Once upon a time in a city somewhere – location doesn’t matter – a child lost her parent – and life changed forever.  The thing that I have discovered about that process – having gone through it for the first time 8 years ago and again this week, is that no matter how old you are or how old your parent is, when they die – you become 10 again.  
 

There is a special bond that occurs between parents and their children.  If any time at all has been spent having a true parent/child relationship, when the inevitable death of a parent occurs, it is a pain and loss that is hard to explain – one that until it happens to you, the idea seems “not so big”.  

I just lost my mother.  We were never particularly close – even though she lived with me for the last 8 years of her life.  We had what I would call the “fractured” mother/daughter relationship.  However, as I watched her body slowly “run out of steam” and she took her last breath, the sadness that I felt and continue to feel is deep.  It will take months to “thaw” and be able to feel the loss in manageable bites of emotion.  It will take years to fill the hole that it leaves in your heart.  The sadness is real and no matter how long or how full of a life the parent lived, your 10 year old self wishes it could have been a little longer.

During the course of our 55 year long relationship, my mother and I were never very affectionate, never said the “I love you’s” that many people exchange.  For the most part, we really didn’t know each other very well and I commented on many occasions that if she weren’t my mother we probably wouldn’t be friends .  Yet, over the past 3 weeks I have told her that I love her more times than I did over the past 55 years combined.  For the most part, the words were spoken when she was fighting unconsciousness and not returned – except once – when I heard “love you too”, a memory that will stay for a long time.  

Fortunately, When she died I had said what I wanted to say, forgiven whatever shortcomings she might have had, apologized for not being the daughter that she probably wanted.  I felt full, instead of empty, and I will always be glad to have had the time to say what I needed to say.  However, the hole still remains.  I am sad.  I feel scared.  

I am an only child orphan – at 55.  As foolish as that might sound, it is a fact and one that makes me feel like I did when I was 10 and my parents would leave me with a sitter.  It didn’t matter that I liked the sitter, or that I got to do things that I wouldn’t necessarily get to do if my parents were at home, there was always that feeling that maybe, just maybe something might happen to them and they might never come home – and then what would I do?  That fear usually occurred as I got into bed and they would still be out.  The house would feel different.  My room would not feel quite as safe.  I knew that I was fine.  I knew that I was “acting like a baby”, but deep down, somewhere in my 10 year old soul, I would feel fear – something that seldom happened.  

Then sleep would take over and the next thing I knew, it was morning.  I would lay awake in my bed listening.  I would usually hear my dad in the kitchen fixing coffee.  I would hear the front door open and in a minute or two close again – the paper having been retrieved from the front yard.  I would hear my mom’s voice saying something that I couldn’t make out, my dad answering her.  Normal.  Safe.  It was good to be 10.

So tonight, 4 days after my mother’s death, I am starting to feel the “thaw”.  I don’t want to think about how much I am going to miss her.  I don’t want to feel how scary it is to know that a safety net called parents that I have had for every day of my life over the past 55 years is no longer in place.  It really doesn’t matter that I moved out when I was 18 and have been responsible for taking care of myself for nearly 35 years and very independent my entire life, the reality is somewhere deep down in that 10 year old’s soul I always knew that if something horrific happened, my parents would be there for me.  No more.  Sometimes it sucks to be a grown-up.

by Jyl DeHaven