I can no longer remember my last Mother’s Day with my Mom. That’s what caregiving, and time, can do to you—they blur all the cards and flowers and Cracker Barrel brunches in with the wheelchair-to-car transfers and the assisted-living smells of dry air and body fluids until one is indistinguishable from the other. But my body remembers. About a week before Mother’s Day, I find myself crying over sunny days and staring blankly out windows—it inevitably takes me a few days to make the connection.
This year, though, exhaustion and anger joined those waves of sadness. As I grumbled and groused, my stomach pressed up high into my chest, making it difficult to breathe and uncomfortable to sleep. It was half-way through the week before I realized the looming holiday—as well as the added impact of a pandemic on an already fragile emotional balance.
I wanted to blame the pandemic, or work, or my sons’ increasing independence for my oversized reaction. But then I found myself barely resisting the urge to privately chastise friends for making jokes about Melinda and Bill Gates’ divorce. I obsessively combed the Internet for information about their children only to see more snarky comments about money and the couple’s impact on the global economy—fair and newsworthy points, to be sure. And I doubt that any jokes about Melinda’s newfound freedom or Bill’s quirky marriage stipulations will inflict real damage on the overwhelmingly well-cushioned family. And yet. I found no glee in piling on.
With that mindset, I fell into commiserating with other divorced moms, some of whom, like me, had taken on involuntary primary caregiver status for children as our marriages crumbled. For us, divorce, while necessary, left deep wounds alongside lessons learned. It left us grappling with mothering, with providing for our children and with finding our place in a partner-free world. It left us resolving to buy our own Mother’s Day gifts every year—to take care of ourselves—until we could approach the holiday with more matter-of-factness than irony. So, even as we read stories about the unimaginable fortunes that Melinda, Bill and their children hold, we still felt a bond of sadness, of struggle and loss, with their broken family.
For me, part of it is projection, pure and simple. Their divorce is a reminder of the loss of my own marriage, which split irreparably during the years when I was my Mom’s primary caregiver. (My first Mother’s Day as a single mom was her last.) Their children remind me of the struggles my sons faced in the wake of our divorce and the lasting scars I can only hope one day will heal.
But another part of it is about sharing a human connection that transcends fame and fortune. It’s about the universality of the loss of separating what was meant to hold together. A loss embodied in new ways of celebrating holidays, new rules of engagement, new questions about the future and yes, new questions about caregiving. In the best of splits, the consequences of divorce are complicated. And most splits, no matter how they appear to the world, are far from the best. I would not wish their pain on a mortal enemy—or on the world’s wealthiest couple.
So my Mother’s Day wish is a simple one this year above all years and for reasons both personal and universal. Whatever else you give or receive, add just one more item to your Mother’s Day list: grace.
Thanks for joining me, and here are a few quotes that remind me of the importance, and the beauty, of grace:
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
—Anne LaMott
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
—Wendell Berry
I'm becoming more and more myself with time. I guess that's what grace is. The refinement of your soul through time.
—Jewel
For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.
—St. Augustine of Hippo