Motherless Like Me

It’s May 24th. Your birthday. Wish you were here so we...

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:48:31 -0400

It’s May 24th. Your birthday. Wish you were here so we could celebrate together.

The Year of Goodbyes

Sun, 13 May 2012 16:30:15 -0400

In December 2011, our family said goodbye to Uncle Dave, just like we did to Mom twenty years earlier. And it was just as sudden and sad and hard. A little over a year earlier, we had said goodbye to Uncle Rick and this new loss reminded us of our certainty that it never gets easier for those we love to leave us.

Uncle Dave could be just as rough-and-tumble as his brothers when he wanted, but he was kind too, and that kindness always won out. On the day of the memorial service, there was a sea of people gathered to honor him. There were so many people, in fact, that more chairs had to be added in the back of the chapel. Our extended family sat together in the front, surrounded by those who also knew and loved my uncle. In that crowded room, we listened to person after person share about the man they knew and the role he played in their lives. We were all becoming witnesses to the kind of legacy that one man could leave behind.

To me, he was Uncle Dave. He was the man who had helped our family articulate the goodbyes we could only say in tears. When Mom died, he did his best to comfort us despite his own grief, just as he had done when Grandpa passed and just as he would do when we lost Grandma and Uncle Rick too. He felt like a rock—steady, strong, and sure. You could bet on it. That’s just the kind of man he was and that’s how I’ll remember him.

When we left the church, I rode in the procession with my cousin, Ricky—Uncle Rick’s oldest. We hadn’t talked nearly enough in the past year, but here we were, reunited again by loss. As he drove to the cemetery, we caught up on each other’s lives, talked about our jobs, decisions, his girlfriend, God, and how much we looked up to Uncle Dave, even as kids. It was comforting to be there with Ricky, sharing in a grief that we both understood.

He told me that he and his sister had finally settled on selling the house their dad had left to them. That house had become a character in its own right. My mother and her brothers grew up there and I spent much of my childhood there. The places you grow up in become a part of you. To let them go means admitting that that part of your story is written and you can’t go back to it.

In the Spring of 2012, I left the place I was born and raised because I knew I couldn’t hold onto it and I knew it couldn’t hold me anymore. It was the only home I’d ever known, but I decided to make a new home with Ryan in New York City. We said our goodbyes to family and friends, packed everything we owned into a 16 foot moving truck, and drove through the night to the place where our story would continue.

We’ve been here for a little over a month and today is Mother’s Day. On this day for the last twenty years, I would make the drive out to the cemetery with my dad, and as I got older, by myself. Each time felt like a pilgrimage; it became a cathartic ritual to go back to Mom’s grave year after year. I can’t do that today because I’m hundreds of miles away—from family, from familiar places, and from the markers of my past.

Since we’ve been here, today is the most sobering reminder that I can’t go back—because this is my home now. With that is the realization that I can’t hold onto the places I’ve lived, but they live on in me and continue to shape the person I’m becoming.

Today I’m remembering the people I’ve loved that have left too soon: Mom, Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Rick, Uncle Dave, and others. But I’m also celebrating the people I still have in my life. I’m grateful for the people who loved and continue to love me enough to say goodbye and let me go to New York City so that I can continue to grow and become the woman I’m trying to become.

Homeward Bound

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:40:42 -0400

I’m quite nostalgic today and am thinking about family, friends, and others who have ever experienced loss, which includes most of us. I can’t shake the feeling that although all of this is fleeting, there is a purpose that compels us to make the most of our time here.

Homeward Bound

We’ve come a long way to get here, heads high
and feet to the ground, we travel lightly because
we know that from the moment we’re born,
we’re all just homeward bound.

Our heavy steps beat the path between what we
hoped and how it is, but we hold on to this,
the smiles we wear, the lines around our eyes
that grow over the years,
the words we haven’t spoken,
the stories we’ve yet to hear,
they urge us on.

We know we can’t reprimand our hearts into
behaving no matter how hard we try, so
we set out to walk this promise down to the
last mile, all other lovers aside.

