On Loving and Losing My Mother …
“If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.”
~ Booker T. Washington
Today is March 19, 2021. It would have been my mother Lena Bell’s 78th birthday had she not died suddenly of respiratory failure while in rehab at a nursing home for a broken back. She died alone in a nursing home — all the while she was begging me every day to get her out of there. I couldn’t rescue her, but she was dying inside long before her body gave out. The guilt of this follows me every day. I can’t escape it. The guilt crushes my heart every time I breathe, and I can’t think of her life without thinking of the fact that she died alone.
I haven’t cried much since her death. When you lose your mother, the person that bore you, a small part of you dies as well, never to be recovered. Tears no longer mean what they used to mean, and they hide behind your eyes during the times they should show themselves the most. Moments of great pain, sadness, broken heartedness, death, destruction, hardship, even happiness can’t seem to make me openly weep like I did the day my mother died. Those were the last of my tears. March 23, 2016, four days after her birthday, is the day that stole my soul.
My grief was so pervasive that it conjured up the need to numb myself once again with Xanax like I had numbed myself for a number of years due to a major heartbreak. I knew I couldn’t walk down that path again because it took all my strength to pull myself out of that hole. Instead of partaking in Benzo’s, I sought out Grief Counseling because I was sinking deeper and deeper into a darkness that blocked out the light in the world and I knew I needed help badly.
My mother, Lena Bell Adams was sugar … nothing but sweetness. She loved many and was loved by all. Born in California and raised between there and Mississippi, she had a southern charm and a valley girl swagger that was confusing in a hilarious way. Her heart was pure. Gold. Her intentions were always honorable. She helped strangers as lovingly as she took care of her family. Her life wasn’t easy. Her sister was killed in a car accident when she was very young, her mother died when she was sixteen and her father remarried a woman that created a wedge between them. These were such heart-wrenching losses and I believe that she never got over her sorrow. She tried to hide that sorrow deep within, but I saw her pain clearly on the surface.
Funny and usually laughing, I don’t think she’d ever been truly happy at a core level. Surrounded by her family and friends who loved her dearly, her eyes and spirit reflected an emptiness that was palpable. There was a longing for something more within her that I’d felt within my bones my entire life, so I clung to her at a very young age, never ceasing to hold on tight. The longing I recognized within her early on became the fire in my belly, the pep in my step and the tear in my eye that made me seek out true happiness — not for me, but for her.
My mother was a Pisces. So am I. My mother was shaped like an apple. So am I. My mother had a large round head. So do I. My mother was naturally shy, an introverted extrovert. So am I. My mother had a charm she didn’t recognize. So do I. My mother lived for instant gratification. So do I. My mother was in search of her father’s love until the day he died. So did I. My mother had big dreams and plans that never came to fruition. So do I. My mother put on a front of happiness for others but was more sad, lonely, and depressed than she was happy. So am I. I am my mother’s daughter. Her twin in many ways. The only reason I bother to look in a mirror is because my mother stares back at me and I get a chance to see her again. Seeing her in that mirror reminds me to be mindful of where I steer my life, so I don’t end up with the same regrets she died with. They say a child is supposed to be better than their parents. Well, I don’t want to be better than my mother. I want to be better than I was yesterday every day. No one is perfect, but my mother was perfect in my eyes.
The Grief Counselor saved my life. Literally. I’m not a talker; I’m a writer. I journal all my feelings. I even write my feelings down in letter form if I’m trying to convey anything of importance to someone. It took some time for her to get me to open up, but when I did the flood gates of emotion came flowing off my tongue. Session after session, she peeled back my layers of love, pain, sorrow, and guilt in a way that increasingly eased my anxiety and began to put my mother’s death into a perspective I could comprehend.
The one day I laid across my bed after work, exhausted, trying to just rest my body before my third trip to the nursing home that day, is the day she died alone. Talk about guilt! I’d always believed that if I had gone to the nursing home straight from work that I would’ve been there when she was having problems breathing and I could’ve helped her or found someone to help her, and she would still be with me today. The what-ifs are endless. Relentless.
