HomeHomeOctober 2000
Greetings from Minnesota! Autumn has definitely arrived here in the Twin Cities. We're witnessing spectacular fall colors, and adjusting to cooler temperatures as our corner of the world prepares to "go to sleep" for the next few months.
The ancient Greeks explained the change of seasons via the myth of Demeter, Goddess of Grain, and her daughter Persephone. Basically, the storyline goes like this: Hades, the God of the Underworld, fell in love with Persephone and kidnapped her. Demeter looked everywhere for her, and when she finally found her, she demanded that her daughter be set free. Unfortunately, Persephone was not aware of one of the rules of the Underworld. She wasn't supposed to eat anything during her ordeal. Unfortunately, she had eaten pomegranate seeds given to her by Hades, and was required to stay with him in the Underworld for several months of each year. Demeter, in her sorrow, determined that nothing would grow on the earth in the months while her daughter was away.
It's no accident that the Greeks used the story of a mother-daughter bond to explain this natural phenomenon. Our mothers are such strong influences in our lives--we learn about the nuances of our femininity from them, learn about what it means to be a woman in this world--what the rules and regulations are, according to the lessons they were taught from their mothers, their cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds and religious training. We use our mothers as a touchstone of sorts--we learn to navigate this world according to what they've taught us, and the lessons that we choose to either embrace or rebel against.
And it is particularly difficult when we lose them. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a reminder that many thousands of mothers and daughters (and sisters, grandmothers, cousins, and aunts) are lost each year, and many, thankfully, survive. It is a disease that will claim over 40,000 American women this year alone. It is hard to fathom 40,000+ lives lost, but not to me. Each woman's life was special and significant to those who knew and loved her. I should know. I lost my mother to breast cancer eight years ago during this season.
When we lose our parents, particularly our mothers, it is as though we are out of step in time with the rest of the world. Our grief keeps us separate, as though we are a dimension away from everyone else, weighed down by the sadness with which we are dealing. We have been asked to participate in a play in which there are no lines, with no knowledge of what comes next. We find out who are true friends really are, and usually that is one of the most shocking lessons of all, leaving us with gratitude for the ones we can count on while realizing that we may have to re-evaluate other friendships.
Following the actual death, we are permitted to grieve for a few days, and then we're expected to get on with our lives. Back to work and families and friends. Life is supposed to go forward from this point. Ironically, this is often when the real grieving begins. We feel raw and emotionally tender. People leave us alone, thinking they may cause us pain by mentioning our loved ones, not knowing that talking about them can sometimes be the most healing action of all. A few moments of having a true friend take the time to listen to an endearing story of our lost loved one may mean the world to us. Sometimes, our grief is exposed for others to see, and that leaves us very vulnerable--not a very comfortable feeling.
The English writer and Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis knew only too well the emotional roller coaster that is grief . Following the death of his beloved wife, Joy Gresham, he faced his anguish head on, and began to write it out. In his honest account, A Grief Observed (Harper Collins, New York, 1961), he said,
"An odd by-product of my loss is that I'm aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll say something about it or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don't. Some funk it together. R. has been avoiding me for a week. I like best the well brought-up young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can. Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers."There are so many aspects to grief that engulf us, particularly when dealing with the loss of our mothers. Many are obvious, and many are subtle--the anniversaries of our loved ones' deaths, the first time we celebrate our birthdays without them, knowing that their card or call will never arrive. We deal with the fear that we may die the same way, especially if we resemble our mothers physically or emotionally. We fear we may die at the same age as our mothers did. Along with the sadness, we may be angry that our mothers have left us, but this is an emotion that is difficult to acknowledge.
In 1994, nearly two years after my mother's death, I had the good fortune to meet and interview Hope Edelman, author of the groundbreaking book, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, 1994). When she was only seventeen, Ms. Edelman lost her mother to breast cancer. Years later, as she decided to write her book and was seeking women to interview, she was unprepared for the magnitude of the responses she received. She realized that she had hit a collective nerve among women. She writes:
"This cultural resistance to mother loss actually is a symptom of a much deeper psychological denial, which originates from the place in our psyches where mother represents comfort and security no matter what our age, and where the mother-child bond is so primal that we equate its severing with a child's emotional death. Because everyone carries into adulthood a child's fear of being left alone and unprovided for, the motherless child symbolizes a darker, less fortunate self. Her plight is everyone's nightmare, at once impossible to imagine and impossible to ignore. Yet to openly acknowledge her loss would mean to acknowledge the same potential for one's self.
Even as adults, few women with mothers want to think about mother loss; still fewer want to hear about it. We may have broken the silence surrounding sex, homosexuality, and menopause, but mother loss is still treated as taboo."When I read Hope Edelman's courageous book, I realized I was not alone, even though I had felt that way for years. My mother's battle with breast cancer began when I was barely 16. After nearly twenty years of being in a sort of remission, the cancer returned and my mother died when I was thirty-five. I had lived with the secret fear that one day this dreadful disease would return and finish off my mother, and sure enough, it did. Despite the brave face I tried to show the world in the first few months after my mother died, I still felt miserable deep down inside. Hope Edelman understood this feeling, too, when she wrote:
"A motherless woman is a walking paradox. At the same time that she emits qualities of personal strength, the loss of a mother frequently has damaged her self-esteem, eroded her self-confidence and evaporated her secure base. This is the fundamental insecurity that makes her scan a room full of women and conclude that she doesn't fit in. Other women have mothers, she thinks, but I only have myself. Never mind that she has a father or siblings or close friends or a spouse. In a crowd of other women, as a female, she feels alone. Fierce independence and self-sufficiency are her shield, thrust forward as her public display of competence-despite-loss and drawn close as her private protection against the crushing loneliness she'd otherwise feel."At the time her book was published, Ms. Edelman told me that at first, she was hoping for a full catharsis--that she would write about the subject of mother loss, and it would be out of her system. However, what she discovered instead in her interviews with women was that grieving for a mother doesn't ever really end and this is normal. The grief will continue to affect a woman throughout the course of her life, and that's okay. Grief is not linear, she assured me. We will cycle through the grief process many times during the course of our lives, particularly during transitional events that we go through without our mothers, such as high school or college graduations, weddings or childbirth. During these times, a motherless daughter may feel her grief all over again. There is also a tendency to "canonize" or "sanctify" a deceased mother, to remember only the good and not the bad parts of her. We must not speak ill of the dead. However, it is necessary to acknowledge our mothers as fully human (and flawed) in their totality before our mourning comes full circle.