What we feel is what we know and all we know
is that we can’t go to work every day from 9 to 5
without feeling less and less alive, we can’t
dull our senses anymore or we’re gonna die.

It’s the truth, you know.

Our eyes plead with each other to drink from the
wine we’ve poured in our cups, to lift up our
heads to the sky and say this journey isn’t safe
but such is life, because from the moment we’re
born, we’re aching for more while knowing it’s
never gonna be enough.

There’s something sacred that can’t be touched
here, the moment when love transcends all fear,
the things we want so much to hold after they’re
gone, the people we’ve known and lost, and the
sense that in the end, it will all make sense even
if we cannot comprehend.

So we hold tight, sighing as the night breathes
deep around us, and we trust that the rest is yet
to come because we’re not done, no, we’re not
through, let’s make it count from this moment
‘til our time runs out.

Because in the end, we’re all homeward bound.

Remembering Uncle Dave

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:31:16 -0500

I don’t have any recent photos of my Uncle Dave—Mom’s older brother—but Mom had taken a lot of pictures of Uncle Dave when he was younger and of him and my Aunt Linda when they were dating. I looked through Mom’s old photo albums and picked a few good ones to share.

We’ll miss you, Uncle Dave.

Messing around with Grandma and Grandpa Baldwin
July 1971

August 1971

Uncle Dave and my cousin, Kim (Uncle Bob’s daughter)
August 1971

Uncle Dave & Aunt Linda when they were dating
May 1971

Wedding Shower
May 30, 1972

Wedding Day
June 10, 1972
Tipton, Ohio

David James Baldwin
December 13, 1948 - December 28, 2011

On Loving and Losing

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:00:00 -0400

Mom kept journals when she was pregnant with my brother and me. On February 16, 1981, she wrote to me about the love she shared with my dad. The entry read, “Someday I hope you’ll be able to experience a relationship like ours, but I know it’s a little too much for you right now. Someday though, you will understand all my grown-up talk.”

I wouldn’t be born for almost four months after her entry. And I wouldn’t begin to understand the sentiment she shared until nearly twenty-five years later when I met and married the man who is now my equal in every way.

My parents had been married for eighteen years before Mom unexpectedly died. I’ve been married to Ryan for a brief five and a half years, but it feels so much longer than that.

Yes, Mom, I think I know what you were talking about. I didn’t understand it for a long time. There was a part of me that didn’t want to know that kind of relationship because eventually, all relationships end. But I took a risk and chose to love him.

We went to New York a few weeks ago and I wrote this:

Brooklyn Bridge

I was moved inside and out, in
a sea of people suspended over
the East River.

I was swallowed by your lines,
by the architecture of your mouth,
by the weight of your history,
by the idea of where
you were taking me.

I was dumped into a city that
I’d never known, into a mad-
ness rushing and whirring by,
but I was not afraid this time.

I trusted you to carry me from
where I was to where I needed
to be, because I did not know.

You reminded me that we’re not
made to live so broken or alone,
so I dared to love all of you,
not just the idea of you.

Because we’re all walking on
bridges, moving into what we
cannot define or touch, but it’s
coming for us.

We’re all dancing with life and
death, reminded by our pain that
the time we have is never enough.

So when we say cheers, let’s drink
it down and make it count like we
don’t have any fear at all, even if
we do.

Because one day we’re going to
fly home from a place that used
to be familiar, a place that we’ve
since outgrown.

And we can only hope that what
we leave behind will be beautiful.

It seems that in every moment of greatness, every moment of intimacy, I am haunted by how fleeting this life is and by my own finiteness. Being in New York with Ryan reminded me of how small we are in a “sea of people.” But we have each other, Mom, just like you and Dad did.

I question it all the time. How would I live without the man I’ve come to know and love? He is too familiar to me. I know that one day we will be separated, even if only for a short while. I pray that during the time we have together, we will we be daring in our living and generous in our loving as we build something of lasting beauty.

