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Illustration by Chelsea O'Byrne
It was never easy to pick out a Mother’s Day card for my mom.
We weren’t best friends. I never confided my youthful or adult struggles to her because she wouldn’t automatically show sympathy or take my side (“You got in trouble at school/fired from your job? Well, I’m sure the teacher/company had a good reason”). The words of wisdom she dispensed were more pragmatic (“Always wear a slip”) than inspirational.
So the syrupy sentimentality of the standard Mother’s Day card didn’t suit the relationship we had, which was nevertheless loving if not Hallmark-esque. I found cards that poked fun and cracked wise. Mom seemed to enjoy the humour and if she ever wished I’d be the daughter to give her one of those gilt-edged “To a Special Mother” cards, she never let on.
Now I’m facing my 11th Mother’s Day without her and I still miss being a daughter. Mom died in a long-term care home. Her life’s ending was a protracted misery; a series of small strokes had rendered her almost completely immobile and non-verbal. Her formerly sharp wit was dulled by dementia.
My three older sisters and I had a long-standing Mother’s Day tradition: we gave her a bouquet of nine pink sweetheart roses, one for each daughter and granddaughter, and one yellow rose for her single grandson. An odd order, the florist must have thought. For the first couple of years that Mom was in the nursing home, we visited her as a foursome on Mother’s Day. We brought dainty plates, cloth napkins and baked treats. We made tea and served it in fancy cups.
At first, Mom seemed to recognize that it was a special occasion and enjoy it. But as the years went on it became harder to get her to look at the roses that we brought or notice the pretty plates. It was challenging to get her to focus on whatever we wanted her to see. As her words became fewer with each passing year, it became harder to tell if she knew it was Mother’s Day. Sometimes we found ourselves having a sisters’ visit over tea while Mom slept in her chair.
Throughout her years in the nursing home, we kept log books to record our daily visits, noting how she was that day, what she ate, etc. I still have all those books. The entry for her last Mother’s Day shows that we visited her in stages. My two older sisters went together in the morning. It was not a good visit; Mom was awake but unresponsive, keeping her eyes closed as they read her Mother’s Day cards aloud. In the afternoon, my sister Lynn and I found her asleep in the lounge, tilted back in her wheelchair. “She woke up right away and looked happy to see us,” I wrote in the log book. “She seemed to listen to our chatter and looked from one to the other as we spoke and laughed.”
And that was good enough for us. When your parent is so compromised, you live for the small things.
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I learned we couldn’t plan special times according to a calendar. Beautiful moments did happen, although not necessarily on Mother’s Day. The sweet times in her last few years just happened, unbidden, much like the ache of loss that I still can’t predict or control today. Sometimes, Mom would purse her lips to return a goodbye kiss or manage to murmur an endearment from the small store of words that remained to her.
As my first motherless Mother’s Day approached, I knew objectively that I was no longer anyone’s daughter but I was not emotional about it. At least not until the commercial machine got into full swing,
One day, on my way to get groceries I spied a display of Mother’s Day flowers, accompanied by a huge sign, and that was it. Like two faucets turned on, tears spilled over my cheeks. I abandoned my errand and drove home, barely getting in the door before bursting into loud sobs. My husband came running down the stairs, but I was crying so hard I could barely get the words out to tell him what was wrong.
“Just … hit me,” I managed to gasp.
“HIT you?” he repeated, thinking I’d been in a car accident.
“No … about Mother’s Day,” I wept into his shoulder.
I am one of four sisters, I am an aunt, great-aunt, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, niece and wife – all roles I cherish – but not a daughter. And I’m not a mother, myself. I couldn’t quite articulate how it felt, but the word “rootless” kept rolling around in my head.
That year, Mother’s Day was warm and sunny, and I did some gardening. When I tried to remove some Solomon’s Seal from its plastic pot, the stem came out of the dirt without a root attached and dangled from my hand. My emotions were still near the surface and my eyes filled with tears at this small setback.
But I dug further and found a tiny root deep in the pot. I planted it and waited. One day, pointed pale green tips appeared above the soil. For me, it’s a plant of resilience and remembrance. I mark the passage of time since my mother died as I watch it grow bigger year by year.
All these years later, Mother’s Day is still one I prefer to see in the rearview mirror. I make a point of not looking at all the “show Mom how special she is” advertising. I might even go into a fit of house cleaning as if I could scrub away my feelings. I miss being a daughter. I even miss standing in the card rack aisles, trying to find a Mother’s Day card to make her laugh.
Cynthia Janzen lives in Hamilton, Ont.
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