A Love Letter to You

A Love Letter to You: Motherhood, Mourning, and the Glare of Silenced Absence

Irvin Yalom’s Staring into the Sun is a poignant exploration of mortality, a manuscript that does not shy away from the raw and unfiltered truth of our impermanence. It offers not only reflection but a painful and necessary confrontation with the inevitability of death, dying and loss.

As Mother's Day approached, I found myself contemplating the narratives we weave around celebration – or perhaps the narratives we are woven into – and willfully remain in. Sometimes at the cost of discarding narratives that can aid our restoration and healing?

The marketing, the messaging, the ways in which the world promotes idealised forms of mothering, idealised forms of celebration, and idealised forms of memorialisation. But what of the harsher glare of indifference, exclusion and erasure? The unrelenting, indifferent glare that does not concern itself with loss, mourning, or melancholia?

As we observe Mother’s Day, can we allow ourselves to sit with the duality of love and loss, and the ways in which it is intertwined and inseparable?

I think of mothers left behind without children to mother, and children left behind without mothering, both young and old. The young child, who will one day look back and confess that their mothers occupied only a fleeting glimpse of their childhood. The young child who grows old and carries the guilt of surpassing their mother’s age with every anniversary of life. The older child, already grappling with their own mortality. The child who cares for their mother until they return to a place of fragility and an infantile state of dependency. Children who could not be mothered, and children who mothered.

I think of the sting of every Mother’s Day social media post, every advertised Mother’s Day menu, itinerary or gift. The persecutory glare for mothers who have only met their children in fantasy or phantasy. Mothers who have had to say goodbye too soon. Mothers who have mourned and grieved their children whom they have never held. Mothers who have buried those they once carried. Little fingers and little toes only yearned for but never touched. Little fingers that never had a chance to make a mess, or little toes that never had the chance to run.

There is no wish to shame celebration… There is no wish to shame laughter, fun and special spoils. But, perhaps, as we bathe in the curated glow of Mother’s Day, we might also honour those standing in the shadow of the sun —the ones staring into the sun, the ones hiding from its glare – in fear of bearing its weight.

Can we prepare the table for joy and presence, whilst not looking away from the silenced absences, grief and longing? I believe there is space at the table for all of us, we don’t know which seat we will occupy next.