be here long, and that was the grief I’ve been holding onto since as long as I can remember. As my mother’s health noticeably worsened progressively from my late teens to now (over the course of ~10 years), I’m just sad. Sad of what never was and what will never be. The grief of the past years confirmed what will never be, the possibility that maybe we can have the relationship that I desired when I was younger.

While in college and during the pandemic, I remember watching her spend the whole day at the kitchen table staring into space. This troubled me, but I didn’t have the language for it. The best I did during that time was encourage her to get up, walk with me from the kitchen to the hallway, and remind her to breathe deeper.

The sadness doesn’t wash away the times where I needed her to stand up for me, to understand me, and emotionally nurture me, it weighs heavier knowing that she simply couldn’t or had the capacity to further extend herself. I don’t know what else to say other than believing that she did the best with what she had. I have been giving myself permission, starting in my early 20s, to put down some of the grief that I’ve been carrying since I was a child. I can tell now that grief, in addition to many other things, has hardened my receptivity to being mothered and nurtured by loved ones and myself.

I know that I am able to connect with my mother’s spirit even now as she is alive, and it will only be strengthened whenever Bon Dieu returns her home.