How a Mother’s Death Makes You Confront Your Own Mortality |
A mother’s death is life-altering. Whether close, indifferent, or estranged, the relationship between a mother and child is weighty, monumental, and closely tied to self-image. When our mother dies, it’s a rite of passage that awakens our own mortality and reminds us that we are now the end of the line—that we have gone from rooted to the world by the physical existence of the person we call mother to the one responsible for shaping our own legacy and heritage.
For people who are not close to their mothers, or whose relationships are conflictual, death may bring relief and a chance to start anew. For others, a mother’s passing becomes the marker of before and after. Before, when the universe felt smaller, protected, and secure, and after: a time of stretching out, vulnerability, and the shakiness of standing on your own two feet, without assistance, and carving your own path forward.
Mothers are the starting point of our existence, the delicate but indissoluble filament that ties us to this Earth. When they die, and we continue........