Missing my mother

April includes three dates in my family - my son's birthday, my birthday, and the day my mother died. 

This year marks the tenth anniversary of her passing, and as "the date" approaches, I'm living in a whole new kind of sorrow. My mom died as a result of pancreatic cancer, one of the more horrible cancers because by the time you learn you have it, it's advanced and the march to death is painful, unrelenting, and swift - even with aggressive treatment and an iron will to live, both of which my mother had. She was only 70, just 12 years older than I'll be in a couple weeks, to put that into perspective.

In the beginning I traveled through the raw grief that comes with the death of a parent. After a few years, I moved to mostly acceptance, my grief a constant little whisper in the background of my busy life. Sometimes things would trigger a louder grief and tears - always unexpectedly. Something would remind me of her, or wishing she was part of a milestone or an everyday event. But mostly it was just the whisper.

Then, beginning a year or so ago, something shifted and I started missing my mother in a whole new kind of way. So much time gone by and so much life where she wasn't. I longed to talk to her, to ask her things about my own aging process, for example. "Did you experience this, too?"

This new grief is for the relationship we could have had over these last ten years - one that could have been closer, richer than what we had before, because of my own inner growth and evolution.

I had a great childhood - two parents who loved and cared for me, who had the resources and desire to support their kids' pursuits and dreams, who insisted we do well in school and go to college, and that we make the most of our talents to make a difference in the world. Yet, between the lines of this happy childhood was an emotional distance that hurt my heart and that I used to blame on them.

Our unspoken family motto was, "Everything's great!" It still is. So as a kid, for example, when I would run to my mom with hurt feelings, she would tell me, "Oh honey, it's okay, don't get upset, you're just fine." But I wasn't fine. What I longed to hear was affirmation of my hurt. "That must have been so hurtful. Let me give you a hug." But it was not our way and over the years, beginning in adolescence, I stepped away from emotional intimacy and kept my parents at a loving arm's length. 

Did my mom know how sad, ashamed and hurt I was that no one invited me to the prom, or even wanted to be my boyfriend in high school? That in some ways I was a victim of being bullied? Maybe, but I'll never know. Even if we weren't in a place to go there when I was 17, surely I could talk to her about it now.

I never told her I about the abortion I had at 20 while in college (though she was a strong proponent of a woman's right to choose), or even that I was having sex at all. I never shared the interior of my adult struggles. Not when I was going through my divorce, coming out, single parenting, or my children making terrible choices with terrible consequences. Or the heartbreak in my early lesbian relationships. My parents knew the facts, but not the feelings.

I didn't figure out until it was too late, until after my mom had died, that I was as responsible for our emotional distance as my parents were - that I was the one who closed down and stopped trying.

It's just been in the last decade, thanks to my journey with my spouse Susan, that I've learned, really learned, that to make an intimate relationship successful you have to accept people as they are, meet them where they are at, and bring your unwavering authentic self to them. I've known those sorts of ideas forever, of course (lots of therapy and self-help books, and Oprah), but only in my relationship and marriage with Susan have I experienced what those ideas mean and the powerful transformation that acting upon them can bring.

I totally get that my mom and I would have never achieved some fantasy daily-talk-on-the-phone-go-shopping-the-first-person-I-called-when-trouble-hit mother/daughter relationship, but if I had evolved more quickly we could have had so much more than we did.

I could have brought more of my whole self to her, and then flowed with her into whatever relationship would have grown from there. I've had the opportunity to do just that with my dad and it's been lovely, and healing.

As April rolls in, my sorrow and grief are loud and present. It's the missed chance to bring a better me to my wonderful mom.

If only we had had a little more time.