Stacie Sherman

This one has nothing to do with my kids and everything to do with me. Allow me this space for some self-pity. Writing it will be my therapy, and then I can return to our regularly scheduled programming.

My 31st Mother’s Day without my mother approaches. I should be an old pro by now. But it doesn’t work like that. Each year does not get progressively easier. All years are tough, some tougher than others.

The year I turned 42 was really difficult. That was the age my mom was when she died. But that year, and that post, helped me accept that I wasn’t going to die at 42, too. And that I had a lot more living to do.

After that, I healed a bit. The years that followed were easier. But now here we go, this is one of those wallowing years. I’m a big crank-ass this week.

I blame my stepfather.

Technically, I guess, Sammy stopped being my stepfather the day my mother died in 1987. But we didn’t see it that way. I stayed with him after her death, until he found love again and my world fell even further apart.

His departure from my life, maybe a year after my mom died, left me hurt and wounded and angry. And I was already pretty hurt and wounded and angry. But I was still a teenager, and lots of time healed most of those wounds he left behind.

Years went by, and we didn’t keep in touch. Then, through the power of Facebook, we reconnected. He had married the love he found after my mom. Her kids were his kids, as were the grandkids. I was happy for him. We learned about each other through photos and posts. He would message me every so often to tell me how proud he was of me, how proud she would have been. We texted on occasion. We talked about getting together. Something always came up for him.

This New Year’s Day, he texted me to wish me well, and to say he really wanted to get together. “Anytime, anywhere, Sammy,” I responded.

That was the last time I heard from him.

Sammy died in March, robbing me of the chance to see him again. Robbing me of the chance for my kids to meet their late grandma’s husband. Robbing me of yet another link to the mom I lost so long ago.

At his funeral, I hugged his wife, his son — my stepbrother — and his two stepdaughters. I reconnected with his brothers and their families — we are now all Facebook friends. I looked at the countless photos of him with his family, watched a video of him silly dancing at a wedding. And I cried.

His death hit me harder than I thought it would. I haven’t seen him for so long, after all. And yet, when he died, it was like a piece of my mom that was still living was now gone forever.

A great quote, from a wonderful book about mother loss. I have read it dozens of times over the years:

“When a mother dies too young, something inside her daughter always feels incomplete. There’s a missing piece she continues to look for, an emptiness she keeps trying to fill.” ― Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss

I have too few photos of my mom. Thankfully I have her wonderful two sisters and their husbands to tell me stories about her. When I run into people who knew her back way back when, my heart swells as they tell me their memories of her. I can never get enough. It makes me feel close to her, if just for a few moments.

About a year ago, I was at my aunt’s house, and family members were visiting from Canada, and my aunt found this box of photos. Inside were some of my mom I had never seen before — one of her at 16, another of her with her first love. I could not get enough.

When my mom was a little girl, she sang on the radio. I had the records of her performances. And for a gift, my husband had them burned onto CDs. Best. Gift. Ever. They are in my car. I listen to them every once in a while. I’m think I’ll do so on the way home from work today,

I have my own memories of her, but they are few and far between. And after all these years, I’m not certain what is a real memory or what is a memory of a story I was told.

This past week, as I carried a pot of boiling water from the stove to the sink to drain my daughter’s spaghetti, and I had a vivid memory of my mom doing the same thing so many years ago in the kitchen of our old house.

My memories have no rhyme or reason. I remember her and that damn pot of water. Her doing her Jazzercize tapes in the living room. Me lying in the back of my stepdad’s white Corvette as he drove somewhere, my mom in the passenger seat. Me talking to her over the phone while she was at work and I was at home as she tried to teach me how to use a tampon. I remember her crying because I had to help her after she got chemo. And I remember her coming up to my sleepaway camp for visiting day a few weeks before her death.

I was really hoping Sammy would help me remember more. That I would look at him, and remember them, and more of her. But now he’s gone, and so is that chance. So allow me to feel a little sadder than usual this Mother’s Day, as I think about what we had so many years ago, and what we never had. What we could have had, and what will never, ever be.