My Mother's Mother

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:06:00 -0400

Donna Dean Baldwin {Jones}
August 8, 1925 ~ September 20, 2000

{This photo was taken sometime in 1941. Grandma would have been around 16.}

I can’t explain the importance of being mothered. When my own mom died in 1991, it was a natural progression for my grandmother to step in as a maternal figure. We lived next to Grandma until I was in high school, so she was the woman I gleaned the most from during my formative years.

She nurtured me along as I grew, offering guidance and an honest opinion when she saw fit (whether I wanted it or not). She shared stories about Mom and celebrated birthdays and milestones with me. When she approved of me, it felt like Mom approved of me too. It was what I needed, to be affirmed as a daughter by the woman who had known my mother the most.

By the time I graduated from high school in June 1999, Grandma’s cancer had made her body weak. I still have the graduation card she gave me. In it she penned how proud she was of me and shared her regret in being unable to throw a big graduation party for me. Through the years, she had been there for the moments when I needed a mom, but now that was changing.

A little more than a year later, on September 20, 2000, Grandma passed from this life into the next. Once again, I felt utterly alone. Being around Grandma was the closest I felt to Mom while growing up. Losing my mother’s mother was like losing the last small connection I had with my own mother.

Maybe our bond wouldn’t have been so strong or special if it hadn’t been affected so deeply by loss. But regardless, Grandma was the woman who mothered me through the hard years that followed Mom’s death and I am forever grateful that she chose to be there for me. There are days I miss her dearly. Today is one of those days. She wasn’t here long enough and neither was Mom. But I am thankful for the memories we were able to make and for the legacy they left me with. I can only hope that if they were here today, they would be proud of the woman that I have become.

Dad and Mom Renfro Valley, KYJune 1971

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 15:11:10 -0400

Dad and Mom

Renfro Valley, KY
June 1971

Happy birthday, Dad!

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:10:05 -0400

To celebrate, I dug out some old pictures of you…

It’s hard to believe you were ever this little, but I know it’s you because you’re still just as mischievous as you look in this photo.

Tempting your luck with a bear at Smokey Mountain National Park. You always were brave, especially during my teenage years. I’m not sure what would be scarier: coming face to face with a hungry bear or being a single dad raising a stubborn teenage girl?

Your 21st birthday cake from Mom. Looks like German Chocolate, my favorite.

All of us in the photo booth smushed together, but we look happy.

You, Gary Jr., and me with Grandpa Aston.

Mom took this picture of us camping in the late 1980’s.

Dad, thanks for all the memories growing up. I appreciate you more than I could ever put into words. I love you very much. See you in a little while. Fire up the grill!

20 Years

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:30:00 -0400

Today marks 20 years without Mom.

I remember the day she left, the day I stood
on our porch  in a pink nightshirt,
tears rolling down, down, down into
 a small circle on the fabric below my chin.

I remember waking up that morning with a
feeling of dread,  I remember the way Dad’s
face looked and the fear  and uncertainty
that formed into the pit in my stomach.

I remember waiting for the ambulance on
the front steps  of our mobile home,
I remember the  long, drawn out breaths that
filled my lungs, then left.

I remember Mom and Dad driving away in the
ambulance  without me, without my brother.
I remember waiting  with a hope that makes
 the heart sick.

And I don’t want to,  but I remember when 
he came back without her.

I don’t remember: 
how I was told. 
the days following. 
feeling anything.
 the faces, both familiar and strange, offering condolences.
I couldn’t remember her favorite color to pick an  outfit
for the showing so my aunt suggested blue.

I don’t remember how I was able to cry so much in the 
quiet hours of the night without waking my dad; maybe
 he couldn’t hear because he was crying too.

I don’t remember how time 
kept going, how people kept living.

I don’t remember burying the  anger so deep
that I couldn’t  feel it or find it, and through 
the years I forgot where I put it. After a while,
I didn’t remember  how to be a good daughter,
 I didn’t remember how to care.

