The Daughter of a Bereaved Mother

My mom has two daughters. One on Earth and one in Heaven. My mother’s heart lives both here, and there. I’ve always had to share my mom, but not in this way. Not in watching her ache for her lost daughter as she holds mine.

It’s crazy, the year I received a daughter is the year my mom lost one of hers. Scarlett has forever become the marker of time lost with my sister. When she’s 10, that’s a decade without my sister. I have a love, hate relationship with 2018, to say the least. 

Now of days when you think of bereaved mothers, we think, or at least I do, of pregnancy and infant loss moms. In reality, becoming a “bereaved mother” has no limits, no timelines, and does not discriminate. These moms — My mom, she’s a part of a club she absolutely, undoubtably does not want to be in; like the rest of them. 

I’m the daughter to a one- daughter- less mother. Where there was two, there’s one. 

When words fail me, my “grief” searches on Pinterest do not. This poem explains my mom’s “new normal”:

“Do not judge the bereaved mother.

She comes in many forms.

She is breathing, but she is dying.

She may look young, but inside she has become ancient.

She smiles, but her heart sobs.

She walks, she talks, she cooks,

she cleans, she works, she IS

but she IS NOT all at once.

She is here, but part of her is elsewhere for eternity.

A child that loses a parent is an orphan.

A husband that loses his wife is a widower.

A wife who loses her husband is a widow.

However, there is no word for a parent that loses a child.

For there is no word to describe such pain.”

-author unknown

We desperately miss my sister, and in turn, I desperately miss my mom. 

Pictured: Nana & Scarlett – Thanksgiving 2018