"Sometimes I feel like a motherless child..."
    This post is going to be a hard one to write, so bear with my stumbling. I'll attempt to edit it into something coherent, but doing so may not be a measure of its applicability to anyone else.
    Within hours of my mother's death I was confronted, repeatedly, with the issue of feeling like an orphan when one's last surviving parent dies. The first confrontation was direct; someone involved in the exit of my mother's body from our home expressed sympathy for my loss by patting me on the forearm and repeating the phrase which is the title of this post, a famous line of a an enigmatic spiritual. From then on I was alert to references to the feeling, direct or implied, everywhere. I suspect I've heard of this feeling previously, probably many times, but have never paused in notice of it because, well, for 57+ years of my life at least one of my parents was alive, so it wasn't something I felt the need to ponder.
    Finally, on December 18, MFASRF wrote me. One of his parents, with whom he is in close touch, survives. He mentioned that he'd recently heard, in a discussion among several people, that no matter how old one is, when one's last surviving parent dies one feels like an orphan. He said that everyone involved in the discussion strongly agreed. He asked me if that's how I felt. Because he and I are in the habit of asking each other such questions and responding as honestly and completely as we are able at any particular time, which sometimes means reopening the discussion weeks, months or years later when our feelings change, I considered it an obligation to think and write back to him about what I had so far experienced in this regard and why I thought I was feeling the way I did. It was an emotional and intellectual workout to examine and express my response. I don't think what I wrote to him was particularly cogent, but it was my best first effort. I considered, at the time, writing about it here but decided against it because, although my experience, so far (I'm leaving myself open to the possibility that in the months and years ahead my experience may change), differs from what appears to be the mainstream experience, the mainstream experience is so ubiquitous that I didn't want to imply that any experience of missing one's parents is "wrong", or "right", or "well-considered", or "thoughtless". One's experience of one's parents' deaths is what it is, exists within the context of each person's eccentric relationship with each of their parents as well as her/his overall experience of being parented. No need, I felt, to intrude upon the grief of others, in this respect.
    Then, yesterday afternoon, I got a call from the Hospice Bereavement Counselor. She was extremely patient with me...I think I must have chewed the poor woman's ear off, talking to her, in response to her questions and comments, about my grief process. I was grateful for the opportunity, too. Although I've "talked", a lot, here, and with my sisters, about my experience, and my sisters' experiences, of grief, talking into the ear of a sympathetic, trained human carries with it a sense of relief that seems impossible to find from any other source. She allowed me to pile word after phrase after sentence, one upon another, about a variety of aspects of my life with my mother, my sense of my mother's life, the days and hours leading to my mother's death, my reactions since her death...then, in the middle of it, she posited that (this is not a direct quote because I don't remember her exact words) I must feel, now, like an orphan.
    This stopped me in my rambler's tracks. After some thoughtful seconds I responded that it was interesting to me that she would mention this because it was an assumption that had come up several times, in a variety of forms, since my mother's death, and, through a friend, I had been allowed the chance to mull this over. No, I had to admit, I don't feel like an orphan. Although I didn't say the following specifically and cleanly (the words didn't quite tumble out in a succinct, organized form, I'm afraid), I talked around the fact that because both my parents functioned well as parents as long as they sensed I needed them to do this, then stepped back and took on other roles in my life when they received signals from me that I was ready to relate to them on other levels, I, instead, had the sense that their job of parenting me was completed long before their deaths. Certainly, I said, I missed my mother and, by implication, my father, as singular, influential people in my life. I missed the reciprocal ability to exchange affection for, information about, interest in and influence of each of our processes of evolution as human beings. I missed the experience of us all being alive at the same time. But, I didn't feel like an orphan.
    I think some of what I feel has to do with my interpretation of the word "orphan". I've always thought of orphans as people who, for one or more of a variety of circumstances have lost their primary resource for being parented while they still urgently need it. I think there is probably rarely a time when we can no longer use the steering and acceptance of someone in a parental role (a role which, later in our lives, is often called "mentor"; for an expanded view of times in our life when taking advantage of a mentor is, likely, no longer possible, see this essay). I also think there comes a time when many of us are able to successfully fly solo because we've incorporated the parenting of our mothers and fathers as a type of autopilot (in addition to them being foremost members of our super ego) which never leaves us, even if the people who were our parents have left us.