The counselor tried to get me to understand that I wasn’t supposed to go to the nursing home at that time on that particular day. That I wasn’t there for a reason … I wasn’t supposed to watch my mother die. That vision wasn’t supposed to be in my mind for the rest of my life. I couldn’t save her, and she wasn’t supposed to die in my arms as I would have liked. She explained that at all times, things happen when and how they’re supposed to. She said God designed life that way and began quoting bible verses and using religious analogies. I’m not a religious person, I consider myself spiritual, so bringing God into the equation wasn’t going to make me change my mind or alter my thought process. I was the reason my mother died! Period.
I left that counseling session with a rolling my neck, snapping my fingers attitude. I was enraged. In my mind she thought I was dumb enough to fall for the “That’s the way God wanted it to be” okey doke. If there was a compassionate and loving God then the most innocent woman who didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and lived her life for others more than for herself, wouldn’t have been taken from me! I was certainly never going back to that bible thumping therapist ever again! Nope … not me.
I fell into a deep, silent depression once I stopped going to Grief Therapy. I barely spoke to my family, friends, and male suitors. I stopped answering the phone. I stopped writing. I called out of work almost on a daily basis. I’d stopped showering regularly and my bed became my safe haven. I didn’t want to eat, drink or be merry. I simply wanted to be left alone by everyone, but my Ma and I couldn’t touch or talk to her anymore. Xanax was calling my name yet again.
The counselor had been leaving me messages regularly, but I ignored them all. I previously thought she was a miracle worker, but I had no use for her now that she wasn’t dropping science on me, rather bible verses. I needed facts, not scripture. I needed coping mechanisms, not faith. About the second week that I didn’t show up for my twice weekly appointments I received a letter in the mail from her office. I let it lay in the large pile of mail that had accumulated over the few weeks prior and one day something in my body compelled me to open it. I’d thought it was a fee for being a no-call, no-show but it was just a business card, which confused me. I knew her information and was trying really hard to forget it. On a whim I turned over the card and it read as follows:
weeping and aching
i longed to honor your passing.
i longed to honor your life.
searching everywhere
i found only one answer.
honor myself.
become all that I am.
and carry you inside that beauty.
In that moment, I felt those words deep in my soul. Reciting them over and over again began to lift the cloud of despair that followed me everywhere. It made me feel like becoming the best I can be was the only way to honor my mother and her legacy. It was the only way to stay connected to her and somehow find, and share with her, my evolution through the happiness and success that I am sure I will continue to manifest. I will share this happiness with her, and I hope that the angel that she is, will feel it from above and know that it is for her.
After reading this passage, I did not answer Xanax’s call. I no longer wanted to be numb. Instead, I called the therapist and scheduled an appointment. I went the very next day and cried like my life had ended — and in a way it had. I was coming to terms with my new reality and I simply didn’t want to accept it, but I knew I had to, or I would become more of a shell of myself than I already had become. She tapped into parts of me that had died along with my mother and I could feel a little more life being breathed into me with each subsequent session.
In honor of my mother, I began a Lena Bell Adams Memorial Gifting program. Since 2018, each year on her birthday, I choose a random friend or acquaintance who I believe embodies Ma’s spirit and I gift them an item that I believe will assist them in attaining their goals, bring sunshine to their life or otherwise change their lives for the better in the way in which they need it. This has been my secret way of honoring my Ma. I haven’t shared this Gifting Program with anyone until this moment. Doing this gives me a sense of purpose and keeps my Ma’s goodness multiplying in the universe.
Nothing and no one can replace my Ma. My love for her is immeasurable. I weep behind my eyes every day since her passing, but I press on trying to make my dreams come true more for her than for me. She was too busy caring for everyone else to take time out for herself to live the life of her dreams. I vow to create the life I want, no matter how difficult it is, so that I can be the living memorial of Lena Bell’s life. She deserves that and today I realize that I do as well.
Rest in heavenly bliss Lena Bell Jones Adams. You are loved abundantly and greatly missed. Heaven has blessed me with you as the Angel on my shoulder.
