My Mother Never Told Me She Loved Me And I Didn’t Need to Hear It
I didn’t need to hear it, and I will never hear it. She left this world nearly eighteen years ago.
I am doing a talk about my memoir and dug through childhood pictures of my mother and me to post a few. When I look through these pictures, there is always a tinge of sadness. I only have two with her and only one with her touching me. She was a tough love mother. She wasn’t very affectionate. She was the type that would point and say, “You better get out there and do it for yourself.” She showed her love in heaping plates of food and flowery overwrought greeting cards she sent mail even when we lived in the same house.
Somehow, I missed that I would post her picture on Mother’s Day. My phone lit up with Mother’s Day greetings from my friends and family. I sent one of my friends the picture I was posting, the one of my mother and I cutting a cake. He messaged me back, “Aww, look how she is watching over you.” I realized something.
I looked at the other picture, and it was the same, her watching over me on the swings. I understood something new about our relationship. That’s what she did; she was always watching over me.
When I was a child, she hovered, nagged, and cajoled. When I was an adult, she called me multiple times a day, wanting to know where I was going, what I was eating, and what I was doing. When she was alive, those calls grew annoying, but now I cherish the memory. I will never look at these childhood pictures the same way.
I thought I had completely waded through my feelings about my mother. She’s been gone for so long. I have written a memoir about our relationship. I have written a poetic Elegy about her. Sometimes It wasn’t easy to be her daughter. And sometimes I felt that she didn’t love me enough. To understand that she was always watching over me is a small but profound revelation. I don’t need pictures of her cuddling me. I understand she was always there and still is.
This is really gorgeous and profound. "I understood something new about our relationship. That’s what she did; she was always watching over me."
What a treasure to find all that time later.
"To understand that she was always watching over me is a small but profound revelation." The one role of a parent is akin to being a guardian angel. At least, that is my belief as a parent myself. My father was very much the same way as your mother, up until he divorced my mom. Being raised primarily by my mother, I never really came to understand my father till later in life. Though I suppose I learned my empathy from her.
My father's got quite the dark mind, both in humor and ethically, and doesn't know how to display affection very well. Understanding how he was raised and the life he had made me realize why that was. But, despite the insecurity, every time I've visited him we've always said good-bye with a hug, an "I love you too, pops," and him reminding me to be good and me saying "I'll try my best" as a bit sly retort.
So I guess what I'm trying to illiterate here is that parents have their own distinct ways of displaying affection, just as you've described here with your mom's story, and that's why I find it so consoling to read.