I don’t remember laughing with Mom about cute
boys,  crying on her shoulder after my first break-up,
or asking  her for advice after a fight with a friend,
so I drank until I  couldn’t stand up, until I didn’t
remember that I didn’t  remember.

I don’t remember Mom being there to soothe my
growing  pains, to comfort me, to guide me gently
through the hard  and awkward life of a teenager
because I guided myself.

I don’t remember the feelings of inadequacy, the
jealousy  of friend’s moms who were so endearing
because I chose  to forget those glaring reminders
of my motherless years.

I don’t remember Mom being there when I graduated
from  her alma mater, I don’t recall her proud smile,
the sound of  her hands clapping when my name was called.

I don’t remember her affirming words and the confidence 
they instilled in me when I got my first real job, when I 
started college, when I began to make the difficult choices
 that would shape the rest of my life.

I don’t remember her helping me as I prepared to move 
out on my own, as I sorted though my belongings alone,
and  packed my life into boxes not knowing what I’d need.

I don’t remember the words of wisdom she shared with
me  on my wedding day when I married my best friend
just like  she had done 33 years earlier.

Now I’m a wife, and I don’t remember being taught my 
way around a kitchen, how to patch up an old shirt, or
 how to keep plants alive.

I don’t remember what it feels like to be her daughter, 
I don’t remember the convenience of calling her when 
I’m having a bad day or need a recipe for dinner.
I don’t remember how our relationship turned to
friendship over  the years as I grew older and left my
adolescence behind.

I don’t remember how the last 20 years passed so
quickly  or how I grew up so fast, because some days
I still feel like  that 10 year old girl who just lost her
mother.

Mom on her horse, “Bill.”
September 1967
Age 16

Mom on graduation day.
June 1969
Age 18

Mom and Dad when they were dating.
April 1971
Age 20

I’ve been looking through old pictures and reminiscing...

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:17:00 -0400

I’ve been looking through old pictures and reminiscing tonight.
Here’s a fun one of Mom from April 1971.

“Gary, me + “our cat.”July 6, 1971

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:39:05 -0400

“Gary, me + “our cat.”
July 6, 1971

Dad and MomJuly 4, 1971

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:34:00 -0400

Dad and Mom
July 4, 1971

Mom and Dad in Harbor Beach, MI1972

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:31:00 -0400

Mom and Dad in Harbor Beach, MI
1972

Goodbye, Uncle Rick

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:53:00 -0400

(This post is lovingly dedicated to my uncle. Thank you Ricky and Stephanie for graciously allowing me to share this story. For the multitude of ways that family has changed me and challenged me to love in the midst of my own brokenness, I am thankful.)

In the fall of two thousand ten, I drove to the place where my mother grew up, knowing that hope and pain would be likely companions. The purpose of my visit was to reconnect with my cousin, Stephanie, who had made the long trip up from Florida to visit her dad. For me, it would become a goodbye of sorts to my uncle, although I didn’t know it at the time.

It was warm enough to drive with the car windows cracked the twenty minutes out of town to my uncle’s house. Turning left from the main thoroughfare onto the gravel road, I continued for a mile, drove over the train tracks, and past the clearing on the left. There it stood. The frame of the house was a familiar ghost, both haunting and beautiful. The painted white brick was weathered and the green shingles in need of attention.

My twenty-nine years felt like a lie. I imagined myself as a child again, sleeping upstairs with my twin brother and cousins, falling asleep to the sound of traffic rushing along the nearby highway.

I turned into the driveway, parked, took a few deep breaths, and walked up to the house. Stopping at the screen door, I gave a knock and a loud shout hello. I let myself in, walked through the enclosed porch, and up the concrete steps to the open door. My mom’s youngest brother was sitting at the table, slightly hunched over it.

Uncle Rick had adored my mom, the only girl and second youngest of five siblings. In fact, he had loved her so much that after she died, drinking was sometimes his only solace. After having a few, Uncle Rick liked to talk on the phone. When I was younger, he had called me on several occasions. Usually he wanted to talk about the day Mom died and how he’d tried to give her CPR. “I put my own lips on hers to give her breath and I couldn’t save her,” he would say to me, apologetically. I never knew what to say to him except that it was okay.

