I Am Still A Mother

I am still a mother. Even though I have lost all 3 of my children, 1 to terminal illness and my other 2 children to miscarriage.

I am still a mother. Though I don’t have my children here with me — faded pictures and fading memories keep them just a little closer to me. And though my children’s photo albums are small — even nonexistent — and will never be added to, I am so thankful for even the smallest of photo albums for I know some mothers don’t have one at all.

I am still a mother. And I still have all the instincts and love and compassion and all the other innate qualities that make up the intricately and beautifully woven fabric of motherhood. In my case they remain, continually unspent — crushingly so at times — an excess of love, motion and emotion, with nowhere to go.

I am still a mother. Though I will never sit in the bleachers cheering on my child at a sports event, attend parent/teacher meetings, watch them graduate — get married and have children — I still sometimes long and grieve those rights of passage and everyday life. Those fleeting moments other mothers take for granted that will all too soon be as dust in the wind

I was a good mother, lovingly, diligently caring for my terminally ill son, watching for each breath — continually praying, hoping — sleeping with him in my bed, my hand resting on his chest. His heart was mine — I would have more than willingly kept his beating by allowing mine to cease. Because that’s how good mothers love.

I will never be a grandmother. Never. But I would have been one heck of one. And I continue to grieve that as not even a possibility for me. But that does not make me begrudge the loving stories my friends tell me of their grandchildren. I would never wish to diminish the love they have for their grandchildren just because my life has taken a very different path than theirs.

I am still a mother. And I am so very thankful for that. I would go through all the heartache and pain and devastation of losing my beloved children again, because knowing them — no matter how briefly — has been worth every shed tear — every jagged edged shard of my ever-broken heart.

For, after all, my lost children are not truly lost. They will always be ever present in my mind and heart and soul where all the children who leave too soon forever live. Until I see them again. In Heaven.

Jackie Deems copyright 2024

My latest book, Surviving The Storm, is now available from Amazon.