Tomorrow I'm returning to see my brother-in-law and his grandkids. It's been 5 months since my sister's death. It feels more like 2 or 3 months though. As hard as it is to visit, I need to visit - have to visit. It always seems like there is "something" I need to "do" since she died -- but I cannot figure out WHAT it is! I want the grandkids, ages 8 and 10, to know I'm here for them. And maybe for my sister's grown kids to feel closer to me. I know how bad it feels to have a mother die.
No matter how much a child "hates" their mom, or believes they do, death changes those feelings --FAST! Her daughter has a 2 yr old and will want to turn to her own mother for advice - but her mother won't be there. That's a big thing, and a girl never quite gets "over" this. There is always a hole there, no matter what a child says. As the song says: "Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone."
I first heard "Motherless Children" years after my mom's death, and immediately burst into tears, even though I hadn't been thinking of her. It caught me off-guard, and ripped right to that painful place I had walled off. I was in a crowd that night; emarrassed, I ran off to another room, and never heard the whole song until later and never knew who sang it that night's rendition. I wish I knew the artist; it was sung so viscerally, so powerfully. It said what I had no words for as an orphan at age 14.
"People say a sister will do.... When the mother is gone "
No one will "do", no one can take a mother's place.
"...there's so many things he (no one) just don't understand.."
No one can understand, until the person loses their own mother. Then you know the depth of the pain. Then you know how "alone" you feel.
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