    I wonder, too, if a lot of adult children use the term "orphaned", when their parents have both died long after their parental role has diminished or stopped, in order to express the overwhelming sense of loss that occurs when one is left without someone who seems so indigenous to one's existence as to be analogous to the color of the sky; the rising and setting of the sun; the existence of flora and fauna; the need for hydration and nourishment and human camaraderie. The fundamental character of the world changes when one loses both parents, I think, or a sibling or other person who has been "here" as long as, and in the case of parents, before, one can remember. You have to reorient yourself, as surely as an orphan has to reorient him or herself to having to rely primarily on his or herself long before he or she has enough experience to do this with any degree of confidence in their competence. However, when an adult who has long been fending for oneself in a variety of ways, relying on one's own judgment with assurance, expecting to endure the knocks of misfortune and bad judgment as well as enjoy the rewards of luck and good judgment, loses both parents, I don't think that adult loses a parent in the way an orphan does; at least this is what my most recent experience in the wake of my mother's death tells me. I think what I've lost is an emotional lock on the sense of the world...what I'm experiencing is the bewilderment of having to redefine that sensibility. Intellectually we know that, at least at this time in this society, it is more likely that parents predecease their children. Emotionally, though, we have no idea what this feels like, what it will mean to us, until we are left without our parents, or someone else who has been preeminent in defining the unquestioned nature of the world for us.
    Late last night MPS called. I decided to ask her, without preamble, "Do you feel like an orphan, now?"
    She hesitated for thought before she answered. No, she admitted, she didn't. She continued by elaborating on the detail of the loss she feels. She, essentially, mentioned the same aspects of loss about which I've written above. This probably isn't a surprise, since, despite our differences, we were raised by the same parents, thus share many perspectives.
    After she and I talked, though, I thought back to how my father reacted to his mother's death. He was emotionally leveled by it; so much so that he fervently believed that he would not outlive the age at which his mother died and, curiously, died at the same age his mother was when she died. His personal history of being parented is also quite a bit different than mine. His father was mostly absent from the home for a variety of nefarious reasons so my father, at a very young age, became the breadwinner and considered himself the equal, in his born-into family's household, of his mother; in some ways, from what he and some of his relatives have described, he considered himself his mother's and sibling's supporter, above and beyond his mother's ability to support (in more than monetary ways) the family. When my father was about 16, his father returned, fully expecting to resume his "rightful" place as head of the household. My father, dismantled by his father's reappearance, issued an ultimatum to his mother, "If he stays, I go." His mother said, as it has been told to me by more than one of my father's relatives, "Good-bye, son. Good luck." Whereupon, my father set about his adult life long before he had received what our current society, and society at that time, has tended to agree upon as adequate parenting. I'm sure, when his mother died, he felt like an orphan.
    As well, I think, we have to remember that throughout history the age at which one is considered a full-fledged adult, capable of embarking upon an adult life, including parenting, used to be soon after puberty began. In addition, it was not so long ago that children were considered mini-adults within the family, contributing members to the household economy, capable of handling "adult" affairs, including managing their own survival, sometimes going through a period of apprenticeship or indentured servitude to help them learn whatever else was necessary for them to be considered a full fledged adult by society, long before they achieved physical adult stature. This is not to say that the loss of one's parents did not have the same emotional effect "back then" that it does now, regardless of when, or how, one loses one's parents. It's possible, in fact, that during times when few people survive into old age, when it is common that parents survive children, feeling orphaned is so common as to be unremarkable.
    So, you know, what difference does it make whether someone considers oneself orphaned by their parents' deaths versus feeling the loss of their parents as people but not feeling as though they have lost, well, someone who wields a parental role in one's life? What does it matter whether someone delineates, for oneself, the eccentric, exact dimensions of the loss of their parents?
    In the case of others, I'm not sure. In my case, the difference is that, in the wake of my mother's death I do not feel any more or less adrift in the world than I did before she died. I don't feel lost, as though I am in need of direction that I can find from no other source besides my parents.
    It has occurred to me that one of the reasons I don't feel the sense of loss of a rudder is that, for several of the years past I functioned as my mother's rudder. The more I think about this, though, the less I am inclined to believe that I was her rudder. I think, more likely, since she had a clear idea of who she was and how she wished to live her life long before she asked me to be her companion, I was not a built in source of direction for her, as parents to children function, but, rather, the wind in her sails...an outside source of momentum with or against which she could work to continue her life as she saw fit. I was also a crew member who protected her from attack from without, and, sometimes, from within, as long as this was possible; the maintenance hand who helped keep her clean of barnacles and spiffy of appearance, thus assuring her a smooth, handsome cut through the water; an admirer and second in command who extolled her virtues with an eye to allowing her to continue her voyage where and how she wished and was most capable. In the end, though, it is the nature of ships, as it is of every other material thing, to defy our reliance on them and disintegrate into the sea upon which they sail. Their essence, though, lives on in legend. Their crew, if not lost with the ship, transfers to another. Hmmm...could it be, we are all ships and crew...sometimes being steered, sometimes steering, sometimes captains of a fleet which includes our own ship as well as those of others, sometimes intent upon a solitary Joshua Slocum-like journey? When we lose a ship, we miss that ship but continue to sail until we, ourselves, lose our seaworthiness and join the ranks of legend.
    I don't know how it feels to others. I would never attempt to argue anyone away from a sense of being orphaned once both one's parents have died. But it doesn't feel like being orphaned, to me.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 05:35   email  this post