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I was six years old when my mother died; she was in her early 30s. She had been in and out of the hospital for months fighting cancer. Still, I was shocked the day my father told me, his voice constrained, that she wouldn’t be coming home any more.
“Where is she?’’ I wailed, tears streaming down my face.
“Mommy died; she went to heaven,’’ he said calmly, as he too, was holding back tears. Eighty years ago young children were not helped to understand the meaning of death. “But don’t worry,’’ he said. “Our very nice housekeeper, Minna, will care for you.’’
Very little was said, almost nothing was explained, in part because my dad was dealing with more losses than just that of my mom. A year before I was born, my parents and older sister had escaped the Holocaust, and he was still grieving the loss of numerous friends and relatives murdered by Nazis. “You still have me,’’ he would say, trying to soothe me. And I did have him for decades more, as he died at the age of 90.
Looking back, I guess I just stuffed down my feelings — other kids had it worse. But now, years later, I realize how that isn’t so. “When we are not allowed to grieve,’’ explained Rabbi Angela Buchdahl in a recent synagogue sermon, “Our loss becomes a trauma.’’
I often thought, during those early years, that my mommy left me because I hadn’t cleaned up my toys or finished my spinach.
As time went on, I learned to take care of many of my own needs; independence was my middle name. While adults praised me for being self-reliant, I yearned for the love and affection I saw between my friends and their mothers. How lonely I felt when Barbara’s mother would give her hugs.
I think back to how angry and jealous I became when my girlfriends had mothers to take them shopping for pretty clothes, or to teach them about bras and periods. Yes, Minna, the housekeeper, was helpful, but not the same as having those mommy-and-daughter talks I witnessed among my friends.
Time passed. I went to college, had an interesting career as a journalist and married a nurturing man with whom I had three daughters. But something, I felt, was amiss. When my eldest daughter turned six, the age I was when my mother died, I was in constant fear that something bad could happen to her.
I became super vigilant. A sneeze could mean pneumonia; an earache would warrant an emergency room visit. It was exhausting, but I didn’t have a clue that my behavior was triggered by something from my unresolved painful childhood.
“The mother-child bond is so primal that we equate its severing with a child’s emotional death, ’’ wrote Hope Edelman in her New York Times bestselling book Motherless Daughters, The Legacy of Loss. I came to learn that when a young child is not given comfort or understanding after the death of a loved one anxiety may not appear until years later.
So when I retired and had time on my hands, I decided to learn why I had those reoccurring, confusing fears and excessive feelings of jealousy (over my children having a mother!) that crippled me so often. Enter Dr. David Abrams, a Palm Beach County psychologist in my home state of Florida.
Dr. Abrams explained how the brain stores a lifetime of memories, perhaps not the incident per se, but definitely the painful feelings related to a childhood trauma. It stays with us forever. Slowly, I learned to differentiate whether my reaction to something painful was based on the traumatic event from my childhood or whether it was to a difficult issue I was dealing with in the here and now. As I began to understand what I was feeling, I learned to respond in more healthy ways. For now, I am a work in progress.
For example, one evening, about a month ago, while a friend and I were watching TV in my house, I fell sound asleep. She woke me to let me know that she was leaving, and in a hushed tone, she said to make sure I locked the door behind her.
Suddenly, I felt my blood pressure rising; my heart pounding. It took a few minutes to realize that the words “I’m leaving’’ triggered the pain of my childhood and the feeling of abandonment. And it took a few more minutes to realize my reaction was due to unresolved trauma.
During a recent luncheon date with my daughter, who is now 60, I explained what I had learned in my sessions with Dr. Abrams. I guess it was a way to apologize. She listened carefully, then reached for my hand and said, “It’s okay, mom. None of us is a perfect parent.’’ I was so grateful for her understanding.
Today, even 80 years later, I remember the kind nurse who took care of my mother in her last months. The nurse would play the piano to ease my mother’s pain. I still cannot listen to Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune without tears.
Did you suffer the loss of a parent or any other childhood trauma? How did you cope? Let us know in the comments below.
Kate Wong
Follow Article Topics: Relationships
