It’s been 16 years since her death.  I am 31 years old and my heart still aches when I realize that I will never see her again, that she was not there for any of my graduations, that my partner will never meet her and truly understand the depth of my loss, that it will be friends that accompany me to find a wedding dress, that I won’t be able to call her in the middle of the night for advice or comfort when my own children are sick— I know first-hand that there is no such thing as “closure” or “acceptance”— and that instead,  grief is a lifelong journey because the absence of a mother’s love is always felt.  What was once whole, has been broken and no passage of time will erase what is missing.

That is not to say that I have not experienced great joy and love in my life since her death.  But there was a long time after her death when I was unsure that I still had the capacity to feel intense happiness or the possibility of carefree and deep laughter ever again.  What I know now to be true is that the intensity of grief changes over time- often so slow and imperceptible, that you can’t detect the difference in moments but only in looking back over time and realizing what has become possible and open, where once there was only pain and hopelessness.  It is this hope and the belief that one’s pain will change that can make the difference between getting out of bed, or staying there.

There is a book I read several times in my adolescence because of a passage that resonated so strongly with my experience of loss - at first the words provided me with that hope of what might come, and later with affirmation of what I lived to be true:

"Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it.  After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad.  Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with the sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories" - Lois Lowry, A Summer to Die

I remember this uncertainty and hopelessness being one of the hardest pieces of my grief.  Many people do not realize that it is not just the actual absence of a loved one that causes the intense pain of grief but also the fear and anxiety that comes from the learning that everything can change in a moment - that everything you know can be turned on its head and while your world fills with anguish and uncertainty, the lives of others around you continue as they did before. 

I wanted to stand up and scream at my friends, at strangers, at teachers - I wanted them to understand the injustice of what had happened and my loneliness that came from suddenly feeling so different from everyone around me.  At 15, it was a time when friends were becoming the most important people in my world, when most young people are inclined to measure who they are and where they stand by comparing themselves to their peers - and suddenly you feel that the rules of the game have totally changed and that in order to continue moving, you must find a way to fit in and have your pain be invisible.       

It is with this clear memory of intense loneliness and alienation that I came to the work I now do as Child and Youth program coordinator with Bereaved Families of Ontario-Toronto (BFO-Toronto).  

I had spent my adolescence and early adult years trying to be “fine”; to move forward and bury my grief in order to meet the expectations of those around me who were uncomfortable with my pain.  BFO-Toronto works from the premise that often the best person to connect and support a bereaved person, is another bereaved person - their mission is “Bereaved helping the bereaved learn to live with grief”, not move on, not get closure or acceptance but learn to live with grief.  I meet with children, youth and families and all those who work with them and I start with my story. 

I cannot know the intensity of another’s pain, but I know my own and I can speak of my mother, of who she was and how much she loved her children, of her struggle with alcoholism, of the guilt and then anger I felt after her death, of my struggle in school with prioritizing academics when I felt that everything was falling apart around me, of the loneliness I felt and still sometimes feel - even when surrounded by friends, of the comfort that came to me when I first met other motherless daughters through BFO-Toronto in the volunteer training, and how I came to see that I was not alone.  I learned that it was not weakness to feel and express the pain of my grief but rather a testament to the love I felt for my mother. 

The work I continue to do is a testament to that love and an effort to ensure that there are fewer young people who are forced to face their grief alone.

Sarah Henderson