Thankful for the Pain of a Missing Mother on My Birthday

You always think of your mama on your birthday.

It's an assertion I never considered fully until this year. Without conscience thought, I assert that most everyone, if not everyone, thinks about their beginnings, particularly their mother, on their birthday. It makes sense, right?

On the day you were born, your mind flies through favorite birthdays, bad memories surrounding birthdays, and ultimately, to the woman who made that birthday possible. You rehash your birth story, wonder about the details. There is truly only one person on the planet who knows those intimate secrets and feelings about the day you were born -- your mother.

Sure, your dad may have been there, along with other family and friends, but he doesn't know the ins and outs and pains and thrills like the woman who pushed you to that first breath. There's something sacred and intimate about the connection mother and child create when the work and fruit of labor climax.

It's something you take for granted until she's gone. At least, that's my story.

With the onset of motherhood and its evolution through the years, I become increasingly more interested in the details of my own birth . . . how my mother handled the newborn years . . . how she recovered from birth . . . about her memories after she birthed her last baby. I didn't think to ask these questions, and I don't remember many of the stories she told because I was young and dumb and didn't understand what she was trying to tell me.

So today on the day of my birth, a tinge of loneliness fills my heart. The other main player in this day 36 years ago isn't here on this earth. I can't ask my questions. No one else knows the answers. It's a layer of grief you don't imagine until it's here.

Yet in one breath I inhale sorrow, today I also exhale gratitude. Thankful for the pain of a missing mother on my birthday -- the unanswered questions, the longing for her, the desire for a different story. Why? Because it makes me a better mother to my two darling girls.

No doubt the birthdays to come will bring more and more thoughts about their birthmothers. While my story and their stories are not identical -- and I will not pretend they are -- there is camaraderie in loss. When birthdays bear heaps of beauty and fun along with sadness and loneliness, I will, at least in some way, know what they mean, what they feel. I can empathize with the unanswered questions, the longing for her, the desire for a different story.

The three of us have all lost mothers. I am thankful God gave us each other.