DAY 43: MOTHERLESS DAUGHTERS

     My mom died when I was ten, but she'd been sick with leukemia since I was seven years old.  I went to a grief counselor years later (they didn't tell surviving parents to take their kids to see a therapist or grief counselor in the eighties, or my dad ignored them if they did) who told me to buy a book titled Motherless Daughters--The Legacy of Loss by Hope Edelman.  I bought the book and read parts of it.  There's no way I could've read the entire book straight through--too hard.
     Anyway, that book sits on my bookshelf to this day.  If you've lost your mother you know what it feels like to break down out of nowhere, even if you were having the best day just because you miss your mom. Having this book makes me feel better because it makes having those feelings not feel so strange.
     A while ago, one of my ex-boyfriends saw the book on my shelf and made some nasty comment about how terrible that book is, what a crappy title it had and how it made him sick to look at it (sitting in my bookshelf).  I started him down incredulously.  And replied, "well, that's what you are when you lose your mother, you're a motherless daughter.  So what's your problem with that kind of accuracy?  She's writing a book for women who are exactly that.  And for the record, that's what I am.  I still get sad about it and know I always will."  I couldn't believe I was having that conversation let alone dating someone who would get so miffed by a book title.  What kind of person dared say something like that to a girl who'd lost her mother?  Bizarre.
     I'm so glad to say that relationship didn't work out.  It's been years now and he married someone else.  Thank goodness.  Sometimes you know things won't work out and it takes you longer to get there than it should have.  That was me with that guy.  We dated a long time.  Too long in fact.  So long that I thought I had to make it work even though I knew it never would.  When I think back on that guy now I think about how insensitive he was and how was just a plain old jerk.  A jerk is a a jerk.  Even if you don't have your momma around to tell you or get you to realize it.