The Perspective of a Bereaved Mother Nearing Mother’s Day

“It takes a lot of breath to live a single day in a world that often forgets the importance of the mother.”

Motherhood was a role I had barely settled into when our eight-month-old daughter, June, was diagnosed with cancer. Despite already having a two-and-a-half year old at home, when we learned June was sick, I was in the midst of learning how to be a mother.

Being June’s mom became a role I lost myself in entirely. Because of the suffering that is often involved in loving your children, mothers can lose parts of themselves. Some to be recovered and others never to be found. 

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A good mother sacrifices a piece of herself the moment she brings a child into the world. Every good mother builds their world around the child from the day they are born. Intentional or not, the child becomes the center of the mother’s universe. While, simultaneously, the mother becomes the child’s entire universe. If and when they are so fortunate. 

I can’t understand why we don’t celebrate our mothers more. Not just on a day in May. Instead we put ourselves down and dance around the critique of others. Like who is mothering their children correctly. What the best practice is. We criticize ourselves. We fault our mothers, then sacrifice our being to be nothing like them. 

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This time of year, every year, I am reminded of the mothers whom I’ve lost. The one’s I’d give anything to have a sliver of again. 

“If she could see us now,” I’d say to June as I flushed her central line with saline while she lay on the changing table atop my grandmother’s dresser. The one I inherited when my grandmother died several years before June was born. 

“I wonder what she would think of you, Junie,” I said smiling, as I bent over and opened the drawer with June’s pajamas, laying a pair over her scarred body to examine whether or not she had gone down a size. My baby, who had only just turned one, was shrinking. 

June’s top and bottom half were split, denoted by a thick scar just above her umbilicus that ran the width of her abdomen. It looked as if she had been sliced in two. 

Some days, I’d talk to my grandmother aloud as I flushed June’s lines, or at night as I rocked her to sleep, in hopes she’d hear my pleas. Maybe in some miraculous way she could help June recover from the cancer. 

“Oh, Taryn,” I imagined she’d say if she were still alive, teary-eyed, in her most forlorn voice, after I told her June was dying. 

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I remember sitting on the edge of my grandmother’s bed as a little girl watching her pull out the same dresser drawer I later kept June’s pajamas in. I watched her lift a sweater from the drawer and hold it up to herself in the mirror. From where I sat, I could see paper lining the bottoms of the drawers painted with roses. 

“Oh, Junie, if Nana could see us now, what would she think?” I’d say to June as I pulled another drawer open and instead of dainty roses there were was a mess of syringes filled with heparin and saline, alcohol pads, and antibacterial green caps. Medical supplies now devoured the drawers once lined with paintings of delicate pink flowers.

I’d often wonder what my grandmother would have done for me when she found out June was sick. What kind of mothering she would have offered. Perhaps, she would have offered me the mothering every mom who’s child has cancer so desperately needs. 

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Mother’s Day has always been about other mothers in my life. When I consider the mothers deserving celebration, I don’t think of myself. I think of the mothers who have lived many more years than I, such as my elders. 

At times, I don’t know how to recognize and celebrate the mother in me. Part of that is because of the wound that comes with identifying as mother after losing June. The other part is that I am still figuring it out. 

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This Mother’s Day marks the third since June’s passing a little over two years ago. Just eight weeks after she died, I experienced my first Mother’s Day as a bereaved mother, exactly forty-weeks pregnant with my son.

In the photos from that first Mother’s Day, I am reclined on a couch, my face and eyes are swollen and tired. I’m symptomatic of the final days of the third trimester. I ache all over. My heart aches the most. My eyes are puffy because I’ve been crying since June died eight weeks before.

Have you ever woken up from a deep sleep and the pillowcase is wet from the tears you cried while you slept?

Most nights after June died, my body just wouldn’t quit. When I was lucky, my mind would shut down as soon as I lay my head on the pillow, but my body would continue to expel the suffering through my tears.

The nights I couldn’t turn my brain off and lay awake, were the nights I swore I could hear June calling for me. I’d hear a tiny whispering voice saying, “Mama, mama, mama,” over and over again. 

