{ Motherless Daughters } uniting those experiencing motherloss

Our Stories

Wendy's Story

My mother died when I was three and it's such a luxury to be able to write about it. I remember her with her head hurting leaning against the corner of the living room and then lying in bed. I wasn't frightened. The ambulance came for her and they carried her out on a stretcher. My younger brother and I, he was two, waited behind the door. I waited for her to come back all the rest of my childhood. I used to think I could hear her calling my name in the garden. The pain in my heart was like an intense, burning hole and it got worse as I grew and waited for her to come back. I think part of me got to realise more and more that she was dead but the other part of me always waited and looked out for her even though I didn't really know what she looked like. Her clothes were in a wardrobe for a while and I used to sit there to smell her smell until the clothes went. I remember a flowery dress and feeling safe. My younger brother and I went to play in a graveyard about half a mile down the road and we found her name on a gravestone with our house's name on. We didn't know her name. When I was five my father who was grief struck I think, found someone to help look after us. She liked my brother but hated me. She used to wash my vagina like she was cleaning a drain. She used to take the bedclothes off me at night. When I washed up standing on a chair she wouldn't let me put any cold water in and my hands hurt. She gave me a row if I cried. If I was ill she gave me a row. She used to give me a row for looking sad. My brother took to her like a mother figure and he seems to view me in the same light as she does and talk to me as if I cause a problem in the family. When I found her grave I used to go back there and want to dig down to keep her company. I didn't like thinking about her there by herself. I think that gave me suicidal tendencies. I struggled to survive when I was a child, the pain in my heart made me want to die. I've always loved my father dearly. He worked away a lot and found us a handful. He'd been right through the second world war and couldn't express his grief for my mother. We've started talking about her a bit now. He's 82 and I'm almost 46. I didn't do anything in school but I've got two degrees and travelled a lot. I've got a lovely daughter of eleven which I've found very painful and have phoned the Samaritans a lot to help me, and they have. I realised what I had lost when I had my daughter. My older brother is a half brother and we talk a very little bit about her. It's too painful for us. I've always found relationships very difficult and am terrified of abandonment. When my daughter was my age when my mother died I became ill and have remained ill. I sometimes think there's a connection as I was terrified that my daughter would have to do without me as I have no close family that could take care of her if I died. Thank you for this site and to Hope for her book. It's given us all hope! My heart goes out to Sidney the motherless son and to all us motherless daughters and our mother's themselves. I read somewhere, New Internationalist magazine I think, that if your mother dies your chances of survival drop astronomically but if your father dies it doesn't drop half as much. Mother's nurture I suppose.

Š Wendy

Ť back