Missing Mommy
#1: Giant, Gasping Sobs
September 1991, Minnesota
By LOTUS MASON
The first time I truly understood death I was 10 years old, sitting in the middle of a gaggle of girls, watching Steel Magnolias at midnight.
We had just moved to Minnesota, and for the first time in my life I was the new kid in town. I’d already been invited to a sleepover the second week of school, and was excited to make new friends. The host Jill and I had almost the same birthday, so we were both center of attention all night.
But suddenly I didn’t want to be in the spotlight. Watching the movie, it was everything I could do to keep from crying. To this day I don’t know why. When the tears started, I gave in, and lay on the shag carpet in the renovated basement, releasing giant gasping sobs, as the girls eyed one another in bewilderment.
It was my mom. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wanted to be sure she would be in my life forever. I was struck deeply by the reality of her own mortality; she loomed large above me like a goddess, the most important person in the world.
Years later, when recalling this scene to my mother, she would show me a letter she had kept from a few years earlier, when I was about 7 years old. In the letter I’d written: “Mommy, I don’t ever want you to die. I don’t ever want to leave for college or my own life. I want to be with you forever! As I am writing this I’m crying. PS Just because I love you so much doesn’t mean I don’t love Daddy either!”
Am I the only one who was so sensitive about losing my mother at such a young age?
Lotus Mason grew up to live 3,000 miles from her mother, but they talk and email almost every day. She is using a pseudonym.
#2: A Speck in the Distance
1950, Chicago, Illinois
By SUSAN ZEMELMAN
My mother is a speck in the distance. But I know it must be her walking those three long blocks from the bus stop.
Every morning, she leaves the house where we live with Nanny and Papa, and goes to work in the Loop. I’m not sure what the Loop is, but I imagine my mother on a roller coaster zig-zagging around tall buildings and smokestacks. When she took me on the roller coaster at Riverview, I was scared.
I wonder why she chooses to do this, to leave each day, rather than to stay at home with me.
Nanny hugs me when I cry and tells me that I should be a big girl. Don’t I know that my mother needs to have money to help pay for my clothes and toys? Yes, I know. Don’t I know that my mother will be back at the end of the day? I know. I don’t know. I’m not sure.
Each night, I stand by the living-room window, squinting at the speck that will suddenly transform into a person - maybe into my mother. Now I can see her wave and blow me a kiss. She’s come home.
Susan Zemelman is a writer and adult educator who lives in Evanston, Illinois. She has published poetry and prose in the Chicago Tribune, North Shore Magazine, and various academic journals.
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10 Responses to “Missing Mommy”
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November 26th, 2007 at 9:59 am
A most poignant rendering of a young child’s experience with repeated separation and reconnection….In a few short paragraphs, Susan Zemelman captures a universality that we can all resonate with.
November 26th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Lotus, I understand perfectly what you’re saying here — I, too, had that realization when I was very young. I remember walking around Disney World when I was around ten, and my mother had given me a stick of gum. She reached back out to take the empty wrapper after I’d popped the gum in my mouth, and I started to cry. I told her I didn’t want her to throw it away because she had touched it — and maybe one day she wouldn’t be around anymore. She sort of laughed, but I think she understood, too.
I enjoyed reading both stories — thanks for sharing!
November 26th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Lotus-
I think there’s something weird about that 10th birthday. It’s a lifemarker at a decade old. The knowledge of adulthood and independence is sneaking up but it hasn’t yet gained the allure.
I had already lost my mother already at age 6. I had been pretty much fine at every other birthday. Then on my 10th birthday I broke down and sobbed that she would never see me reach this decade marker and I was afraid to go on to the next stages without her.
November 26th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Wow these are both powerful stories.I thank the both of you for writing them,God Bless,Mike G.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:46 am
As an adult I still miss my mother she died in 2003 of lung cancer,losing a parent or parents in my case no matter how old you are is had to take.
The worse thing about death is being a parent and loseing your child.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Lotus,
When I was 8 years old and had moved to a new state, my mother put me in a Christian Sunday school to be around other children (as an adult I am now Buddhist). One day we had a Christmas activity to do where we had to go around in a circle and tell each other one wish. Mine was that I died before my mother because I didn’t want to ever be without her. I was immediately taken out of the room and kicked out of that Sunday school. In my 8 year old mind death was equivalent with “old” people, I was not being morose; I was too young to understand what I had said wrong in their eyes. I guess that deep of an expression was hard to articulate as a small child but the intention was full of a deep love for my mother and the fear of losing her. Reading your story reminded me of this memory.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Lotus,
I was the same way. I actually wrote a contract with my parents on the back of a puzzle box promising I would never live away from them, and that they would have to move with me when I left for college.
Luckily, I’d changed my mind at age 17, and they didn’t hold me to the promise.
December 8th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
I remember following my mom around our double wide trailer one afternoon so I could get her attention long enough to tell her I didn’t want to live without her. I was as tall as her apron strings. She said “Amy, everyone goes to heaven, and you will go too, but not before me. It’s not okay for you to go first, so I will. You will be okay with this.” and I was sure I wouldn’t be. As an adult I understand, and I think I would tell my children the same thing.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
These stories remind me, once again, that I have next to no relationship with my own mother. I am 55 and my mother is 74. I do not have her address or phone number. My parents divorced while I was in college, and she remarried and has basically shut me out of her life. She was a good mother to us, although not particularly warm. She never said “I love you,” that I recall. Yet she took good care of us and was always there for us. It’s strange with my family. At any given time nobody really knows where he or she stands. Especially me. With my own children it’s different. We are very close: letting them grow up and go has been hard for me. My oldest son’s goal is to someday move us all back together again into one big house! (I like the idea)
January 12th, 2008 at 10:38 am
This responce is for # 1.I realize what its like to lose a mother. I lost my mommy before she died.She had an addiction.I really dont wanna talk about it but to anwser the question. Am I the only one who was so sensitive about losing my mother at such a young age?No your not my mom died in 2007 but really I lost her At age 11.i still cry from the things hse did when i was 11.Going on 4 years in may.Their are people who know how you feel.