Holding On
Posted on 05 January 2012
It was five months after my mother’s death. I was 20 years old, had just finished my sophomore year of college, and was struggling. I decided to attend a grief group at a local hospital in the hopes that it would provide me with some sort of solace or help.
What I experienced, instead, was a disaster. I sympathized with the many other attendees, but let’s just say there was no connection, no common ground. It wasn’t my first grief group or counseling experience, but it was the first one I found torturous. I suffered through the entire session because I felt too paralyzed to leave. But then, on my way out, the counselor pulled me aside. She led me to the bookshelf, handed me a copy of Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman, and said, “I think this might help you.”
I went straight home and read the entire thing. Then I went out and bought my own copy, along with Edelman’s Letters from Motherless Daughters. At the time, I needed those books. I needed them because in late December 2000, I went from having a mom — a mom who had cancer, yes, but a mom I still expected to be around for awhile — to not, in just under 48 hours. My brother and I took her to the emergency room for “back problems” (denial is an amazing force) on Friday night, and by Sunday evening she was gone. I returned to college only two weeks later, where I tried to put on a happy face, drank way way too much, and somehow still managed to pull a 4.0 that semester, most likely out of desperation and terror. When the semester ended I headed back to my hometown, where I drove around alone at night, feeling entirely disconnected from everything I had once known. And then a counselor gave me a book and I finally had something to hold on to.
I’m thinking of Edelman’s books now because a Q&A with our very own Averil brought them to the front of my memory. Thanks to that Q&A, I made a note to read Edelman’s new memoir, The Possibility of Everything. While I might be beyond needing to read about grief, those motherless daughters books brought me to Edelman’s writing, and now I want to see what she’s been up to more recently.
In other words, I’m over at Averil’s place today, answering her excellent questions about Living Arrangements that I swear aren’t as somber as this post.
As far as Edelman’s books go, they still sit on my bookshelf today. If I cracked one open again, I’d find the passages I’d highlighted, the ones that meant the most to me back then. But I’d rather leave those books closed on the shelf for now, to let a little more time pass between who I was then and who I am now.
Photo: evoo73
5 responses to Holding On
Leave a Response
Living Arrangements
Click the cover to buy Living Arrangements
Follow
Thank you so much for the book, Laura, and for your generous responses to my questions. Living Arrangements touched me deeply, and it’s truly been a pleasure to explore its genesis with you.
Your mother would be very proud, my friend.
Laura,
I love the awareness that in opening those old highlighted books you’ll be comfronting the you, you were then with the you, you are now. Time and time and time. My best friend lost her dad when she was the same age and her view is that it doesn’t get easier, she just gets better at keeping it out of the forefront, and the further away it is, the more she can remember the funny, and the great joy. I hope that is true for you as well.
Your mother raised an amazing woman.
Love.
I can’t even tell you how much I enjoyed reading this Laura. There’s a line in Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking: “‘Motherless children have a real hard time.” You’ve captured that here so beautifully. I see a memoir in your future….
Fabulous post, Laura, as usual. And particularly intriguing to me since my current novel has much to do with the loss of a mother.
Your mother would be so proud.
We’re proud.
But most important, I hope you’re proud.
awww laura
thank you for sharing something so deeply personal. i just read averil’s interview and immediately wondered (for the first time since getting living arrangements) what memories/sorrows publishing this book may have brought up for you with your mother.
i’ve never done grief counseling groups, but i can’t sit through any addiction groups to save my life (literally). any time i’ve tried, i’ve only wanted to do more of whatever i was there to avoid. (not that my addiction is on any level with your loss…)
i can see you in that car driving around. my heart breaks for your 20 year old self. i’m glad she grew into you.