It is easier to love my mother now she's dead.
Mother-daughter relationships don't end.
As someone without children or siblings, who never knew her father and had a mother who reinvented herself with each of her three marriages, sloughing off names, family and friends as she went, I’ve never had a sense of ‘family’ as something particularly capacious; if anything, it’s been rather anorexic.
So perhaps it’s a little bit strange that for the last couple of years, I’ve been asking my ancestors to support me with the entirely homemade, hands-on healing practice I’ve developed for my husband, mother-in-law (and dog!). I’ve tried different ways to tune into the right state of mind for it, and the most powerful one I’ve found is simply to ask my ancestors for help: ‘Please help me,’ that’s all it takes, and they pitch up willingly, rolling up their sleeves and announcing their presence with an undertow of energy that tugs at my nervous system like an interdimensional foghorn.
If I try to imagine them, I see a hazy mirage of women, receding forever in the fairground mirror of my mind: a blood of midwives and hedge witches; a feast of farmers and foragers; a hank of spinners and weavers; a delight of singers and dancers; a bucket of housewives and housemaids and, garlanding them all, the priestesses, poets and prostitutes. Being half-Irish and half-Londoner, I’ve never imagined anything other than a thousand generations of working-class women backing me up - I doubt that Cleopatra lurks anywhere in my lineage.
I’ve tried conjuring up my ancestral fathers but nothing much lights up the line; it’s always the women that show up, wiping their exhausted hands down floury aprons and determining themselves towards yet another task asked of them. That they show up for me at all moves me deeply; maternal support is not something I’ve been able to trust in my lifetime, but there are other wells to draw upon it seems.
As I wrote in my essay A Parting Gift, my mother died recently and I was with her at the end. She was only 18 when she had me, an unwed Catholic teenager ‘bringing shame on this house’, and my father scarpered shortly thereafter. Mothering did not come easily to her; she’d been brought up harshly and her own needs had barely been met, how dare I demand what little she had?
It was only a few weeks after her death that it came to me, somewhat as a shock I’ll add, that she too is now one of my ancestors; one of those I can call on for guidance and support. And although my wounded mother wounded me deeply, those wounds directed me towards taking responsibility for my own healing. Without them, I would never have woken up, and right now, we need those of us who have done the work to stay the fuck awake.
It is easier to love my mother now she’s dead; she cannot hurt me anymore.
My mother was a powerful force in this world with a hair-trigger sense of injustice that often exploded as anger towards those she loved. And now that very same fury is part of my lineage. Mum, your fight is over but I can feel your power at my back.
My mother is one of the ancestors now. Her powers of reinvention won’t ever leave me behind again; her harsh words can no longer leave my heart pierced with sorrow. Instead, I am left to remember her green-fingered magic; her love of reading; her infectious Charleston-meets-Woodstock dancefloor moves; her tenderness towards small creatures; her quirky and surreal humour and her unique sense of style.
Now, a few months on from her death, when I reach out to my ancestors, I feel a whisper of her, a sense that she is tentatively taking her place amongst them, as she should; they are her ancestors too.
I hope she is being celebrated. I hope there is dancing.
A parting gift
My mother, who was 77, died two days ago, from dementia after another stroke. I was with her, alone in her room in her care home. I had flown in that morning from Ireland, as the doctor had told us that she was likely close to death. A month ago, there was a …
I was born into a time of endings.
Note: Mother’s Day is in May in many places; in the UK/IE it’s March/April.
I’m so excited to read this! Its something I’ve reflected on. Here’s a little excerpt from my WIP:
“The dead no longer annoy us with their humanity. That may be why we can view them clearly, but with charity.
We judge them only by their past actions, not by their current actions and especially not their future actions.
No more fear and worry. No more hope. No more surprises for good or ill.”
Jody, I am the daughter of a daughter who was abandoned. This was eclipsed while my father, a big warm sun in our sky, was alive. When he died, my mother provided but did nourish. She did not know how. Taking this on in my memoir. I so appreciate your courage here.