Many years had passed since our last phone call and Uncle Rick, who had recently been released from the hospital, now sat with breathing tubes in his nose and an oxygen tank at his side. His lungs were failing him. The doctors at the hospital had been unsure he’d make it home again. But here he was, stubborn as ever.

I greeted my uncle with a hug and turned to say hello to my cousins, Ricky and Stephanie, who were now in their early twenties. Stephanie pointed a finger at me and jokingly said, “Don’t you dare cry.” Then she introduced me to the bundle in her arms, her daughter, a mere three months old and cute as a button. I did feel warm tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, but I shrugged them off. The four of us sat at the kitchen table and got reacquainted while Uncle Rick made ice cream cones at eleven in the morning. Suddenly, all the years that had passed seemed an illusion to trick us into feeling grown up.

After a while, Uncle Rick suggested we watch some old home videos. So we did. Leaving the kitchen, we settled into the living room to watch smaller versions of ourselves on television at birthday parties and Christmastime.

I felt close to my mom here. This is the house where she lived as a little girl and this is the house where I waited when she died in the late summer of ‘91. After Dad left for the hospital in the ambulance with Mom, my aunt had brought my brother and I to the house to wait. The living room was where I sat in the recliner, rocking, while the world around me carried on. I said as many prayers to God that my ten year old mind could conjure up. As a last resort, I bargained to be a better daughter by pledging to clean my room more often and help with chores minus the complaining. For a long time after that, I believed that either God didn’t hear my prayers in that room, or He didn’t really care that I still needed my mother.

Today there was laughter as we sat in the living room together. My cousins and I watched VHS tapes of family and laughed aloud at our embarrassing haircuts and childish banter. Meanwhile, my uncle restlessly shuffled from one room to the next, his walker leading the way. He paused next to the couch and stretched toward his granddaughter nestled on Stephanie’s lap. Uncle Rick may have been known for being a hard-ass, but to see him now, you’d never know it. He instantly became Grandpa. He made silly faces which elicited amused laughter from the little one. Smiling from ear to ear, the baby’s giggles and coos said what we could not say with our grown up words. In that moment, Uncle Rick was a man reborn.

A few hours into the afternoon, we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

About a week after my visit, Uncle Rick was re-admitted to the hospital. By the time I went there on a Wednesday night, he had already slipped into unconsciousness. I sat with Ricky while his dad was dying. We were joined by Uncle Fred, the oldest of the five siblings, and his wife. Stephanie called on the phone from Florida and Ricky told her to wait there. He knew she wouldn’t make the drive up before their dad took his final breath.

Although Uncle Rick couldn’t respond, the bunch of us took turns telling stories that left us roaring with laughter. We were so loud that the nursing staff shut the door under the guise that the noise in the hall might disturb us. Later, Ricky and I talked about religion and God and how unfair life seems in times like these. We talked about my mom. Between phone calls from family checking in and our storytelling, we reached out to touch Uncle Rick’s arm, to reassure him and ourselves that everything would be alright. When I was finally too drowsy to keep my eyes open, I stood up, leaned over Uncle Rick, and put my hand on his shoulder. I told him I loved him and I meant it. And then, for good measure, I told him to behave himself.

I got the call the next morning, September 23, 2010. Uncle Rick had passed from life to death to life around eight-thirty that morning. When my dad called to talk about it, he said that Mom was probably waiting for her brother with a plate of home-made chocolate chip cookies to satisfy his sweet tooth. I agreed. And then I pictured Grandpa and Grandma standing with outstretched arms to embrace their son who had come home.

I went to my uncle’s funeral feeling numb, but I cried the feelings I could not name into a little balled up tissue. Once again, the world had changed around us, without our permission. After the service, we drove in the procession, our faces straight and solemn, and I thought we should all be in a Patty Griffin song. At the cemetery, we said our final goodbyes and watched the casket get lowered into the dirt.

