Sixty-two years ago today, my mother died. I was 15 years old.
You would think 62 years would be enough time to soften the memory. Enough time to put distance between that 15-year-old girl and the woman I am today. Enough time for the details to fade. But today, in a flash, I was 15 again.
I could see my mother gasping for air. Not vaguely. Not as some distant memory that I had to work to retrieve. I could see it.
And suddenly, 62 years didn’t seem like a very long time at all.
That is one of the things I have learned about trauma. Our calendars may tell us how much time has passed, but our bodies and emotions don’t always measure time the same way. Some experiences become imprinted upon us.
- We heal.
- We grow.
- We build lives.
- We love.
- We laugh.
- We experience joy.
- We create families of our own.
- We learn how to carry our grief differently.
And then something—a date, a smell, a sound, a photograph, a song, or sometimes nothing we can identify—takes us back. For a moment, the years disappear.
For Years, I Thought About What I Missed
A few years ago, I wrote about all the things I missed because my mother died when I was 15.
- She wasn’t there when I graduated from high school.
- She wasn’t there when I became a young woman.
- She wasn’t there when I fell in love.
- She wasn’t there when I got married.
- She wasn’t there when I became a mother.
- I couldn’t call her when I didn’t know what to do with my babies.
- I couldn’t ask, “Mom, did I do this when I was little?” or “What would you do?”
- She wasn’t there for birthdays, holidays, family celebrations, successes, disappointments, ordinary Tuesday afternoons, or those moments when a daughter simply wants her mother.
For so many years, mother loss was about what I missed.
And I missed a lot. But now, at this stage of my life, I find myself thinking about something different. I think about what she missed.
My Mother Missed So Much, Too
Now that I am a grandmother, I see her absence through different eyes.
My mother never got to see me grow up.
- She never knew the adult woman I became.
- She never saw me as a wife.
- She never saw me become a mother.
- She never held my children.
- She never watched them take their first steps, graduate from school, fall in love, marry, or create families of their own.
- She never became the grandmother she might have been.
- She missed Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving tables.
- She missed birthday cakes and family photographs.
- She missed graduations and weddings.
- She missed new babies being placed into waiting arms.
- She missed watching one generation become another.
- She missed the stories that became part of our family history.
- She missed watching me become a grandmother.
- And she never met her great-grandchildren.
Sometimes I wonder what she would think if she could see all of us together.
- Would she recognize pieces of herself in our faces?
- Would she laugh at something one of the grandchildren said?
- Would she tell stories about me that I had long forgotten—or never knew?
- Would she sit quietly at the table and simply take it all in?
There is no answer to those questions. And perhaps that is another part of grief—the life that might have been.
Grief Changes as We Change
I used to think grief was something we worked through and eventually left behind. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe grief changes because we change.
- The 15-year-old girl grieved needing her mother.
- The young woman grieved navigating adulthood without her.
- The wife grieved not having her mother at important milestones.
- The new mother grieved not being able to ask her questions.
- And now the grandmother grieves differently.
Today, I understand something I couldn’t possibly have understood at 15. My mother didn’t just leave behind a daughter who would miss her. She lost a lifetime she never got to live. That realization brings a different kind of sadness.
There Is No Expiration Date on Mother Loss
Maybe your mother died last month. Maybe it was five years. Twenty years ago. Forty years ago. Or maybe, like me, it has been more than six decades.
Please don’t measure your grief by the calendar.
An anniversary can bring sadness you weren’t expecting. A granddaughter’s wedding may make you wish your mother were sitting beside you. Holding a new grandbaby may suddenly make you wonder what it would have been like to watch your mother hold yours.
- You may feel sadness.
- You may feel anger.
- You may feel longing, loneliness, tenderness, gratitude, or even joy as you remember her.
Sometimes you may feel several of those emotions at once. Mother loss does not follow a timetable. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. And healing doesn’t mean that something from long ago can never hurt again.
Today, 62 years later, I can still see my mother gasping for air. That memory is painful.
But it is not the whole story. I am no longer only the frightened 15-year-old girl who watched her mother die. I am also the woman who lived the next 62 years. I became a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I have loved and been loved. I have experienced things my 15-year-old self could never have imagined.
And perhaps that is what I want another motherless daughter to hear today:
It doesn’t make any difference how many years ago you experienced mother loss.
If something triggers the grief again, allow yourself to feel it.
You haven’t gone backward.
You haven’t erased the healing that has taken place.
You have simply touched a place in your story that still matters.
Sixty-two years ago today, I lost my mother. Today, I grieve the girl who lost her.
I grieve everything I missed. And now, perhaps more than ever, I grieve everything she missed, too.
Because love remembers—even when 62 years have passed.