Tears from Earth: Reflecting on another Motherless Mother's Day
I saw my Mom cry three times in my entire life. Other than that, she was stone cold and equipped with enough humor to bypass any external emotion. Mom spent most of her time screaming at me to clean my room - so she didn't exactly have time to express all of those other emotions anyway.
The first time I ever saw Mom cry I was twelve and we were at her brother's memorial service. A few tears fell from Mom's face as the rabbi (who was not very happy about my uncle's cremation) recited the El Maleh Rachamim and then, she spent the remainder of the night making sarcastic comments about her alcoholic brother who drank himself to death in Hawaii, making everyone around her laugh (yes, at her brother's funeral).
The second time I saw Mom cry was in 2016, at twenty, when I handed her my Mother's Day letter after she had lost her hair from chemotherapy. In this letter I told her that despite her lack of hair, she still had her laugh, her smile and her charisma and I kept that image with me every time we said goodbye. I told her she was my best friend and she always had been - something she had longed for me to say to her since I was a little girl.
This time, we both cried - I sat on the ledge as she sat on the couch cushion. No words were exchanged, but a huge bond was felt as was a fear of losing it. I didn't realize it then, but she was reading a part of the obituary I would recite at her funeral.
The third, when we said our goodbyes to her in the ICU - I was twenty-one. I held Mom's hand, feeling all of her pain, terrified for her mortality and told her she was going to be okay without believing any of it. Even with all of the medical measures of sedation, she was crying. And even then, she maintained as much composure as she could.
The relationship Mom and I shared was unlike any other. Sometimes, I forget this, but we were like sisters - always ripping each other apart and always telling it to the other like it is. We had such a funny relationship, we were like two peas in a pod. We could take on the world together. Losing her was quite literally like losing a part of me.
Every Mother’s Day, Mom asked that we make sure Dad didn’t buy her flowers as she’d say they were “a waste of money and would just go bad” and that we instead shower her with as much love as possible. Every Mother’s Day since, I made sure she was showered immaculately (with fake ones).
She was the greatest Mom I could have ever imagined. I don’t know anyone else who wanted to protect their children more, I’ll never know someone who’d sit on a couch clipping coupons as long as her, and I’ll never know anyone with as much strength to go through the wringer and compose themselves as well as she did. I wish I could tell her that again and again. I wish I could tell her that today.
Mom didn't always believe in crying but she did believe in a Heaven and today, on Mother’s Day, I feel her absence, I feel our bond and I can feel her tears from up there. I know she can feel mine too.
