When a child dies a mother is reborn

When a child dies a mother is reborn

June 15, 2012

(Dedicated to Wilma Flores-Arroyo, Marisol Martinez Negrón, Aide Vazquez-Mont, Carmen Laura Báez, Bibi Mille Torres-Speeg)

This matter has been too close to me, hence I choose to understand it as a reality. No caring mother will ever be the same after she loses a child. No one shall ever expect her to be the way she used to be before the biggest loss a human being can experience. The different approaches and/or religions or sets of belief systems are simply a band aid to a humongous wound. They can pretend to be Ok, or act as though things are just moving along, but don’t you buy it for a second. In her solace, she will be yearning for that child as she did at that precise moment where she learned her child had passed. Age is irrelevant! A mother can see gray on her offspring’s hair, and to her, he or she will forever be her baby. They can grow up, they can leave the nest and regardless of whether they are near or far, nothing changes that feeling.

From the moment you feel or learn you are going to have a child, you change as a woman. The second you hold that little bundle of life in your arms, you experience the biggest and most overwhelming vibration in your entire being! A bond is formed, an unbreakable bond. The love of a mother for her child is the purest of all loves.

When a mother has to face the fact her child has been taken away by illness, accident or suicide, that woman experiences a void that nothing can replace. She may have other children, she may not, but it does not matter as far as it being a filler for that part of her that is no longer there for her to hold, hug or kiss. She too, dies. A new person has to emerge!

She may falter, get weak on the legs and low on strength, but just as a baby needs to flip over, crawl, give their first few stumbling steps before they can walk steadily, a mother has to do the same. She has to be re-born, for when her child left this plain, she too, left with him or her.

Don’t ever expect this woman to be the way she was, unless you want her to put up a show. Yes! A show!  She knows what she is presenting you with is not her true self. The pressures of family and friends with good intentions, can sometimes almost force these mothers to act in a way only they understand is NOT real. You may end up seeing what you want to see, but you are no longer getting her true essence.

Let her be! Let her go through the process of this re-birth. Embrace her, support her, encourage her! She may act different, she may even choose to do things she had not done before, but now she has come face to face with the fragility of life! She had to endure and survive not just her child’s, but her own demise.

Let her be! Eventually, not only may you be able to see her walk, if you give it time, you may be able to see her freely display the wings of her spirit, as she soars high as this new mother that has just been reborn!

Tai Pelli