Tonight 20 years ago was one of my loneliest nights. It is actually difficult to comprehend from 20 years later just how much pain I was enduring and how much courage I showed in that season emerging from a life shattered by marriage rejection and failure.
Somehow, even though it did happen, and it WAS the worst, here’s the evidence of my healing: there are only good memories of a time when I actively did everything I could to recover from grief, despair, betrayal, depression, panic attacks, and alcoholism. Even though month after month many days were punctuated by horrific moments. Now, there are no signs of the pain of it all, even though I’ll never forget the pain of it. I hope that makes sense.
Back then, my mother was a rock of support. As was Dad. But since we lost Mum last year, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the incredible woman she was. Mum didn’t take sides or play favourites, and this is why she was the best mother. She was fair, knew what was right, and her and Dad were strands made of the same cord of integrity.
The pain I went through in that period of my life, and the burden that my parents (and particularly Mum) bore, cannot be put into words. Day after day, for months, and in reality, the flux lasted years. Nobody ever tells you when you become a parent what it will cost you. I saw the labour of love my Mum invested in those tremulous days, each of them fraught with the nagging worry that one day I might lose all hope—the pain of divorce is too much for many people.
As I consider the many words in cards and other memorabilia that my Mum left me, I read her poignant words with a piqued insight, astonished at what she went through because of what I went through.
20 years to the day when I went to the Royal Show with my family and left alone, Mum remarks how the happiness she saw in me to be with my family earlier in the day had morphed into a life-questioning morbid depression by evening when I returned. No doubt at the time I was so heavily in my own fearful grief that I may not have discerned Mum’s, but I can only imagine the vicarious pain she was enduring—her and Dad—each and every day through that hellish season.
My initial recovery took nine months, and then I entered another transition that, from my parents’ viewpoint, provided concerns of a different kind. I was over the initial grief, but I was still so off balance. I got so heavily involved in the church that I began to lose sight of my daughters’ needs, but yet again, my parents filled that gap, until another whole year (or more) had passed, and I realised the mistake I was making. But I acknowledge now, reflecting on what my Mum wrote me at the time, just how much Mum did to be a mother to my daughters, and all she and Dad did to hold us all together.
20 years to the particular night, with Mum now deceased nearly 14 months, I pay respect to what she did for me, one of her three children.
If you are a parent of an adult child grieving and you relate to holding that insurmountable burden, please know that no matter how painful it is, it IS worth it, for you would give anything to support your kin.
If you are the one amid the pain of the deepest imaginable grief, hold on, for it will be worth it in the end. Endure one day, one hour, one minute, at a time, and try as much as you can to connect with what you can still be grateful for. I don’t say that to make you feel bad, but when you are enduring grief you NEED gratitude to cling to, for in gratitude is at least the mirage of hope.
20 years on I am so thankful for the life I have now.
IMAGE: Happier times. Mum with my eldest daughter, her eldest grandchild in 1993.
