The Dance of Motherless Daughters

 

In early 2006, I ran across a book while searching for something that would help me love my nephews well after the sudden and devastating loss of their mother. The book, Motherless Daughters, by Hope Edelman (2006), was the results of a nation-wide bereavement study, coupled with Edelman’s own research on mother-loss. I bought the book, thinking, at the very least, I would gain understanding into losing a mother by death, and would perhaps learn something that could help me understand a bit more about what my nephews were going through at the ages of 5 and 9 years old. I was surprised, however, to find that Edelman’s book gave me profound insight into another experience of loss that had touched my life indirectly (or at least I thought it was indirectly at the time).

My mother, Wanda, was a motherless daughter. This fact I knew my whole life, and I also knew that it was her greatest sadness. Mom’s mother, Edith, passed away unexpectedly when Mom was only 3 years and 3 months old. I grew up knowing about Mom’s mother-loss, but it was not until I read Motherless Daughters, that I truly had comprehension of how life-altering Mom’s early experience of loss was for her. This is what Edelman (2006) said,

            Our mothers are our most direct connection to our history and our gender. Regardless of how well we think they did their job, the void their absence [through dementia or death] creates in our lives is never completely filled again. (p. 69).

I had always wondered why Mom had a hard time moving past her mother’s death, even as an adult. Edelman (2006) helped me understand that

motherless daughters constantly try to situate their mother within the current context of their own lives. [Britton, 2021, p. 34] ... The surviving member of the relational dyad continues to live in the loss of the interactional identity [between herself and her mother] but must find a way to continue the bonds of the relationship moving forward. (p. 44).

I realized that Mom had been in a renegotiation of her relationship – her dance, if you will – with her mom since she was 3 years old. With very few real memories to enlighten her view, Mom continued to grieve her mother-loss with every new milestone in her own life: her graduation from high school, her wedding, the birth of her children, her career, the loss of her brother, the births of her grandchildren. She reached for that interactional identity and sought ways to continue her inextricable bond with her mother.

I, too, looked for ways to have a relationship with a woman I never met and only saw one image of in a family picture. I longed to have known my Grandma Owens, wondering if I would have called her Nanny or Nana, like so many children in Arkansas call their grandmothers. I just knew she would be delighted to know my cousin, Karen and me, and would have called us her “twins,” since we were only 10 days apart in age, and had dark hair and dark coloring. We would have been her shadows, learning all we could from our grandma, while our moms watched on with pride. This is how I learned to have a shared relationship with this woman I never met, but who touched my life deeply because she had an interactional shared identity with my mom.

On this day last year, 365 short days ago (December 31, 2023), I spent my last 24 hours with my mom on this side of heaven. It was a quiet, peaceful Sunday. As she lay in her bed, warm under her blanket, transitioning to a new life, I sat vigil next to her. We “watched” the KC Chiefs play, something we would often do together. I held her hand, spoke softly to her, and reminded her how much I loved her. When nighttime came, I couldn’t pull myself away to go home and sleep. I told Marty I didn’t know what to do. He said, “What does your heart tell you to do?” I said, “It tells me to stay.” So, I did. I curled up in the recliner where I could watch her breathe, and drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rhythmic inhalations and exhalations coming from her bed. I had heard a very measured, even breathing like this before so it didn’t scare me. In 2018, I sat for 34 days next to a person in an ICU whose very life was sustained by a ventilator. As I closed my eyes next to mom and dozed in and out, I imagined that I was just hearing a ventilator doing its job again. I slept.

At 5:50 a.m. or shortly thereafter, the night aide made one last check on Mom as she was completing her rounds for the night. She woke me up with these words, “Happy New Year, Miss Wanda.” I heard Mom’s rhythmic breathing and started to close my eyes again. But as I lay there quietly, I suddenly realized the “sound of the ventilator” had stopped. The rhythm was no more. I opened my eyes and looked over at Mom just in time to see her take two deep and relaxing breaths. She closed her mouth and it was over. In that sacred moment, shortly before 6:00 a.m., I became what my mother had been for 86 years – a motherless daughter.

Mom and I had always had a good relationship, but like many mothers and daughters, we struggled during my adolescence as I tried to become my own person. Added to my own emotional and physical upheaval was the fact that Mom had her own emotional struggles during those years. She was not the best version of herself for about 10 years, and to be honest, she was a very difficult person to be around most of the time. Because we had a shared relationship, however, and because our interactional identity was so strong, we weathered that storm and, I think, became closer as a result. Mom’s final 20 years of life were peaceful, serene, and without some of the emotional chaos that had marked the previous 10 years. We never had the kind of relationship where we went shopping or out to lunch, but we had quiet moments together playing games, reading books, and just living life. I much prefer that, I think.

