4 tcf.org.uk COMPASSION | FEATURE - PERSPECTIVE The timespan of our Spring issue covers two days with added significance for parents: it is Mother’s Day on 30 March and Father’s Day on 15 June. We will also be celebrating Easter in April. The symbolism of Easter is important to many, and I love that it heralds spring, too. While ordinary days may carry the quiet hum of loss, Mother's Day, Father's Day and celebratory holidays of any sort can amplify absence, making the heartache more acute. But these special days, though painful, also provide a space to recognise the enduring love and connection you hold. In these moments, know that you may feel lonely, but as we all know through being connected with the Compassionate Friends, you are not alone. Please keep your contributions coming for our magazine! Yours in compassion, Andrea I don’t feel much like celebrating Mother’s Day this year. My 15-year-old daughter died 51 days ago, after being plagued by a rare, relentless form of cancer for five years. I’m not sure what the celebration is supposed to look like when I failed at my main task as a mother: Seeing my child safely to adulthood. I realize that attributing the death of my child to my own failure is irrational. I understand that guilt and blame won’t bring her back, that we tried valiantly to cure her with treatments that ranged from a liver transplant to chemotherapy to radiation. I know cancer kills children every day. But she wasn’t a statistic. She was my child, and I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save her. I know other mothers who’ve lost children, and they’ve tried to prepare me for how unbearable this Hallmark holiday can be, how your very identity as a mother is shaken and upended when your child dies. We’re a dismal, heartbroken club of kindred spirits. We share the pain of empty, quiet rooms that hold the remnants of our children’s lives — keepsakes that remain long after our dear ones have gone. How can I celebrate this day? How can I celebrate myself? Every day I open the door to my daughter’s room, sit on her tidy bed and wonder how any of this is real. How is it possible that all I have left is her collection of albums, stones and crystals, and her closet full of untouched clothes? How long will they serve as proof that she was here on this Earth, that she was real? As the days go by, my daughter’s proximity to me fades, the reality of her absence becomes more concrete. This would be okay if it were because she had graduated high school, gone off to college and started her life, but that’s not what happened. She stopped existing at 15. She stopped. I don’t know how to celebrate Mother’s Day without the consolation prize given all mothers — that our babies are gone, but we have laughing toddlers in exchange, that our toddlers are gone, but we have curious, bright-eyed preschoolers in their place, that the messy, carefree days of preschool meld into the primary years, when interests and personalities emerge and blossom, giving us teenagers who are Perspective by Jacqueline Dooley (Article from the archives of Washington Post about Mother’s Day)
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