
Thank goodness Mother’s Day is over for another year, it’s become a day I loathe.
I realised that I wasn’t going to get anything this year, so on Saturday I took things into my own hands. I persuaded everyone that we needed a trip to the shopping centre. I needed to go to the cemetery and it was on the way, so no excuses. Once there I gave Graham my card and told him to take the kids to buy me presents.
Just a few days earlier, I’d been buying birthday cards in the Card Factory and it was full of lovely gifts, mugs, candles, photo frames, pens. Some might call it tat, but I love stuff like that and would have been happy with anything they had chosen.
While they were shopping I decided to browse The Works, but I wasn’t alone in there for five minutes when my family descended on me. The Poundland carrier in my husband’s hand disheartened me. I already guessed that I wasn’t worth a 10 minute wait in a queue in The Card Factory.
The Real Sadness
But it’s not just the lack of tat, or thought, that saddens me. There are so many other reasons to hate Mother’s Day. There are women out there who have never managed to have children no matter how much they wanted them. How must Mother’s Day feel for them?
There are Mother’s who have lost their children, the pain must be firmly in their hearts on Mother’s Day.
Then there are Mother’s and children that are estranged. How sad to be apart on a day that celebrates their relationship.
I was estranged from my Mum for five years. I can’t tell you why, but it wasn’t because of anything either of us had done. Every Mother’s Day I would browse the cards in the shops, I may have even picked one or two up before rushing out with tears in my eyes. I missed my Mum so much, and I know she missed me too. Mother’s Day seemed so much worse than birthday’s or Christmas. This was the day to celebrate our relationship, which was in tatters.
A New Beginning Before the End
One Mother’s Day I picked up one of those cards in the shop and bought it. I wrote it and took it to my aunt to give to my Mum. I didn’t even know where my Mum lived at the time.
A few days later I got a letter thanking me for the card, and it included a phone number if I wished to use it. A bridge was built.
It took three years to get close to my Mum again, and that was only because we made a rule not to talk about the past. We both accepted what had happened was wrong, but we couldn’t talk about it without falling out all over again.
I met my Mum again for the first time a week before Star was born. She met Star and Boo and it was lovely to share my new babies with her. We planned to spend Christmas together for the first time in 8 years, and we did. I held her hand on Christmas morning in a hospice. She didn’t make it until the end of the day.
Now, every Mother’s Day I’m reminded that my Mum is no longer here.
Losing your Mum is like losing a part of yourself, a lifeline, an invisible umbilical cord that has kept it’s hold throughout your life.
Mother’s Day 2019
The Little Man woke me up and was so excited because he’d managed to sleep an extra hour and had given me a lie-in on Mother’s Day. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the clocks had gone forward an hour in the night and he’d woken at the same time as usual.
He rushed downstairs before me and grappled with his school bag. He brought out a card he’d made at school and gave to me, along with a big kiss and a ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’
He made my day. It couldn’t get any better than that.
(and it didn’t)
I overheard a Mother talking to her adult son a few days earlier.
” On Sunday you will be at my house at 12pm sharp, and you are taking me for lunch. Don’t forget, you wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.”
Maybe I’m doing this mothering thing all wrong?