Analyzing the differences between what it means to not have a mother and to have a mother that is “lost.”
In her memoir “Blood Orange Night,” Melissa Bond details lots of difficult things. Her experience being a mother, having a child with down syndrome, her sleepless, numbing nights, and her eventual addiction to benzodiazepines. It is a worthwhile read, an exposure to the sibling of the opioid epidemic that often goes unnoticed.
In all the trials Bond faces, she takes time to detail her childhood and her relationship with her mother — fraught and marred by her mother’s drug addiction and episodes of raging anger.
“I sewed words around me like a quilt,” Bond writes. “I survived being broken and mother-lost in this way.”
Mother-lost. Mother. Lost. Motherlost.
For a while now, I have struggled to define Motherless, even when it is a word I wear proudly, tattooed across my chest. I have struggled only because there are people I have met, spoken to, know, who identify with the word even when it doesn’t apply to them.
I have friends who have horrible relationships with their mothers, who can’t stand to talk to them, who hope to never talk to them again. I know people whose mothers have abandoned them, have disappeared into the night or done the unthinkable and cast their child out.
When speaking to these people about my motherlessness, they create an illusory relation. They think that because their mothers are not in their life or because they have no relationship, they too are motherless.
This is not true.
I do not mean to discount anyone’s feelings, and for a long time I have allowed these people to claim the motherless title even though it put bile in my stomach, because it was easier for them.
And then, I read Bond’s book and this specific word, rolled my eyes over it again and again. I said it out loud. And I realized, yes, there is a difference.
If you are Motherless, your mother is not on this planet. She has passed and the mother you once had, whether you had a relationship or not, is gone. You once had a mother and now don’t. You are Motherless.
But if you have a mother you do not see or speak to, who you don’t feel loved by, or love, if you have a mother who has exited your life, who has failed to fulfill her motherly duties, then you have a mother and now she is lost. You are Motherlost.
I find this distinction important, only because the two experiences are so vastly different and are written with entirely different outcomes. A Motherless person feels that loss one way, a Motherlost person will feel it another. Motherless is melancholy and tear stricken. Motherlost is heartbreaking and infuriating. We are still daughters and sons.
And the simple fact is; those who are Motherlost could someday see their mother again. That door is still open, if only cracked. But those who are Motherless will never see their mother again, and this is a pain the other may not yet understand.
When Mother’s Day rolls around, I often feel unsettled. I have friends who dread the holiday as well, only because they don’t want to be forced to sit at a dinner table with their mother, who has hurt them, and pretend all is well. They don’t want to be dressed up for formality.
I say I hate Mother’s Day and they agree. But it is not the same.
Only because they are Motherlost, whether that will change someday or not. I am Motherless, and this will never change.
Leave a Reply