Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman

stage. Regardless of our age, we yearn for a mother’s love throughout our lives, reaching for the security and comfort we believe only she can provide at times of illness, transition, or stress.
    So much has been written about the mother-daughter relationship, but comparatively so little about mother loss, that the natural impulse is to look at what exists when a mother is alive and then expect the inverse to be true if she’s gone. But it’s not that simple. To say that a mother helps her child develop self-esteem doesn’t necessarily mean that a child without a mother has no self-esteem, but instead that she must develop it in alternate ways. That’s why her age at the time of loss is important. It indicates which developmental tasks she’s likely to be working on, and which emotional and cognitive tools are available to help her cope with the stress of the immediate crisis, and guide her into the next stage of her life.

Early Childhood (Age Six and Younger)
    Tricia was three when her mother died after a two-year struggle with cancer, and what she can best recall now, at twenty-five, is the general feeling of confusion and abandonment she experienced at the time:
    I can remember about a month before my mother died. It was Christmas. She was able to come and sit in my dad’s chair in the
living room to watch us open our presents, and I remember this feeling that we had to be quiet. Just kind of an aura of calmness. And also that it was very, very unusual and special for her to be able to come and watch us. I remember she had her wig on, and not quite getting that. It’s funny, because there are pictures of me wearing her wig. I like that now. But I remember thinking then, “Isn’t that goofy? She’s wearing a wig. Why isn’t anyone laughing?”
    And then I remember when my dad came in to tell us she had died. My sister, who was five, and I were in bed. I remember not even understanding what that meant, but seeing my dad cry. My sister immediately cried, but I was kind of confused. A lot of my feelings from that time are confused and really fuzzy. I also remember the funeral a month later. My sister and I wore little red velvet dresses. I remember how the velvet felt against my skin. And I remember feeling lost. My father told me once that the hardest part of those next few months for him was that I would wake up in the night screaming for her. Screaming and screaming. But I don’t remember that.
    Tricia spent only three years with her mother, but it was enough time for her to feel a deep connection to her and to understand that an important part of her livelihood had been taken away. She’s been trying to recapture it ever since. Today, she still seeks out stories, photographs, and items that can tell her more about her mother’s life and the brief time they shared.
    To experience the loss of her mother, a child first must develop the ability to miss someone. This usually occurs between the ages of six months and one year. A girl who loses her mother before this time grows up with little sense of connection to her. Preverbal, sensual memories of very early care may be lodged deep within her psyche, but she retains no conscious memories of being held, talked to, or fed by any particular caregiver. Twenty-seven-year-old Lisa, who was four months old when her mother died, says with evident regret, “I don’t feel anything between us. I have pictures of her and my father when they first got married, and pictures of her by herself, and I look at them and wonder, What was she like? It’s like I’m
looking at someone who’s a stranger but not a stranger. I’m sure that just from being in her womb, I have some subconscious connection to my mother, so there has to be something there, but I don’t have anything I can point to and say, ‘This is my mother and this is how I knew her.’”
    Daughters whose mothers died when they were infants or toddlers grow up feeling a strong sense of absence rather than loss.