Longing for Belonging After My Mother’s Passing…20 Years Later
Navigating & redefining life as a motherless woman
I feel lost.
After running for over 20 years, 23 to be exact, I’ve finally accepted the fact that what I have been looking for will never be found.
My various attempts for belonging from other families, other mothers, friends’ mothers, mother-in-laws, book clubs, churches, will never fill the cavernous void left by my mother’s unexpected and too-soon-for-me death in 2002.
You see, at 28 years old, I had just moved to my dream city of New York City, one year prior in 2001. My mother, Lois is her name, was my #1 cheerleader, my confidante, my rock. She battled alcoholism and depression amidst struggles with infidelity & disregard as a wife by my father, drug addiction by my sister and raising her grandson due to my sister’s inability to do so. She endured these life woes after her 2nd heart attack in the classroom rendering her unable to live out her passion of serving the world as a 10th Grade English teacher, as she had done for over 25 years.
Yet, amidst her struggles, she wanted me. Being wanted is one of the most amazing and fortifying feelings in the world. To be wanted is a gift that is underestimated, but which should be relished and cherished.
My mother’s efforts to conceive with my father were finally successful at 37 years old while enrolled in a Masters of Humanities program at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis). She was a teen mother at 16, and wanted to bear for and with her husband for a decade, to no avail. So, having a second daughter in her late 30s gave her the chance to give a little girl all she could dream of. She enrolled me in tap, ballet, piano, flute, speech therapy, arts camps, sleepaway camps, Hill Chapel Missionary Baptist Vacation Bible School, and more.
She would often tell me that I was her pride and joy. She invested her all in me ensuring I attended private school from kindergarten through 6th grade (in part due to my father’s provision), and was involved in abstinence peer counseling, spoken word, church to fulfill my civic duties in the community — as a teen. It was a lot. But I now respect the exposure and foundation she instilled in me as a child to be kind, studious and disciplined to live the life I do today.
When she died in August 2002, I missed her by 30 minutes. My nephew’s Chicago-based father Andre informed me of her death while I was waiting at baggage claim at Memphis International Airport. His call was both urgent and soft. He wanted to know which day he should drive from Chicago to retrieve his son — which my mother was raising on his and my sister’s behalf. I don’t recall much about the conversation, other than that I’d missed my mother’s last breath by 33 minutes traveling on a Delta Airlines direct flight from NYC.
Bags in tow, I got in the car of my best friend Niki’s car, and said two words, “Mom’s dead.” Without missing a beat, she said, “well I’ll be got damn. What do you want to do?” Her immediate surrender to what I needed remain with me to this day. Stunned as well, I asked her to drive me to Methodist Hospital on Union Avenue to face what needed to be faced. She asked if I wanted her to go in with me, I remember saying “I’m cool,” and walked boldly into the hospital.
Entering into the Intensive Care Unit room where my mother’s cooling body lay with a sweet and gentle smile of release brought me comfort. I approached her bed, and looked at her, and said to myself, I got it from here. She was finally free, no longer in pain. No longer having to figure out what to do with the pain in her life. She could finally rest. I was happy for her. She had just visited me for a full week in New York City, five days prior to her hospital visit that ended in her death. She saw my apartment, went to dinners with me, and we talked, as always. She’d told me how proud she was of me, and told me then that she wasn’t sure she would live to see me marry and have kids, but that she was proud of me. She was tired. Her conversation was laden with concern about how to navigate my nephew and sister living with her full time.
She was confined to her bedroom while they had the run of the house with their guests and company which made her uncomfortable. The more she shared on a running loop, the more I knew that the only option was for me to extract my mother from Memphis. The Monday after her Sunday departure from NYC, I called my landlord, requesting a 2-bedroom in my 151st Street Harlem apartment building, or any others he owned.
You see, I didn’t have a reaction when Andre called telling me of her transition from the earth plane because I think my spirit knew her time was up. On the plane ride to Memphis from NYC, I cried uncontrollably. It was as if there was a spiritual reckoning. So, when I landed, just like Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, I was all cried out.
So, once in that room with my mother’s physical body, I was strong. I held space for the emotions of my Aunts & cousin who were there, and informed my nephew and sister granting them permission to come ONLY if they did not create a scene or a ruckus. They absolutely could not create a trail of tears in the hospital room, given the emotional disturbance they caused her in life. I did not grieve, I had business to handle and my mother’s affairs, possessions, name, and legacy to protect.