When it was over, Dad and I walked along the path to Mom’s grave. I cried again for my uncle, for my mom, for those that were gone, and those of us left. Through blurry vision, I studied Mom and Dad’s wedding picture engraved on the headstone. They were so young and happy with so many plans.

Death is never a part of the plan, but it is part of all of our lives sooner or later. In the midst of our suffering, we are changed forever. Seeing Uncle Rick before he left for good was an invitation first to pain, and then, to hope. I had unknowingly invited God to till the soil of my heart that loss had hardened through the years. I found places I’d forgotten and pain that needed to be remembered and deeply felt in order to be transformed.

I never got to say goodbye to my mom. She was there and then she was gone. But Uncle Rick left this world slowly and stubbornly. My goodbye to him was the goodbye I never said to my mom, the one I’d been saving for nineteen years. It was the goodbye my mom would have said to her brother if she could have been there. It was love’s way of redeeming the things I didn’t understand about my uncle when I was growing up. Those things didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that we were there together, loving my uncle when he needed it most.

I walked away from the hospital that night reminded of the brokenness that lives in all of our hearts. I thought about how hard parents work for redemption in the eyes of their sons and daughters, and how a little bit of grace can go a long way. I don’t have any answers for the pain we’re left with, but I have hope that one day, even our pain will be redeemed.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:44:00 -0400

MY MOTHER 
When I was very small, I went with my parents to an even smaller Baptist church. I liked the hymns. I spent most of the time drawing on the back of the weekly bulletin, which kept me quiet enough for my parents’ liking. Dad often fell asleep, his head leaning toward the floor as if in prayer. Only he wasn’t. But the wooden pews were uncomfortable at best and before long he would have to readjust his position. Sometimes I would sit on the floor and lean over the pew, which doubled as a table for my latest work of art. The offering was my second favorite next to the singing. If we were lucky, Mom would reach into her purse and hand my brother and me a dollar bill each to tuck in the offering plate as it passed us by.

Apart from service on Sundays, I read the Bible with Mom. I still have her Bible somewhere, its cream leather cover and red-edged pages worn from the passing of time. We read it together starting in John. I liked reading it sometimes, but even more I liked the time I spent with her. We would sit on the bed next to each other as she held the book and read to me, or sometimes I would read aloud.

And then, when I was ten, my mother died.

It was no surprise that with my mother no longer around, my dad, brother, and I went to church less and less. From that point on, my relationship with God became complicated. I was a child struggling to make sense of the kind of loss that leaves a hole in your chest.

MOTHERLESS
 I don’t remember having any kind of hope for a long time after that. My story could have belonged to anyone, but it didn’t. It was happening to me. That’s how I saw it through my teenage years. And so, instead of changing the plot, I settled in for the ride. By the time I was in high school I worked a typical retail job at the mall. While I didn’t think the life I was living was a direct ticket to hell, it wasn’t satisfying either. There are only so many times you can get drunk and pass out before you realize your problems are still there in the morning. Besides, graduation was around the corner and the pressure was on to make something of myself.

When it was slow at work, I hung around leaning on the clothing racks, pretending to straighten the hangers while chatting with co-workers. So the first time Erica invited me to church, I totally blew it off.

Eventually I did go, kinda as a favor to my friend and co-worker. I’m not sure why, but I decided to go back a second time, and a third. That was the night I chose to begin the healing process. I prayed to God and asked him to be whatever I needed since I didn’t know anymore what I needed and obviously wasn’t doing a very good job at being in charge of my own life. As I drove home that night, I knew something inside of me had shifted.

For a while, everything felt new. Every experience, every conversation. It was like I had gotten corrective lenses and everything that was blurry was now in focus. It was the reprieve I needed.

But eventually, the feelings wore off and the time for growth came. The wounds that occurred many years before needed to be reopened to heal right.

MY MOTHER’S MOTHER 
The showdown between me and God had been brewing for the past nine years and was now an underground volcano finally ready to erupt. Although I pretended all was okey-dokey, I was still seething. By the time I was nineteen, I had lost the two most important women in my life: my mom and my maternal grandma.

