THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9409300059
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
MOTHER'S DAY was the worst.
Susan Cintron of Virginia Beach would watch jealously as her friends bought flowery, sentimental cards for their mothers, wrapped presents, planned special dinners.
Her own mother had died suddenly of a heart attack when Cintron was 13, and every year on that spring day in May, the scab was again ripped off the partially healed wound, and the grief and memories released.
Until she had her own daughter, Katie, 20 months ago.
Now, by mothering her daughter, Cintron is trying to move beyond the life-affecting loss of her own mother. But she is discovering the sad truth of mother loss: a daughter never stops mourning her mother.
We like to believe, says writer Hope Edelman in her best-selling book ``Motherless Daughters,'' that mothers are immortal. Mothers don't die young. Mothers never leave the children they love.
Tell that to Maumi J. Cannell-Harris, 36, of Virginia Beach, whose mother died of congenital heart failure when she was 5. Whisper it quietly to Libby O'Brien, 38, of Norfolk, who at age 13 found her mother dead of a barbiturate overdose. Convince Nancy Smith, 55, of Virginia Beach, who has barely any memories of the mother she lost at age 6 when her parents divorced.
Or Madeline Nevala, 73, of Virginia Beach, who still mourns the mother who died when she was 6.
``I always believe that I was cheated out of knowing what it is to have a mother; to sit on a mother's lap, to tell her your troubles, the happy things that happened. I feel I was cheated,'' says Nevala, bitter even now, 67 years after her mother died of pneumonia.
``Even as adults, few women with mothers want to think about mother loss; still fewer want to hear about,'' says Edelman in her book. ``We may have broken the silence surrounding sex, homosexuality and menopause, but mother loss is still treated as a taboo.''
She should know. Edelman was 17 when her mother died of breast cancer. She was 24 and a successful journalist when she found herself immobilized one day while crossing a busy street, one thought flashing through her mind: I want my mother.
The feelings that incident unleashed, and the stories she heard after writing two articles about mother loss, led to the book. It is, she says, the kind of book she was searching for but couldn't find when her mother died.
Across the country, it's hit a nerve. Published on Mother's Day, it sold out its first printing of 50,000 copies within weeks and is now in its fifth printing. And it's given birth to motherless daughter support groups, where women gather to discuss their grief, their loss, anger and guilt.
Maumi Cannell-Harris was never supposed to be born. When her mother was four months pregnant, she underwent open heart surgery. No fetus had ever survived during such a surgery, the surgeons told Harris' parents, who prepared to lose their unborn child. But after the surgery, when no heartbeat could be detected and the doctor was prepping her for an abortion, Harris' mother felt her baby move.
The little girl who was Maumi had her mother for five years. And even now, 31 years since her mother died of congenital heart failure, she still has strong memories.
She remembers her tiny Japanese mother lifting her onto the kitchen counter to reach for things in the cupboard.
Futiley trying to teach her to say ``butterfly'' in Japanese.
She remembers waving goodbye to the airplane taking her mother to Bethesda Naval Medical Center for yet another heart surgery. And remembers the next morning hearing her brother crying in the hall.
``Your mother is gone,'' her father told her. ``She's never coming back.''
For four years, Harris thought her mother was on an extended trip. No one ever mentioned the word death to her, and she hadn't gone to the cemetery for the burial. ``I did not know she was dead,'' Harris said. ``I thought she had gone; she had flown away.''
When she was about 9, her father took her the cemetery. And she lost it. Just lost it.
In front of her was the double headstone - one side completed with her mother's name, date of birth and date of death. The other side empty - awaiting her father's death.
``So in that moment, I lost not only my mother, but I was looking at losing my father.''
She threw herself on the grave and cried the tears that had been bottled up for years.
Now, at age 36, a combination of events - the publication of the book, this interview with a reporter and the movie, ``The Joy Luck Club,'' which detailed four Chinese-American women's relationships with their mothers, has reopened that grief, and Harris finds herself mourning again.
It's common, says Edelman that women never stop mourning their mothers.
