Mother's Day Again

One of my heroes Billy Bragg, just shared this poem on Facebook. I know if I'd shared it there, no-one would have looked at it or connected with it. Or very few. Lots of people are sharing happy times on Facebook today; and some are missing Mums that they have lost very recently. I thought I'd share it here instead. It seems to fit my melancholy mood today.

I always find Mother's Day hard one way or another. I wonder what my Mum would have been like if she had lived and I had gotten to know her. I wonder if she would have understood me somewhat. Same old questions. Last week was the anniversary of her death. That day and Mother's day always overshadow March for me. She would have been 83 this year. I wonder if she would have had a garden? Would she have been anything like the woman in this poem?

I am very grateful for the woman who brought me up from the age of nine, and her family. They took me in and accepted me, in all my prickliness. Recently I recognised that I needed to grow up and be a grown up daughter to her. I struggle with this, though her own daughter(my sister) manages it very well. All of a sudden she became that adult daughter caring for her Mother. I missed the opportunity and got left behind though I am the elder. I feel on the outside still. I feel childish still. So I continue to avoid contact. Though this is all I long for. I feel it is better to stay on the outside in case I let them down. My sister fills her role as grown up only daughter so well. Do I sound bitter? I am not. Just a little sad.

Each Mother's day, whilst I celebrate that she is my "second Mum" and give thanks for this, I also grieve that my own Mother has been away so long. Seeing them together makes me miss that relationship I might have had. I struggle to make a relationship with either of them. The distance feels like a dark hole and I do not know how to reach across it. It is a dangerous place.

Some years there are simply more tears.

I know that I have to look at the abundance and not the lack. I habitually look at the lack or am Pollyanna making the best of it. In the middle somewhere maybe there is a place of acceptance and quiet sadness; compassion;  and gratitude. There is joy too. Somewhere amongst the shadows.