The loss of a parent can trigger a crisis in our spiritual lives as well. What is the meaning in this experience, and why are our loved ones (and ourselves) allowed to suffer so? Where is the hand of God, if there is a God, in all of this?
Rabbi Harold Kushner understood this crisis when he wrote his bestseller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Avon Books, New York, 1981). He writes about the ways in which we choose to look at our situations:
"All the responses to tragedy which we have considered have at least one thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause of our suffering, and they try to understand why God would want us to suffer.
There may be another approach. Maybe God does not cause our suffering. Maybe it happens for some other reason than the will of God. The psalmist writes, "I lift mine eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, maker of Heaven and earth." (Psalm 121:1-2) He does not say, "My pain comes from the Lord," or "my tragedy comes from the Lord." He says "my help comes from the Lord."While we deal with spiritual considerations, we are also plagued by earthly ones. Another part of the experience of loss is dealing with our parent's material possessions. Jane Brooks, author of Mid-life Orphan: Facing Life's Changes Now that Your Parents are Gone (Berkeley Publishing Group, New York, 1999), examines this problem:
"When our last parent dies, one of the most difficult tasks we face is the division of family property. On the surface, this job is nothing more than a practical matter--'you get this, I get that.' In reality, though, the division of our parents' property is a rite of passage laden with potentially wrenching emotional and psychological issues. Watching our parents get sick and die depletes us emotionally. Planning the funeral is wrenching. But it is the experience of settling the estate that brings us face-to-face with our new status in the family album and it can take its toll as family dynamics shift. For many of us, the experience itself is bittersweet as we are suddenly handed what took our parents a lifetime to accumulate. Without parents to intervene, it falls on us to negotiate our way through this process with our siblings. How we handle this significant rite of passage can have an enduring effect on the next stage of our lives."So what hope is there for those of us faced with loss? Over time, we manage to cope, and find our way through grief. If we are lucky, we are also left with a greater sense of compassion, not only for ourselves, but also for others in this world.
Hope Edelman sees a positive outcome:
"We have all learned something from mother loss--lessons that perhaps no child or adolescent should have to learn, but lessons nonetheless. We have learned, if nothing else, how to take responsibility for ourselves. The next, and even more important step is to move into the place where we can take consistently good emotional care of ourselves, too--not by excluding others from our lives, but by learning how to trust, respect, and value the children we were and the women we are."Ms. Edelman also writes poignantly of her own loss, and loss in general:
"I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on beneath everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide."And in that spirit, I would like to dedicate this column to the memory of my mother, Helen Schultz.
We'll see you back here next month.
Teresa
The following are just a few of the many resources for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month:
National Mammography Day is October 20th.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation is one of the most influential organizations in America---and proof positive that one woman can make a significant difference in the lives of millions. Nancy Brinker started her foundation to honor the memory of her sister, who died of breast cancer. Among its many activities, this worthy foundation also sponsors the "Race for the Cure" held in many cities around the U.S. every year.
According to the Komen Foundation, the U.S.Postal Service has re-issued a breast cancer awareness stamp, which has raised $15 million for breast cancer research.
Lee is sponsoring National Denim Day on October 6th to support breast cancer research.
Avon corporation is sponsoring a breast cancer crusade, which includes 3-day walks in several American cities.
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation was founded by Evelyn Lauder, and has a mission of "addressing a crucial lack of funding for clinical and genetic research." Their goal is to "bring lifesaving discoveries from the laboratory to the bedside of every woman suffering from this disease." They can be reached at http://www.bcrfcure.org/contact.htm.
Y-Me National Breast Cancer Organization offers support and advocacy for patients, families and friends. Their toll-free number is 1-800-221-2141.
The National Breast Cancer Coalition has one mission: to eradicate breast cancer through action and advocacy. They also offer a Make Breast Cancer History Campaign which encourages voters to support the political candidates who support breast cancer research funding. They can be reached in Washington, DC, at (202) 296-7477.
The National Cancer Institute offers information on their Cancernet web page.
The American Cancer Society offers a breast cancer resource page.
San Francisco's Breast Cancer Fund has a mission to end breast cancer and to make sure the best medical care, support services and information are available to all women. Among their many activities are an "obsessed with breasts" ad campaign, and a touching breast cancer prayer flag tribute. They can be reached at 1-800-487-0492
Stanford University offers a list of resources on breast information.
The mission of Celebrating Life for African-American women is to "educate the African American community and women of color about the risk of breast cancer, to encourage advancements in the early detection and treatment, and to improve survival rates among these women."
Also, the American Women's Medical Association 85th Annual Meeting on Human Rights and Women's Health will be held from November 1-5, 2000.
Unfortunately, breast cancer is democratic and can affect men as well as women. The mission of the John W. Nick Foundation is "to help eradicate breast cancer in men and women through education, prevention, early detection, state of the art treatment, and to provide support groups, and services to cancer patients and their families." The organization honors the memory of Mr. Nick, who died of a disease he didn't know he could get: male breast cancer.Teresa
tcallies@hotmail.com
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