``A daughter who loses a mother does pass through stages of denial, anger, confusion and reorientation, but these responses repeat and circle back on themselves as each new developmental task reawakens her need for the parent,'' she says in her book.
Libby O'Brien felt it keenly when she went shopping for her wedding gown. All the other young brides were in the fitting room with their mothers, where the clerks flitted and fussed around them. O'Brien, there alone, was put in a back dressing room with a stack of dresses and a directive to ``call me when you're ready.''
Ten years later, the incident still rankles.
``I just know if I'd been there with my mother, they would have paid more attention to me,'' she says, as her 2-year-old daughter, Mairin, watches a video in their Norfolk living room.
That she even has a daughter amazes O'Brien. She didn't want children, was afraid to have a child, especially a daughter.
``I was afraid I wouldn't be a good mother. That I wasn't focused enough,'' she says, her hands nervously twisting her daughter's worn blanket.
Her pregnancy came as a happy surprise.
But like many women who have lost their mothers - whether through death, desertion or divorce - the birth of her daughter caused another cycle of mourning.
O'Brien experienced severe postpartum depression, in part, she says, because she missed the support a mother provides during that time.
Even today, 25 years since her mother died, the pain is still strong enough to bring her to tears.
``I think about what my daughter is missing from not knowing my mother; and what my mother has missed in not meeting my husband, my siblings' spouses. We all have wonderful families and my mother is missing that. I don't want to miss any of that, and I don't want Mairin to think she's not able to have someone there for her.''
She's reading Edelman's book and is puzzled by the anger the author speaks of so frequently. That's something she's never felt, even though her mother died in one of the most devastating ways a mother can die - suicide.
``It's sudden and usually unexpected; it often involves violence; and even daughters who understand the part mental illness and depression often play still experience suicide as a clear-cut and real rejection,'' says Edelman.
But for O'Brien, the overwhelming feeling is guilt. Guilt that she didn't wake her mother earlier, before the pills had time to work. Guilt that she fought so often with her younger sister, which made her mother unhappy.
For years, she thought she had dealt with her mother's death. Then, about six years ago, her husband's commanding officer committed suicide, and the experience catapulted O'Brien back to that dark bedroom where she found her mother.
Her husband was instrumental in helping her through that time, she says, as was the therapy she received.
Her biggest lesson: ``There are things I can't control. That I just have to leave alone or walk away from.''
Throughout her book, Edelman stresses that mother loss occurs not just from death - but also from desertion or even emotional distancing.
In Nancy Smith's case, it was divorce.
Her mother had an affair, so after the divorce her father got full custody. Smith saw her mother a few times after that, always on the sly, but those visits soon stopped.
``It was terrible,'' says Smith, a public relations professional. ``That's why I'm doing the story, to make it clear that children should never have that happen to them.''
Like O'Brien, Smith experienced a severe depression after the birth of her daughter, now 32. ``I felt like I wasn't going to be able to handle being a parent successfully; not at the time.''
Today, 21 years since her mother's death and at least 44 years since she last saw her, Smith is just realizing that she's never truly mourned the loss of her mother.
Reading Edelman's book has helped her see that, like many of the women in the book, she idealized her mother. ``I haven't dealt with the fact that she wasn't so perfect, that she went off and left me and didn't get back in touch again.''
Eight months ago she wrote to her aunt, asking for details about her mother.
The aunt never wrote back, and Smith hasn't been able to bring herself to call.
``Something inside is keeping me from being too curious. I'm not sure if it's anger I'm dealing with or what.'' ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff color photos
ABOVE: ``Mother loss is still treated as a taboo'' subject says
author Hope Edelman.
INSET: Maumi J. Cannell-Harris' parents, Hitomi and Edward Cannell.
Harris was age 5 when her mother died.
Maumi Cannell-Harris
Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Libby O'Brien of Norfolk, with her 2-year-old daughter Mairin, said
she feared motherhood because ``I was afraid I wouldn't be a good
mother. That I wasn't focused enough.'' O'Brien's mother died when
she was age 13.
by CNB