An Ode to the Motherless

As this month’s Letter from Your Therapist, God has decided to use me as comfort to a special population of His children – loved ones who have recently lost their mothers. Living on this side of life without my mother has provided me with the words I wish I could have heard and the love I still very much need. So, this is for ya’ll, the ones who have called on me and the ones who will.

I see ya’ll. I see what it’s taking for you to put one foot in front of the other and press play on your own life and your own bills while handling all the paperwork that comes along with having lost her. I see how tense your shoulders are and how you haven’t been able to relax them since she left here. I see you, scrolling to call her and the sharp ache that glides to your heart when you realize she won’t be on the other end. I see you, living anyway. I see you still letting some folks make you smile. I see you, placing all those reminders of her all over everywhere. I see you, still showing up for your children and reminding them that grandmama is always with them. I see you aching and living. You are seen.

I feel ya’ll every day, grappling with the hardest thing that you have ever had to endure in all your “trying to keep it together” glory. I touch your faces and feel your yearning for your mother’s touch against your cheek just one more time. I feel that gaping hole in your chest when you can’t quite seem to catch your breath. I feel you when your palms start to drip and your head begins to ache because you have to figure out how to do some very adult thing without the most important (actual) adult you trusted. I feel the heaviness in your gait sometimes when you think about how many days you have to live without her. I feel the grace that it’s taking from your very bones to negotiate for her belongings and her money and how to honor her. I touch you, and I feel the strength of a child fighting for their life – to live, to heal, to be happy, to remember. I feel you, fighting. You are felt.

I hear you even when you cannot find the words. I hear you, telling family members that you’re doing okay because it would just take entirely too much energy to say, “No, I’m not okay. I just lost my mama.” I hear the laughter in your memories and the bellowing screams on your couch at month three without her. I hear those silent prayers (and questions and anger, too) to God, because it doesn’t make sense, because it isn’t fair, because you are too young, and because some of life’s happenings, like losing her, are still teaching us lessons. I hear you, playing her favorite song, cussing because you messed up her good recipe, and two-stepping like ya’ll were holding her hands in the living room. I hear your sighs, and I understand. You are heard.

There are not very many words that anyone can say, and as someone who knows, I want you to hear me when I say, I know. I feel you. You are not carrying this alone for our mamas are with us. They carry us still and love on us still and shade us and correct us still and tell us to get it all together still. Every moment you think she is talking to you or reminding you of her, she is. Every word that God speaks to you about her and about your life, it’s real. God has us in the palm of His hand, raining down His comfort on the pains of our grief, and is asking you to lay yourself at His feet. That means, be kind to yourself; take it one day at a time; tell other folks of your needs; let folks be there for you; and take care of yourself. This is the worst thing you will ever go through, and God is still bigger. He has not left you. He will not leave you, and neither will she.