{ Motherless Daughters } uniting those experiencing motherloss

Our Stories

Anna's Story

At the end of my 6th grade year, my parents announced that my dad had gotten transferred and we were going to move. I was devastated. The last thing I wanted to do was leave my house and all of my friends. I wished for months and months that somehow my dad would change his mind. After that, I noticed that my parents were fighting a lot more than usual. I thought this was what parents did and I just tried as much as I could to keep my little brother from hearing it. In July of 1994 my parents announced that they were separating. My dad would move to Tennessee like scheduled and my brother and I would remain with my mom. We were assured that we would see my dad on weekends and that everything would be fine. I was 11 and I thought that the separation was mutual but it wasn’t. My mother did not want my dad to leave and she let him know that. Once he had moved, she was calling him at all hours of the night and trying to hurt him like she was hurting. She would retreat into her room and lock the door. She would not come out for hours. I was basically left to provide for myself and my little brother. She would go off on us for the littlest things saying that no one loved her and then sometimes she would not say anything to us for days. She had lost touch with all reality. I hated her for that.

Valentines Day weekend 1995, my dad came to pick us up to go to my grandmothers for the weekend. My mother said she was going to go to dinner with her mother that night so I didn’t worry about what she’d do to fill the time. My dad and my brother and I went to dinner and truthfully I don’t remember anything else about that evening. All I remember is the next morning, waking up in my grandmother’s house and feeling the weight of the air on my chest. I could feel instantly that something was wrong. My first thought, being the child that I was, was that my grandmother’s beloved dog had died. When I got up and walked into the living room and my minister was there, I thought this was an unusual ritual for the deaths of pets.

When my father looked at me, I knew it was something a lot more serious, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine what came next. He sat my brother and I down on my grandmothers bed and told us that he had gotten a feeling to go to our house in the middle of the night and check on my mom. When he got there, she was dead. She had killed herself with carbon monoxide poisoning in our garage. I was 12 and my brother was 9. I remember feeling like my chest might explode and the next weeks are a blur. I don’t recall everything that happened and I only recall the funeral slightly. I didn’t sit down, my aunt held me and my best friend in the back the entire time. She had them play ”Rock me on the water” by Jackson Browne and to this day I cry when I hear it. My life was turned upside down after her death. My brother and I lived with my grandmother until we had to move in with my father whom we hadn’t seen consistently for over a year. We moved to a new state and essentially tried to start our lives over. I went through my adolescence trying to hold the family together and trying to be stronger than I was. I could not talk to anyone about my mom (everyone blamed my dad for leaving her) and even the grief counselors I saw didn’t give me the type of help I was looking for. I wanted to know how I was supposed to go on from here. How was I supposed to live the rest of my life without her around? I was told I’d heal with time but no one said it was okay to just talk about her and cry about her anytime I wanted. I felt as though these feelings would go away and I would have to just let it go but even now 10 years later, it still holds on to me and I know now that it always will.

My father got remarried not even two years after her death and at the time I just wanted to be happy again so I didn’t protest, but over the years I realized that she was not ready to handle a new family with adolescents who had lost their mother to a huge tragedy. When I first read motherless daughters I wasn’t sure I qualified because I have a step-mother who has been in my life for 8 years but now I know that I will always be a motherless daughter. There will always be a place in my heart where her memory is and with every milestone in my life I will think of her. I am sometimes afraid that my mother only exists in my mind because I cannot talk about her with the people who knew her. It is too painful for them but it is painful for me not to know who she really was. I want to know if I am like her and that I remind them of her. She was important to me and I feel that someone has to keep her alive in spirit. I have conflicting feelings about it all because I miss her and I wonder what things would have been like if she were still alive but yet I know if I find out what she was like it may make me miss her even more. I just want it to be ok to talk about her. I want my dad to feel okay telling me I look like her or that I remind me of her. I don’t think this will ever be possible since his wife is threatened by the memory of a ghost. I thank you for letting me tell my story. It has been very healing for me.

© Anna Mueller

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