In the words of one of my favorite author’s, Barbara Kingsolver: “Kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.”
I was afforded the luxury of suffering no guilt about leaving for another continent, in my mid-twenties. My British mother wiped a tear as she waved me off and I shed more than one during my first six months in the States, but it was homesickness on my part, not guilt at leaving her behind.
“Don’t come back,” Mum urged during her first visit to California, a year after I had set up a rudimentary home with my British Italian husband, Timo in a one-bedroom, rented apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had given birth to my first of three sons almost exactly a year to the day that I had set foot on American soil. I was twenty-five and we were starting out with very little, materialistically, in a country which requires hard work, enthusiasm and tenacity to make a go of things, especially as an immigrant family.
It wasn’t that she didn’t miss me, or wouldn’t have enjoyed having her oldest daughter’s young family within driving distance, but she loved to travel, to push the boundaries of her provincial English life as a wife, mother and nurse in a small market town she considered a little too far off the beaten track. And she wanted a life of discovery and adventure for me and my brother and sisters.
My Dad is never moving from the place where he was born and raised. The vast horizons over flat fields of rich peat soil, the damp Fenland air fuel his soul.
Mum and Dad visited me and I visited them, many times over the past thirty-four years. We took road trips around California together and sometimes my sisters came along too, along with my increasing offspring!
International calls were too expensive at first. We sent cards and letters and saved up our phone time for specific catch-up calls. As my mothering progressed, I would call more frequently. It cost less to ask my experienced medical professional mother a myriad of minor child health questions than to make a doctor’s appointment. It was an extra bond that linked us together across the miles.
Mum’s advice, after raising four kids of her own, was practical, sensible and generally reassuring and she never once made me feel like I wasn’t doing a great job, even when I was super stressed on occasion as a young working mother without any extended family around.
Mother’s Day in the UK is earlier than in the States. This year it falls on Sunday, March 10th. Interflora, useful bestower of the proverbial annual blooms, kindly enquired via form-email last week if I’d like to opt out of Mother’s Day promotions. Not just me, I assume — all of the repeat customers whose mothers, like mine, may have passed away during the last year. I suppose there are other reasons why someone may choose not to be reminded that it’s Mother’s Day, including those who prefer to send or hand deliver flowers, cards and messages of appreciation on a day of their own choice.
As for me, I’ve been sending bouquets of flowers to my mum and my mother-in-law since 1998 when the company first took its international network of florists online. It certainly made things convenient and easy over the years, as subscribing to reminder emails meant that I have never forgotten the earlier UK date.
I didn’t know it at the time, though it wasn’t completely unexpected, but March, 2023 would be the last time I would click on Interflora’s Mother’s Day collection and pick out an ample bunch of brightly colored, jolly Spring blooms for Mum.
She died the following month. I am grateful to have been by her side, in the UK, along with my siblings and Dad, at the end. Soon, there were many more flowers, in the form of a bounty of beautiful bouquets delivered to the house from family friends, neighbors and Mum’s former colleagues from her long career as a National Health Service nurse.
A couple of weeks later, we picked out pastel English country floral tributes for her funeral in early May. Later that summer, a small memorial garden began to take shape in her back garden in sight of the spot at the bedroom window where Mum had waved to her green-thumbed husband during the last weeks of her life. She had rallied against COPD for several years, though she had otherwise been remarkably content and well looked-after at home, the house where Mum and Dad spent the entire sixty years of their marriage.
Picture an English country garden where Dad spends a good part of his daylight hours mowing, pruning and digging. Shrubs and plants are moved around on a regular basis and there’s always something new. He says he sees her waving, still, from the upstairs bedroom window every now and again when he glances up. Muscle memory, he reckons, but it’s comforting to him and to me and my siblings.
I decided not to opt out of the Mother’s Day marketing, primarily because of my robust 86-year-old Mother-in-Law, Pina, who insists she doesn’t need anything these days but posts a snapshot on social media whenever her table is filled with flowers from her four offspring and assorted familial well-wishers. It’s some small way to send her love in a vase from the other side of the world. I’ve given a lot of thought to my feelings in receiving email blasts for Mother’s Day, this first year without my own mum. I remind myself it’s the Hallmark holiday effect after all and not nearly as painful as those everyday random sleeper waves of loss that swoop in and tear me up, blurring my vision when I’m least expecting it.
For the first eight months after her death, I struggled to make sense of the massive emotions I was experiencing after bereavement set in. And then, the holidays came and went and I realized how deeply I cherished this time with my loved ones around me, the simple joys of the season and how good that felt. A new year arrived and my calendar began to fill. I took a trip. Life is continuing to unfold and sometimes in unexpected ways. Daffodils are blooming in the front yard outside of my writing room window. Spring is on its way. Mother’s Day UK is this weekend and each time I walk by, I wave to the framed photo of Mum which captures an image of her waving at me.
People tell us to let go after time. There’s letting go of pain and sorrow, but that’s different to letting go of a loved one’s memory. What I’ve come to learn is that I’ve never had to let go of my mum, not then, when I was a teenager and figured I knew everything, not at twenty-four when she waved me off, not now, after she has passed. She’s an integral part of me, my past, my present and my future as I become more of myself, visit new places, try new things.
If three plus decades on different continents and a distance of more than 5,000 miles didn’t break our mother/daughter bond then I don’t think two separate paradigms will make much difference.
At a risk of sounding corny, I have planted a memory garden without even knowing it, the shoots began to emerge around the holidays. As spring approaches, every day is Mother’s Day bringing fresh, new blooms and bursts of unexpected color. And the tears fall far less frequently.
My mother taught me something like this: “Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full person. Your child will benefit from that.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In memory of my Mum, Elaine
