What does a motherless daughter do, in the shadow of loss?
With her grief still raw, Susannah Walker faces her first Mother’s Day without her mum. ‘HOW are you?” a colleague asks. It is four days since my mother’s funeral, my first day back at work. I wonder what to say. Do I tell him that my mother died near the end of a perfect summer’s day, a day so sweet and warm the very fact of it should defy death? That I had spent the day at her bedside but she died 10 minutes after I left to prepare dinner? That when my sister rang with the news, I stood in my mother’s kitchen and finished peeling the potatoes? Not because I didn’t care, but because I simply didn’t believe it was true. On the way back to the hospice, I was stunned to see a couple walking along the street laughing, as if the world hadn’t just changed. My mother’s skin was still warm but her body was a discarded husk. She had eluded death so many times that we used to joke she was like a cat with 100 lives. And ever since I was a little girl, watching the ambulance take her away again,
Related Questions
- My son/daughter was very involved in youth group/synagogue in high school but doesn seem to want to get involved in Jewish life at college. What can we do to get him/her connected with Hillel?
- Does Vanderbilt offer the opportunity to shadow current students? Is it possible to stay with a student while I am on campus?
- My son/daughter has climbed a little; how will he/she fit into the Earth Treks Climbing Team?
