Question: Dear Luise: Recently I lost my mother. It was in August of this year. She died of lung cancer. I am really missing my mom like any thing! It was so sudden. It all happened in only one month. It was confirmed after she had a bad cough. Otherwise, she was normal. It is really so hard and horrible to accept death. I am feeling very lost and lonely. Sometimes I’m very restless and don’t feel like working. What to do? I feel so very sad. Please help me to learn how to recover from it. D.
Answer: Dear D.: When this happens, and we are separated from our mothers with such finality, each and every one of us is left alone with it. That’s the hardest part. You lost your mother just a few months ago. How you are feeling is the only way you could possibly feel so soon after her death. You need time. We all do.
Most of us aren’t brought up to accept that death happens to everyone and unless we precede her in death, we are all going to lose our mothers. We are not taught that death is natural, normal and inevitable. Death isn’t understood. How can it be? Like life…it’s a mystery.
We are meant to go on…to move through grief without getting stuck there, to find new friends and new interests and to focus on living. How do we do that? Usually with extreme difficulty. Loss is real and it is terrible. Some never recover and that’s a high price to pay for love. We are part of a parade in which there is a beginning, a middle and an end for each participant. We join it when we are born and we leave it when we die. No one, absolutely no one, stays. Fighting the master plan, anguishing over it takes energy that we don’t have and we will never win. That’s the way it is.
Why not move, when you can, into gratitude. Why not start a gratitude list and dedicate it to your mother. Keep going over it every night before you go to bed and keep adding to it. Your mother gave you life as her mother gave her life. Celebrate your lovely relationship in gratitude and joy. Healing will follow. Blessings, Luise
Hi Luise,
I just lost my mother on Nov.18, 2011. She was sent into the hospital for high blood pressure and some tests. This led to the discovery of her needing heart bypass surgery. Her surgery was successful ( so we thought), but 5 hours later she went into cardiac arrest and died later that night. My father, siblings and myself are still in shock. The doctor even joked the night before her surgery that she may be eating turkey for Thanksgiving in the hospital. Well, something went terribly wrong and it has been a total shock for me and my family.
I am 43 and have two small children. It is very difficult because me and my mother talked everyday and were best friends.
I am so sad , but I also am mad. I feel so angry that my mother is gone and she was a very young 70.
Please give me some advice on how to stop feeling this terrible pain and anger .
Thank you,L.
L. – There is no way to stop the pain and anger. They are normal and they are also terrible. It is of little use to know they will diminish…you are trying to find a way to survive this. Here is what I did when my mom died at age 63. I wrote to her. That may sound dumb but I couldn’t have a world without her in it…so I wrote. Sometimes I wrote large letters…in pure rage. Some pages were tear soaked. But I told her how I was and eventually writing to her became a comfort to me. Later on, when I was more at peace and still writing daily…I did what might be seen as something even dumber…I started writing back answers from her to me. No, I wasn’t hearing her voice or “getting messages” but I knew what she would say to me and so I wrote it. She diesd 58 years ago and sometimes I still write to her and she to me. Not often…but when things are exceptionally great or awful for me…I connect and “we” share it. That’s all I can suggest because it worked for me. Blessings, Luise