“Where’s Mom? Will I see her again?” Growing up, there seemed to be nothing more frightening than the prospect of losing my parents—but especially my mother.
The first inkling came when I was three, still a year or so before I’d heard fairy tales of orphans left in the woods, forced to scrub floors, or nearly murdered by a stepmother. Moreover, I had not yet recalled being separated from my mother for any period of time until one day when she went to the hospital.
At that time, my paternal grandparents were staying with us in our one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. My father was home too since he was not teaching that day. In other words, there was sufficient company to have forestalled any feelings of loneliness.
Yet, that was exactly I felt. Although I did not feel distressed enough to cry, something felt wrong, empty, and out of place despite it being a crisp, sunny day. Dad had brought me to the nearby playground, just a few minutes’ walk away from our building. Yet, when he pushed me on the swing, I didn’t feel my usual delight. Something was missing. And when we returned home, I didn’t even want to play my beloved Sound of Music soundtrack. I just felt numb as I kept asking Dad over and over again, “when’s mom coming home?” “In a few hours,” he’d answer patiently.
After what felt like an eternity, we arrived at the hospital. Seeing her lifted my spirits immediately, making me feel so much happier than buying a new toy, meeting a friend, or celebrating my birthday. This was my mother—whom I loved better than just about anyone else and here she was. I couldn’t resist going out to hug her in her familiar dark blue coat. I didn’t want to let go as I clung to her, hoping to sit in her lap in the front seat— but was steered to the back of our Beetle where my grandparents sat. “Your mother is right here, right in front of you,” Grandma told me in Taiwanese. She didn’t understand that I wanted to see her face, to be kissed by her—to be sure of her physical presence after what seemed like an interminable separation.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that over the years, the prospect of losing my mother would terrify me. If she was my most dependable provider as a parent, she had also become my closest friend and mentor over the last three decades. It was she who had shared all of my joys, sorrows, triumphs, and tribulations. Not to mention that she had read nearly everything I had written, from grade school through grad school and beyond. She knew me inside and out like no other person. As such, until the age of 7, I would fret that something tragic had happened to my parents if they arrived later at night than promised. Any illness on the part of my mother, even a mild skin rash, would lead me to fear that it was fatal. In later years, as my mother flew to Taiwan, I would worry that she would perish in a plane crash or die in a typhoon or earthquake. And in more recent years, visits to her doctors would trigger anxieties over her health. Would they find a lurking cancer?
Yet, in spite of these worries, nothing quite prepared me for the death of my mother on October 4, 2014–not all of our departures and time apart since my college days. A comic yet horrifying realization hit me as I went to bed on the night of her passing: I would never again have to worry about learning of an accidental or untimely death because the worst had already happened. I would never have to scan the news for a story about a plane crash or call the police. And of course, there would be no seemingly miraculous reprieves either like those times she had arrived home safe and sound after an accident. And that in itself reinforced the bitter fact that she was never coming back.
You see, her passing wasn’t supposed to happen so soon: that’s perhaps what stung the most. Mom was viewed by everyone as tough and strong. She was rarely ever hospitalized and always had good annual checkups. She bounced up and downstairs with just as much energy as someone half her age and would even pull all-nighters when she returned home from Taiwan. (Nothing was ever clean enough for her.) By contrast, Dad, the apparently weaker one who had suffered a heart attack in 2004, was expected by just about everyone to kick the bucket any moment. Though I never told Mom, I prayed she would get a much needed reprieve from caring for him: especially since they had a challenging marriage. In fact, I had already made plans for our easier and happier Dadless future together. We would travel the country by Amtrak in a sleeper car like she wanted: it would be like the great times we had in Europe together. So when Mom passed away all too quickly from her bile duct cancer, I felt I had lost everything—even though Dad was still around.
“Where’s Mom? Will I see her again?” More than 50 years later, with decades of life and learning, this question still haunts me. I sometimes feel like the 3-year-old me who felt empty without Mom. Hearing the plane overhead reminds me that Mom will not be returning home from abroad. Seeing a blue Lexus like hers on our street appearing as it might turn up our driveway reminds me that I will not hear the garage door open and the familiar beeps of the door alarm. Hearing the whistle of the train reminds me that I will never see her standing tippy toe, waving her hand and smiling on the train platform as I return from work. It stings to know that I will not see her in this lifetime. So now, in my 50s, I ask myself “Where’s Mom—in Heaven, Hell, or purgatory,” assuming, of course, that these entities exist. And just as I wondered as a 3-year-old if death was not a prolonged sleep, I wonder too if Mom will be reborn according to Buddhist thought. But naturally, what I truly want to know is if I will ever see her after this life: a question that cannot be answered while I am alive. Will I ever get to tell her, like the 3-year-old me, how much I missed her? And will she caress me—however caresses feel in the afterworld?
Although this space will focus on my grieving process, it will also explore my other experiences with grief and other losses as well as the relationship I had with my mother: for instance, why do we miss some people more than others, whether it’s distant celebs or relatives? How does grief intensify at certain moments? What if others don’t understand our grief? How do we prevent it from putting our lives into a tailspin? And finally, how do we find the will to persist, to keep moving despite having lost what feels like everything?
Just lost my mom three days ago. It was a six-week battle with leukemia. Ultimately she just couldn't handle the intense chemo. I'm sitting here feeling a level of Devastation, isolation, loneliness, emptiness, pointlessness, that is unfathomable. I can't find a comfortable place to sit or stand. I spend much of my time pacing back and forth Just talking to myself out loud. I'm a 51 year old male and I feel like an absolutely terrified lost four year old child. She was a single mom and my whole life was pretty much just me and her. I really enjoyed your essay and can really relate to it.
Smith '78 here. I am so moved by your essay, the deep love for your mother, all the details. I'm currently visiting my nearly 101 year old mother. I feel that, as close as we are and always have been, I've taken my mother as much for granted as the air I breathe, and the fear looms that I won't quite know how to be myself without her. Every precious word, glance , touch reminds me that she can't stay forever.