The mourning mother in me cried on and off most nights in the wake of June’s death, while I slept, nine months pregnant, on the verge of giving up. 

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My son, whom I unexpectedly became pregnant with during June’s treatment, was due May 8th, 2022, which that year, unbeknownst to me, was Mother’s Day. 

“Isn’t that Mother’s Day this year?” A nurse asked me after I told her my due date as she hung a bag of Cisplatin on a metal pole and connected it to June. 

“Is it?” I hadn’t considered. I didn’t care. Or did I?

This small detail the nurse pointed out forced me to acknowledge my greatest fear. If my son was due on Mother’s Day it was because he was part of a metaphysical exchange. A parting gift. His birth would seal June’s fate. What more cherished a gift to receive on Mother’s Day than a brand new baby boy as your daughter is dying of cancer? 

At that time, no one knew the cancer had returned in June. I had every reason to believe she was going to survive. We all did. She had been declared cancer free several months before, prior to entering the most enduring portion of treatment: high-dose chemotherapy paired with stem cell transplant. 

June had survived the worst part of treatment which many children did not. She died a survivor. 

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My son wasn’t born on his due date, Mother’s Day, 2022. To my great relief, he was four days late. 

I was relieved to not have to endure my first Mother’s Day as a bereaved mother birthing a child I’d only just meet for the first time. One I’d feel guilted into loving immediately. A child of mine who would never know his sister. Seemed impossible. I’d been so distracted by caring for June, that I’d almost forgotten he had grown in my womb. 

The last baby I held was June, and I knew he wouldn’t be June. Although part of me wished he was June and that we could have a do-over. That I’d wake up from the nightmare where my two babies were so close to meeting, but never did.

“Junie, your brother could never replace you,” I’d whisper to her at night as I rocked her to sleep. After she died, I’d repeat the same words when I’d be laying awake at night wondering where June really went. “He will never replace you,” I’d say just after I could have sworn I’d heard her whispering, “Mama, mama, mama.”

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Sunday, May 12th marks the day my son turns two. It’s the first birthday of his that has fallen on Mother’s Day. It’s a monumental birthday for two reasons. 

Firstly, our son is healthy and thriving. He’s turning two! He’s an absolute gift, just as I once feared. I could never have asked for someone more delightful to be placed directly in my life’s path. My son has saved my life in many ways. 

Secondly, our son turning two marks the first age June never reached. The first birthday she didn’t celebrate. This is a big milestone in our household because for the first time in nearly four years, I’ll know what’s like for my child to continue to live. I have been caring for an infant, newborn, and toddler who is just about to turn two, but then doesn’t.

My son’s age is also an indicator of the time that has passed since June died. In that sense, I know he and June’s lives are forever intertwined.

I am overcome with emotion that my son is turning two. It’s an incredible feeling. I’m also anxious to see if it takes the edge off the worry I have surrounding my living children. I wonder if my breath will come back. 

His life is a tremendous gift I have to celebrate this Mother’s Day. I no longer fear the arrival of the day itself, or fear feeling happiness, like I did that first Mother’s Day without June. 

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I framed a piece of the rose paper that lined my grandmother’s dresser. I’ve been searching for it in the moving boxes. It reminds me of my younger years, when I was free from worry’s chains. 

It reminds me of that day my Nana pulled a sweater from her drawer, held it up to herself, and then turned to me to say, “Dear, do you see this scar? The doctors cut me open. They operated on my heart, dear.”

It looked as if a jagged knife had been dragged from just below her neckline to the bottom of her sternum. Scarring from the stitching made it look more like shoe laces could be woven through it, than anything else. She thought she was going to die, then lived nearly two more decades.

I don’t have a scar like either June or my grandmother to show that I’ve been severed in places no mother should ever have to be cut. But from them, I learned that if someone is sewn back together, even without the sum of their parts, they might still be whole. I’d like to think this is exactly how both June and my grandmother felt before leaving this world. 

In the process of healing, I’m becoming okay with losing parts of myself because perspective has won, once again. My life could never have been this beautiful had I never met June. I am whole.