Jess’ Story

My mother died a few weeks before the 20 week scan of my third pregnancy.

As the sonographer waved her lubricated wand across my swollen belly I held back rampant nausea. Not simply because of the cocktail of hormones that were flooding my system, but because looking at the screen I saw a hollow skeletal face, which reminded my so acutely of my own mother’s face on her deathbed, that I thought I might choke.

I turned up to my scan alone, telling anyone who offered to join me that it was my third baby and I was in the swing of things. I didn’t need to inconvenience anyone.

But as I looked at the skull of my child, the high cheekbones, and the vacant, skinless void of my eventual daughter I knew I’d made a mistake in coming.

I should never have come alone.

You see, my mother had been terminally ill for years. I didn’t put a lot of conscious thought into it, but I certainly acted like I was OK.

Ok enough to do things like go to scans alone. Ok enough to do things like organize funerals. Ok enough to do things like smile when people offered me comfort.

But I was not ok.

My mum was singularly the most important human in my life and she left me.

Shortly before her passing she had confided in me that she worried for my father and for my brother when she died, but she held no concern for me.

And yet, here I was. Growing a child inside me as armour to fight the grief I knew would come like gunfire.

I had planned my pregnancy during her illness. Begged my husband for a child we could not afford, so long after her siblings that she seems an afterthought. In his infinite kindness he agreed, knowing I might not make it without something to dote on, to drown the volume of my grief.

My mother was intelligent. She was beautiful. She was tiny and elf-like and elegant and so unlike me it seemed like madness that I could come from her bones.

She knew theology. She was reflective. She could see into you, the hard parts of you, and pour love into those places while you squirmed with discomfort but ultimately were healed.

I write this from a place of a wound. Not a scar. She died nearly two years ago and I have not opened myself up to grief yet because I’ve been busy mothering my three children. Distracted, conveniently, by their noise. Their life.

But the grief creeps in the shadows. It’s lurking, waiting for me to lay down my guard. Stalking me like the wolf in the cave that my mother saw on her deathbed.

I haven’t invited my grief in yet, because I still don’t feel strong enough to. So I pretend I can cope without her wisdom. I act like I can handle the emptiness that eats like a tumour at my soul. I ignore the trauma of her dying days, the suffering and moaning and evident discomfort that has haunted me all this time.

Instead I cry gentle tears when I see the butterflies that we always said would be a sign of her. I sing her songs to my children as lullabies and talk of her to them so they don’t forget. I choose to believe my youngest daughter looks like my mother, and my friends all humour me and agree.

I do not invite the tsunami of grief in. Not yet. I enjoy the gentle tears and the singing and the choosing to see what I want to see.

But it is coming for me... the violent grief. It’s on its way.

My mother was a marvel. And, when it comes, grieving her will be marvelous. It will be all consuming and liberating and I know I’ll learn and grow through the process.

But I can’t get there. Not yet. Not now.

She was loved beyond words. Beyond reasons. Beyond time.

I’ll get there at some point but for now I like the feeling that she’s still somewhere nearby. Like maybe COVID has just kept her away from me like it has so many people from their loved ones.

There’s a protection in denial. And I’m good with that. It’s helping me get through scans and births, and corona virus, and everything else that’s happened since she left.