Over this year, as I’ve reflected on Mom’s life, and as I’ve tried to “continue the bonds of the relationship [with her] moving forward,” (Britton, 2021, p. 44), I’ve thought much about how changing the dance steps to walk her home with dignity became not only my mission but my heartbeat. When I wrote my doctoral dissertation in late 2020 and into early 2021, Mom was at a critical juncture in her health care. COVID-19 caused many dance steps to be changed for everyone, but for Mom and me, I felt like we started a completely new dance. As I listened to other daughters of dementia share about their caregiving journeys walking their mothers home, I was also negotiating big changes in Mom’s own dementia journey. For the sake of the research, I had to bracket my feelings and distance myself and my own experiences from that of my participants. But once, the research study was complete, I was able to reflect on all I learned. What I wrote about my participants, I lived out with my mother over the next 2½ years until her death:

            Each daughter’s candid and thoughtful dialogue about her caregiving journey revealed conscious and unconscious efforts to change the dance steps in order to move with the innocence of dementia as daughters worked to protect their mothers’ identity, preserve their relationships with their mothers, and insulate themselves from the loss of shared identity by following their mother’s example and drawing on their lifetime of intimate exchange with their mothers. (Britton, 2021, p. 323).

Like all of my participants, I “made a commitment to stay with Mom until she passed, regardless of the difficulty of the journey” (Britton, 2021, p. 324). One of my participants shared, “And I’d often say, we’d go for walks and I’d say, ‘I’m gonna walk you all the way home. And I did ... literally” (p. 330). Walking Mom home became,

about the intimate exchange between [us] – mother and daughter, caregiver and cared for. [It was about] the privileges and pains of caregiving, the gratitude and the regrets, of learning to do something because it is the right thing to do, even if it was never or will never be reciprocated. (p. 330).

Just as many of my participants came to realize at the end of their caregiving journey, I realized that it was my privilege to “overcome past relationship issues in order to provide safe, loving care for [my] mother that guarded her dignity and promoted [my] sense of perceived obligation in caregiving” (Britton, 2021, p. 430). But more than just fulfilling an obligation, I extended my shared relationship with my mom. I learned how to continue my bonds with her;

I felt a sense of accomplishment and purpose from having mindfully walked her home. ... My shared identity with Mom was irrevocably altered, [and I feel that today] I have a stronger relationship with [her] as a result of [our] shared dance. (p. 446)

Today, it has been 365 days since I last held Mama’s hand, since I last heard her rhythmic breathing. It’s been 366 days since I’ve looked into her twinkling blue eyes. It’s been over 366 days since I’ve seen her beautiful smile. I miss her as much – maybe more – today as I did on January 1 of this year. There is so much I want to tell her. I catch myself looking for her. I hear myself making a mental note to tell her about the latest family happenings. I still remind myself to “go get Mom” and bring her to the church service, or family dinner, or birth of her great-granddaughter. These intrusive thoughts stop me short every time. Even now, as I write this, my eyes burn with the tears of missing these moments of our shared relationship. I miss Mom more than I can say. There was a time in my life where I didn’t know how I would feel when she was gone, but our shared dance steps changed that. I’d walk her home over and over again if I could.

She speaks to me even now. As part of gathering up and sorting through the last of my parents’ keepsakes, I stumbled on some writings of Mom’s when she was only 23 years old. I was a new bride with a new purpose – to share in life and ministry with my pastor-husband. And Mom spoke to me; this young, 23-year-old woman who was embarking on a life of ministry with her new pastor-husband in 1957 said,

I’ve been thinking lately about the job of pastor and his wife. You know, Honey, we are the servants of the people there. We’re nothing but instruments in God’s Hand for the purpose of serving and ministering to His people at that place. I have a lot of self to get rid of before I’ll be the servant of the people I ought to be. I pray that self will die that He may live in me. (Wanda Owens, 12-5-57)

Today, I remember Mama. I remember all she was, all she stood for, and all she taught me. I remember the good times and the challenging times. I remember the laughter and the tears. But most of all, I remember the privilege of changing the dance steps so I could walk her home and preserve our shared identity. It’s been one year since she left for heaven, and I cannot wait for the day when I can join her and tell her how much her life impacted my own.

Happy New Year in heaven, Mama. I love you.

 

Britton, K. B. (2021). Dancing with Mom: The shared identity between caregiving daughters and their mothers with dementia: A qualitative narrative study [Publication No. 28546883) [Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2572567030?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses

Edelman, H. (2006). Motherless daughters: The legacy of loss. Da Capo Lifelong Books.