Virginia’s Story
Some women report knowing they wanted to be a mother for as long as they can remember. I recall carrying around a life-sized doll I aptly named Baby, but I’m not sure I was ever that little girl that consciously dreamed of parenthood. That was until my mother passed away.
I was 32 years old when I got the news, and I’d already lost my father in my late 20s. Losing both parents at such a young age was a radical education in grief. One that came sooner than I was prepared for maybe, but life unfolds in its own timing, doesn’t it?
What I know from that season of my life is that our grieving can be a gift to us if we let it.
For me, my grief was a form of insight. It created in me a visceral knowing that if I wanted a sense of family, I’d have to be the one that created that experience for myself. That was the year that my journey into motherhood began in earnest. Slowly, I began to envision what my life would look like with children in it: the necessity of a dependable partner, breastfeeding in the midnight hours, the challenges of running a home, the everyday magic of exploring the outdoors with little ones trailing closely behind.
I wanted it all.
They say Ask and you shall receive, and in my life that’s proven true. These days, I am the mother to an active 2.5-year-old boy with my father’s blue-grey eyes. Our days are filled with spotting mushrooms on hikes, playing in the garden with shovels and watering cans, and slow afternoons where he wakes gently in my arms after a long nap.
We are still not sleeping through the night and there are tantrums and sensory sensitivities that make some days long and hard, but I know these early years with my son are a gift. In between diaper changes and making snack plates, I whisper Thank you. Thank you for all of it. It is a simple prayer, and probably all I have the energy for in this season of life, but it helps me remember the privilege of motherhood. That my son was once just a dream in me. And now he’s here, my very own miracle. One that never gets old.
And yet the grief of my parents’ long and tragic battle with substance abuse, their untimely deaths, the sad reality that they never saw their daughter become a mother and will never meet my son is sometimes a jarring contrast to the deep joy of new parenthood. Holding both truths in my body feels strange and heavy and beautiful all at once.
Even in the most idyllic moments of parenthood, the grief of not having them here by my side is ever-present. As I make new Christmas traditions with my husband and son every year, there is no escaping the thick echoes of the past. I remember hanging handmade ornaments that smelled of cinnamon on our tree as a child, my father making eggnog and lighting the fire. My mother getting us ready for the church Christmas pageant and singing carols with us. The sound of her voice that sounds so like my own. My eyes well up with tears as I watch my toddler dance around the Christmas tree in only a diaper. I can never tell if I’m crying because of the perfect innocence of his childhood or because they’ll never hear his laugh or see the way he lights up when we put Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on the turntable.
Recently, a local children’s musician put on a concert at the community center, so I packed my squirmy toddler in the car with his Yoto player and some Goldfish crackers for a morning of socialization out in the wild. I was struck by the other parents in the room, the familiar mixture of exhaustion and good humor in their eyes. I’m often unconsciously searching the room for other mothers. Scanning for wedding rings, guessing ages. Imagining their stories, whether they have good husbands or doting parents. Wondering if they have support and the ever-elusive village. I wonder how any of us are surviving the sleeplessness and tantrums of the toddler years. But we are.
In between one of the songs, a little girl shouted, “I have two grandmothers!” We all laughed at the innocence and unbridled joy of such an announcement. The total lack of context that makes toddler brains so funny and sweet. In that moment, like so many others, I was both happy for her good fortune and struck by a familiar pang of grief. As I looked around, I noticed about half of the care-givers were in their 60s and 70s, which is common at weekday toddler events. In that moment, surrounded by hands-on, present grandparents, it was admittedly difficult not to feel the full weight of my loss.
But that day some mixture of good therapy and probably grace worked its strange magic in me. Looking out in the crowd of fawning grandparents, instead of seeing my parents’ absence, I saw what I might one day become should my son choose to have his own children. A seemingly simple shift, but simple can be powerful. This was a sign that I was turning a corner in my grieving. That I was slowly releasing the past and making space in myself for greater well-being, for the possibility of a brighter future.
Life has shown me that this is how the heart does its slow work of healing. In seemingly insignificant moments. One positive thought leading to the next. Pretty soon, I was awash in gratitude: What a privilege it is to have a child to want these things for. What a privilege it is to want to live a long and healthy life so that I can be there one day for him when he needs it most.
How nice is it that everyone seems super cool with my son, part human part wolf, running laps around the entire concert hall for the last twenty minutes.
I won’t say that my healing has been linear or that I always find a way to count my blessings instead of my losses. But I do know that my motherhood is inextricably and mysteriously intertwined with my grief. And that it is all a gift: the pain, the wrestling with loss, the colossal, edifying task of raising little humans.
My son, in all of his chaotic toddler glory, is my most important teacher that it is possible for great beauty to be born of our suffering. That all things can be worked for the good.
