Adjusting to motherhood without your mother as a touchstone, writes Joan Thatiah, is poignant, complex and emotionally challenging.
“My mother died suddenly on a Sunday morning in February 2014. She was 64. I was 25. She’d been unwell for a few short weeks and had seemed like she was getting better for a while there.
Being the only female left in the family, my brothers tasked me with organising prayer meetings. I got overwhelmed with the planning that first evening. And knowing that she would know what to do, I found myself dialling my mother’s number for help. That is who my mother was – my go-to person.
Her number was always the first I called whenever I was in a fix. Instead of a structured mother-daughter relationship, ours was a close friendship.
I talked to her freely about boys; her love for shopping rubbed off on me, and we spent countless Saturday afternoons poring through clothes and shoes.
BATTLING COLIC
She always said that no matter how miserable you felt or how broke you were, you needed to make an effort to look well put together, and so shopping was a priority.
I hit rock bottom after her funeral. I went for days where I cried all day long, and then weeks where I went about the day looking for her amongst the crowds of people in the streets, and nights where I lay in bed very quiet listening for her because I was convinced that she would visit.
I, however, felt the greatest impact of losing my mother when I had my son in 2018.
He came through a hurried emergency C-section on a Friday evening in July. We were allowed to go home three days later.
That is when the bouts of crying began. He would stretch his tiny body out and just cry for half an hour at a time. The paediatrician said it was colic.
There was no known cause or a known cure. We could only just control the symptoms. I tried everything, from changing my diet and rubbing his belly for hours to giving him some pain relief ointment – unsuccessfully.
I have never needed to have my mother like I did when I was a new mother almost two years ago. This second motherhood experience was a stark contrast to my first.
LONELY EXPERIENCE
I had my first son at 19 and I was single and broke. I had my second at 29, married and with a little more money to spend, but still I struggled more the second time around because this time, I was motherless.
To give credit where it’s due, I have an incredible mother-in-law and an involved husband. But when I experienced new motherhood again, I found myself grieving the loss of my mother all over again.
From the moment I found out that I was expecting, I wished I could call her with the good news.
Then when the morning sickness, the cravings, and the food aversions began I felt the gap she left even more.
Being a new mother – especially in a fast-paced city like Nairobi – can make one feel isolated. No longer having my mother just a phone call away made this experience even lonelier.
Pregnancy and then delivery spurred questions that only she would be able to answer. What was all this like for her?
Did she eat eggs while pregnant? Did her feet swell like mine? And then on days when I struggled with being a mother, I wondered whether, if she had been alive, she would have been able to help me out.
On afternoons when I was home alone and Roy, my husband, was away at work and I sat on the living room couch with my beautiful baby in my arms and just cried, I wondered whether my mother, too, had such conflicting feelings when she had me and my brothers.
MEMORABLE PARENTING
When my relationship with Roy evolved with our changing family unit, I wanted to ask her if this is what ‘normally’ happens.
And when the colic stopped and the good days and milestones started rolling in, I wished I could share these with her too.
When I met my stepdaughter, I wished my mother had lived long enough to meet her too, to see me live through this very complex experience that is a bonus.
Anyone who has lost a parent will tell you that it is a journey. That things never quite go back to how they were.
I still sometimes see her out in the streets when I look at other women with a gap in their front teeth or long jet black hair.
There are days that I feel able and strong and there are days that I miss her so much that I feel like a child without a home.
I am sad that my children will never have her for a Cucu. That my husband will never look at me and tell me that I am acting just like my mother because he didn’t get to meet her.
But I also know how incredibly lucky I am to have known my mother on such a deep level and for so long. I am grateful for that and this Mother’s Day, I celebrate her.
Mum, in my eyes, you were perfect.”