I was speaking to a friend recently who lost their mother several nonths ago. Today they’ll be facing their first Mother’s Day without their mum. That first one isn’t easy, but all those that follow still carry the weight of what might have been.
Today marks my 39th motherless Mother’s Day. It’s still a bit tricky. Maybe that’s because I was only 23 when mum died and so there are so many more years of ‘what might have been’ than for those who lose their mums later in life. I don’t know. I only know my own experience.
I don’t remember anything remarkable about the last Mother’s Day we shared with mum before the illness that consigned her to hospital for the rest of her days, but then we weren’t expecting it to be the last. As far as we knew there’d be many more days to celebrate mum.
Mum’s last couple of years were spent in hospital after suffering a brain aneurysm. For most of that time she was unable to communicate with us. Occasionally she was able to say a word or two but there were other signs that would show us that she knew a lot of what was going on. Even making movement to communicate was difficult for mum.
There were several times that more bleeding in her brain would cause doctors to tell us that mum only had hours or maybe days to live. We would all begin to grieve our loss only to find the days turning into weeks or months until there was another medical setback and the whole process would begin again. You can imagine the kind of emotional toll that took on each of us, not to mention how it would have been for mum who was trapped inside a body that no longer did what it was meant to do.
When mum finally left this earth I experienced a mixture of relief, sadness and joy. There was relief that she didn’t have to suffer any longer, joy that she was now enjoying paradise but still the immense sadness of losing someone I loved so very, very much. In her final days it was my constant prayer that God would take her home.
I’ve seen many more Mother’s Days come and go without a mum than I have with a mother. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a completeley sad day for me but Mother’s Day always brings moments of reflection among the moments of celebrating what an incredibly wonderful mother my own children have and celebrating with Pauline’s mum.
On the 28th of February, 1987, my mother, Margaret Sadie Olsen, passed away at the age of 66. Like I said, I was just 23 years old when mum died. Mum was 43 when I was born.
Pauline and I got to travel to Scotland in 2023 to see the home and town she and her family left at the age of just 6 to begin a new life in Australia. There are now so many more questions I would want to ask her and stories I’d like to hear. Even though we only had a day and a half there, I find myself feeling strangely and overwhelmingly connected to Scotland. I think about Scotland every day and long to return.
There is so much more that I wish she could have shared over the last few decades. Mum wasn’t around to see me cycle across Australia for the first time, just 8 months after she passed away. She never lived to see me realise my childhood dream of working in radio.
By the time I met Pauline, mum had already been gone for close to 5 years. She never got to see her youngest child marry the woman he loves. Mum never got to hold Emily or James in her arms. How I wish she was still here to see our wonderful family. I desperately wish that Emily and James could have met their Grandma Olsen and that Pauline could have spent time with her mother-in-law. I wish that Emily had been able to introduce her husband, Josh, to Grandma Olsen.
Mum never heard me tell stories of my trips to places like India, Canada, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, the Philippines or Bangladesh and never had to sit at home and worry when I had to evacuate from Haiti during food riots back in 2008.
Although she never got there, mum had an interest in travelling to Africa. I so wish I could tell her about my journey to Ethiopia and Rwanda back in 2014. She was long gone before I took up the challenge of working for Compassion for 9 years to see children released from poverty around the world.
She never experienced the thrill of seeing Emily and James born and then grow up to perform so well in many areas of life.
I know that there are many significant events in the lives of my siblings that mum has missed too. There have been highs and lows along the way but all of them would have been quite different if mum had been around to share them.
I know that the person I am today is very much a product of who mum was. I value the influence she was and continues to be in my life.
(Musch of this post is drawn from posts I have previously publsished for Mother’s Day.)
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