After everyone came and went that dreadful long afternoon, the nurses were still awaiting my mother’s next of kin, her husband-because-she-never-divorced-him, — my father — to come sign the paperwork. My father’s truck troubles delayed him. I was massively annoyed. The longer it took him to get there, the more people I had to endure reacting to her cold body and holding space for their emotions. I was over it. I had a house to dismantle and a funeral to plan, and then I could grieve.
When my father finally made his appearance at the hospital, I will never forget that he opened the door, saw her body from afar, and feigned enormous pain, ducking back out as soon as he came in. In my mind, I said “get the eff out of here.” Exhausted at that very moment by the shenanigans that were commonplace in their relationship, I then went to the nurses’ station and said, “can we wrap this up now that he showed up?” They let me finish all the paperwork (autopsy request, organ donation, etc.), since he was too bereft to do so.
I was supported by an enormous crop of extended family & friends who came to support me during this time. Although not all of us have immediate family we can lean on, having love abound is a gift which I cherish.
I stayed in Memphis for three weeks. Closing out her affairs, storing precious items and giving others away. My father honored his promise to my mother to ensure my sister and nephew had a place to live outside of her beloved home. But the one thing he would not do was honor my mother’s handwritten will request to pass through her portion of our family home to me.
So, I returned to NYC to my 570 square foot apartment. I was 28. No mother. No home to return to. No grounding. I rekindled with a former boyfriend who three years later I ultimately married, for companionship and because he was the sweetest and most kind man I’d ever met. I enrolled in NYU’s Graduate Entertainment Marketing Certificate program one week after getting back home, believing my mother would approve, and started therapy at the insistence of my job’s HR department. I kept it moving. Didn’t know where I was going, but I kept going.
Head down, I focused on my career, excelled with work, but was stunted in every other way. I couldn’t really connect with anyone intimately, emotionally and trusting people was hard. I felt abandoned and alone in a very big city. The original one who wanted me, and wanted what was best for me was gone.
I thought of children, but after an Aunt absent-mindedly asked who would witness the childbirth of my children (as she had for her child & grandchild), unconsciously I think right then and there I made a silent agreement to avoid childbearing because I didn’t think I could do it without my mother. That felt unfathomable to me as I was at a loss for figuring out my own way in this life…let alone a kid too!
So now, twenty-three years later, I find myself still unforgiving of my father, while simultaneously trying to provide the best care for him in his twilight years. My sister died 6 years ago. I have not spoken with my nephew in years. And I divorced 11 years ago, I have nothing holding me back from creating a good life for myself except myself and self-limiting thinking.
The loss of a mother is crippling for many, including myself. When people talk about Kanye losing his way and his mind after Ms. Donda’s death, I know how this can be true, and accept that it likely is true.
This is one woman’s experience of loss of a mother. I often don’t indulge because people don’t have patience for it. So I thank you for your attentiveness now. The droning on about a mother lost 20+ years ago to those with living parents may seem absurd, attention-seeking or as if it’s something you should get over. But for me, it is my truth. And I still haven’t found my way, or my home. Yet, hope to find it soon now that I’m getting grounded in New Orleans.
What I have done in these 23 years is learn. I’ve learned that the loss of a parent must be grieved, and that your identity must be redefined.
The person you were before loss is tied to the acceptance and validation of a living being, the ones who are responsible for the breath you breathe daily. When they die, there is an extraordinary amount of rediscovery that beckons you to explore. What do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to travel? How do you want to wear your hair? Do you want to marry? Do you even want a wedding at all? Who will be there for you when you have children? Who will be at your wedding, or by your side when sick?
Yes, the passing of a parent can be a rite of passage into a new identity. So, if you’re grieving a parental loss, I pray you allow that process to run its course, and then, when you’re ready and feel emotionally stable enough to do so, allow yourself to become who you already are — outside the shadows of your parent. And that you allow yourself to be — anew, however long it takes.
Olivia is a C-Suite Marketing Exec, Author of 51 Brand Marketing Tips for Creators & Founder of Omerge Alliances & Freedom at The Mat. An NYU & Loyola Professor, she has led mktg at influential organizations such as Carol’s Daughter, VIBE, Live Nation, Ogilvy & more for 25+ years. A Native Memphian, now based in New Orleans, is a forever Harlemite (NYC) who travels extensively and blooms where she is planted.