When Mom died, Grandma became a second mom to me. After all, she lost her only daughter and I lost my only mother, which seemed to give us a special connection. Living next door to her strengthened our bond because I could drop in at any hour to see what kind of sweets she had in her kitchen, or play a few rounds of Yahtzee. I spent countless hours at her house, many times sleeping over to keep her company since Grandpa had passed back in ‘89. We would stay up late and watch Murder She Wrote, or my favorite, The Golden Girls.

My grandma died from lung cancer, which finally became immune to treatments and took over her body. It was heartbreaking to watch the woman I had depended on consistently through the years begin to need help from me for even simple tasks. I brought this up to say that I think the showdown with God culminated after my grandma passed. It was the last straw. I felt abandoned all over again by people and God.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MOTHERS
 But God must’ve known I’d need another mother. It wasn’t long before I met Alaine and adopted her as my own. I followed her around to glean any kind of wisdom I could. She welcomed me like a stray puppy. And when I felt hopeless, she shared her life story with me. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It gave me courage and I began to believe that I could have a different story.

I won’t bore you with details about the tears I cried, the endless pages of journals scrawled with processed feelings, the titles of books I read about grief, the prayers I prayed that led to my heart becoming mostly whole again. But I will tell you that I could not have written this part of my story alone. The work my mother started was passed to my grandmother, and then to someone else’s mother.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE 
My relationship with Alaine changed me. I began to feel like the reader of those Choose Your Own Adventure books from elementary school. Except the book was my life, so I played it safe.

I went to college, earned a degree in social work, got a full-time job, married my best friend, moved into a small rental, and adopted a cat. The only things left to cross off the list: buy a house, have kids, open up a 401(K), and erect a white picket fence along the edge of our property line.

Now, if I was in a Choose Your Own Adventure book I might do something crazy like quit my job, backpack across Europe with my partner-in-crime, become a painter, write a book, or all of the above. Because in the book, if you get caught by the bad guys and get offed, or quit your job and it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to the safer choice.

I think I can hear the Voice whispering to me, prodding me along to live a better story, but I don’t feel brave enough to write it - yet. Because I think I know what my story is about.

THE MOTHER IN ME
 I’m not a mom, biologically speaking. Even after five years of marriage my “let’s have a baby” clock has yet to start ticking. On top of that, I’m not good at mom things like sewing on loose buttons and cooking recipes from scratch. But there is something in me that feels like I think a mother might feel when I meet a young woman who is motherless too.

When I was eighteen, I landed a gig at a shelter for runaway and homeless youth. On the Friday to Saturday midnight shift I cleaned bathrooms as part of my weekly routine. Scrubbing the dirt off toilets changed me. I thought a lot during those eight hour shifts, mostly about the girls I’d met who didn’t have mothers either. I wondered who would show them the way into adulthood, only I knew most of them didn’t have someone else’s mother to guide them.

For many years I was silent about my loss. I thought I had to be. I hid everything touched by loss in the deepest caverns of my heart, afraid that my stories would be too much for another to bear. Then in January 2009, I sensed that still, small Voice telling me to write about the experience of losing my mother.

I wanted to write, I did. I wanted to put into words what so many others have been afraid to say, including myself. But I was still afraid. And fear is a lot less tangible than money or time. It’s impossible to fund-raise and buy fear a one-way ticket to a tropical island, and sometimes more time leads to more procrastination. I struggled with the fear of rejection and the fear of being known. Some days the words came like a flood and some days fear had browbeaten me into silence or retreat, thinking someone else could tell the story better.

But I am going to continue to write because I want to connect with a generation of women who have grown up without mothers and invite them into honest conversations full of purposeful tears, and healing laughter. I want to share my story with hundreds, maybe thousands of women, so that they too can have the hope of choosing their own adventure. And if I can wrestle with fear and win, I just might have the chance to do all of those things and more.