I am suddenly assailed by all kinds of doubts and regrets.
Chief of these is my inability to put into words my feelings about the loss of my mother. As I've mentioned before, since I didn't see my beloved Dad (he was also an extremely important presence in the life of my DD) interred, to me he is still around....but Mom was different - I saw her suffer - a lot of it because of her stubbornness - but suffer she did, and badly...
I was comforted by these words:
A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.
A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That’s what makes her a mother: you cannot start the story.
When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it.
Grief requires acquainting yourself with the world again and again; each “first” causes a break that must be reset… And so you always feel suspense, a queer dread—you never know what occasion will break the loss freshly open.
It’s not a question of getting over it or healing. No; it’s a question of learning to live with this transformation. For the loss is transformative.....it's like a tree growing around an obstruction.
Taken from 'In The Long Goodbye' - Meghan O'Rourke's magnificent memoir of grieving her mother's death. In this book, she crafts a masterwork of remembrance and reflection.