Being Michaela's Mother

I often get asked, in various ways, what it was like to lose a child.  How it felt then, how it feels now, what do I miss about her, what occasions are the hardest, what makes things easier; that sort of thing.  I am often uncomfortable answering those questions.  I often don't have answers or at least I don't have the words to adequately explain anything.  Maybe someday I will.  I read a lot of memoirs written by people who have lost children and they seem to find the words to describe their journey; maybe I will too.  

Mother's day gift in 2003 when I was away at the AFSNCO Academy

But what nobody asks me is the question that is SO much more important that how it felt to lose her.  Nobody ever asks how it felt to have her; what it was like being Michaela's mother.  My answer would start with, I wouldn't give up this grief for anything in the world if it meant I wouldn't have had those years with her.  I have decided that even though nobody asks, I have a need to share a little bit of how it felt to be Micheala's mother. 

Michaela left me many, many things to remember her by including boxes of journals, cards, letters, notes, pictures and videos.  I now feel strong enough to share some of that.  Very carefully and very slowly.  I will not divulge her secrets or attempt to explain how it felt to BE Michaela, only how it felt to be her mother.

Michaela was never shy about showing her love to anyone she loved.  I'm am not a terribly demonstrative person.  She was.  I am not a hugger.  She was.  When she was older she would tease me about it.  I didn't have an answer for her.  It isn't that I didn't hug her or tell her I loved her; but never enough to make her happy :).  Still, I know, for certain, she knows how much I love her.

She was also my greatest cheerleader.  She told me over and over what a great mother I was; how much better our relationship was than any of her friends had with their mothers; how much she liked spending time wtih me.  And in other things too--if I wanted to lose weight, get in shape, start a business--she was right there telling me I could do it.

Of course we didn't always agree.  Nobody always agrees with their mom.  Sometimes I disagreed with her choices.  Sometimes I thought she shortchanged herself; undermining herself through insecurity.  Only once am I aware of her hiding something big from me for any significant amount of time.  She was afraid I would be disappointed in her decision and wanted to make sure that decision worked out before she told me.  She was an adult.  That was her choice.  But it did hurt me.  She could never let me down; she worked so hard to please me all the time.

I'm sure it was much easier to see these things in retrospect than when I was actually making her do her own laundry while some of her friend's moms were still cleaning their rooms for them.  When I was making her get a job at 16 to pay for her own gas and entertainment; when I was making her fill out scholarship applications as a task tied to how much financial support she would get from me in college (whether or not she got the scholarships); when I wouldn't let her stay out all night on those all important (and most dangerous) nights like prom and graduation or go to Key West for Spring Break when she was underage; when I put a top dollar I would pay for a prom dress and she had to pay for the rest herself if she wanted a more expensive one; when I bought her a stick shift car for her first car at 16.

Only in her mind did she let anything come between us.  She was young and didn't undestand the nature of mother love.  She didn't understand that a mother must hold loosely at the right times (and tightly at the right times)  for a child to grow up and become their own person.  That a mother knows a child will pull and push alternatively as they stretch their own wings and then snuggle back under their mother's for protection.  I learned patience from my daughter.

That's really the bottom line.  Home isn't a place.  Home isn't even really a person.  Home is the connection of one soul with another.  A connection that lasts well beyond death.