by Julie Hartnett

Created on: November 23, 2008

December the 14th, 1989. I have never forgotten this date. What at first felt like every minute my mind would be consumed with grief and and guilt turned into hours then days and finally months. I was sixteen at the time, getting ready for school and running late as usual, I had asked my mother to make me a grilled cheese sandwich. She'd been sleeping a lot which was not unusual but this particular morning she complained that her arm was aching.

My mother was ill my entire life. There is not one time in my childhood when I can recall her not talking to the voices in her head, crying for no reason or trying to cut herself with whatever she could find that was sharp in the house. I never understood what psychizophrenic meant and no one ever explained it to me. I knew what manic-depression was though and that my mother had it. I longed for the mom who made cupcakes for the class, who would teach me to play piano, (an accomplished pianist herself) but my mother was consumed by a world of pain.

Being a teenager, I never spent much time at home. It was an escape from the reality of my home life. I became fiercely independent. I managed to make decent grades but definitely wasn't a candidate for the honour roll at school. My father worked all day every day, I was at school or out, and my sister worked. My mother was left alone much of the time. She listened to the radio, played her piano and smoked like a chimney. She had nothing else. Now, almost twenty years later, I cannot help but feeling I neglected the only mother I will ever have.

When I came home from school and opened the front door, I expected her to be sitting on the back porch, smoking and listening to the radio as usual. She was laying at my feet, the phone by her side off the hook. She had died of a massive heart-attack. The funeral came and went. I was never told how I should feel, I was never counselled or consoled not only because I had lost my mother but that I had been the one to find her body. The truth is I felt nothing but confusion. I knew I should be sad, but I was relieved. She was no longer in pain, she hadn't taken her life and I hoped at long last she was happy.

Years later I would read a book that would change my life and help me resolve my feelings with this loss. "Motherless Daughters" helped me to heal old wounds and ones I didn't even know I had. From my own and the experience of others, I have learned that it doesn't matter how old you are when a parent dies. For a woman, it's the journey's of life: planning your wedding, pregnancy, the birth of your first child. Moments you would call on the voice of wisdom to guide you through. The older we get, the more we have to face the inevitable loss of people we love. No matter what your relationship with your mother, she gave you life. Had my mother lived, I can only assume she would be institutionalized now. I have taught myself to play the piano and the older I get I having a striking resemblance to her. I have been left with a scar which I know will never go away but I live my life, remembering her: her talent, her beauty, her pain. I try to live each day reaching for what she could not achieve. This was her gift to me. It's my way of letting her know she's not forgotten.

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