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Rosita Boland: I never bothered with Mother’s Day before. Now it stabs at me

The death of your mother gradually nibbles into the life you must continue afterwards

The loss of my mother is a loss like no other. Photograph: iStock

Rosita Boland's face
Rosita Boland
Thu Mar 10 2022 - 06:00

They started this week. Unsolicited emails to both work and private email addresses, suggesting all manner of things I could do for my mother for the upcoming Mother’s Day, which is later this month. They were all trying to sell something – flowers, hotel nights, spa treatments – presumably having sought me out by some kind of configured algorithm.

They made one crucial error. My mother is dead. She died last year. Whatever computer witchery sends out spam to email addresses was unaware of this one fact. I'm not in the market for Mother's Day gifts, unless it is something to place on her grave, and correct me if I'm wrong, but all the marketing I see for this particular occasion encourages spending on a gift for a recipient who is alive.

I didn’t know what I first felt when these emails began dropping into my inbox, as unwelcome as strangers trying to climb through my windows to ransack my house. Grief. More grief. The sensation of being caught unawares. Anger. Sadness. It was at base another reminder of loss. I have once now passed the anniversary of her death, and once now also passed the date of her birthday. Those are the very hard dates. Those dates will be forever in my head; the ones that made me cry when they arrived, and probably always will.

My sister reported to me, with a little embarrassment, of receiving kind messages from friends who still had their mothers

The irony is that Mother’s Day was never a thing to me. I took the view long ago that it was a prescriptive event, contrived to provoke guilt in offspring who ran the risk of forgetting to mark it, and expectation in those it was marketed at. In the same way I thoroughly dislike New Year’s Eve and how it purports to be a prescriptively landmark day when you do landmark things, I never engaged with Mother’s Day.

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I didn’t need a prescribed event to celebrate the existence of my beautiful mother. She was special every day of the year to me, and I frequently marked that fact in all sorts of ways on random dates. That was just my reaction to Mother’s Day. You might have a different take on it, but that was mine.

I didn’t even notice Mother’s Day coming and going last year, when my own mother was so recently gone – flown away from us. It was only a few weeks after she had vanished for ever and we were all still in some state of shock or grief or disbelief. My sister reported to me, with a little embarrassment, of receiving kind messages from friends who still had their mothers, and who were sympathising with her. My sister had taken the same tack on the day as I had. It had never been a big deal to us.

I knew I needed to compose myself before arriving in the restaurant to meet my friend

It’s different this year, for some reason. In the week before Christmas, my friend Oonagh invited me to drinks with her mother who was visiting from out of town, and her aunt, in her aunt’s Dublin home. I know my friend of old but it was my first time meeting both her mother and the aunt she had spoken of so often. That December evening was a delightful one of chat and warmth, where I was made to feel so welcome. There were plates of canapés, and chilled wine and a candlelit room. There was laughter and banter and stories. It was both moving and bitter-sweet to observe what a lovely, relaxed relationship there was between my friend and her mother.

The three of them were clearly all so fond of each other that I found myself feeling unexpectedly bereft on departure that evening. We were going on to dinner afterwards; the three of them to one restaurant together, and me to another, to meet a friend. I left them a little before I needed to, because I knew I needed to compose myself before arriving in the restaurant to meet my friend.

My own mother had been the most charming and hospitable of hostesses, completely engaged and interested in all the friends I had brought to visit her. I missed her so deeply in every step I took on my walk to the restaurant that night. It’s the kind of evening I would have phoned her about after leaving my host’s house and told her about in detail. She would have loved hearing about it.

It hurts because she is gone; but there is true solace in the knowledge that she knew how much I loved her

All this, I am realising slowly, is the way the loss of a mother gradually nibbles into the life you must continue afterwards, without her in it. In the beginning, it was mostly shock I felt. Death is the darkest and most mysterious of all the dark arts: the person who was there my whole life was suddenly gone for ever into the ether. I know this is in the warp and weft of the fabric of all our lives, and I was luckier than many to have had my mother, in her full health, for so long.

And yet, her loss is still a loss like no other. This year, the references to Mother’s Day unexpectedly stab at something in me every time I hear it mentioned. It hurts because she is gone; but there is true solace in the knowledge that she knew how much I loved her, despite my never marking Mother’s Day in the traditional way.