Will Lunch With A Woman Over 60 Ever Be Just a Lunch?

I am blessed with friends of all ages. I have a few friends who are in their 60's which makes them the age my mom would have been, had she lived past 41. Now and then we meet for lunch and I try to be completely present for these moments. I talk about my kids and work; things I struggle with. They listen with open hearts and no judgement. (From what I hear, that is not the way an actual mother would listen, but this I will never know).

They say things like "You are an extraordinary mom," and "your children are who they are because of the mother you have been to them."

I wonder if they can hear the open thud in my heart at the end of these lunches, or if they see the ache I feel in knowing they will return to their real daughters and I will be left behind.

I want to learn to leave these lunches with joy for having the privilege to have women in my life who are my moms age. I want to leave these lunches with gratitude and a sense of blessing.

For now, it takes my breath away that after 23 years of not having my mom, I can leave these lunches missing her as if she left me yesterday.

Perhaps it is because she left a 16 year old 23 years ago. Each time I experience I life cycle event in my life, the loss feels new because in that moment the loss is new.

I remember when my kids were 7 months old and for the first time they started to play together. They were on the living room floor in our apartment in Albany, NY. They were smiling and laughing and started to notice that the "other" was doing the same. Elon found a beach ball and pushed it over to Eliana and she screeched in delight as she pushed it over to Elon. I had my first real moment of joy with my babies (after a long bout of post-partum depression) and so I picked up the phone....to call my mom.

She had been gone 13 years and I went to call her. In that moment it was a new loss. I lost the mom who would have taken complete pride in knowing her grandchildren "found" each other and were playing. I lost the mom who would have noticed I was happy for the first time in seven months. 

In that moment I lost her again.

So when I leave a lunch with my dear friend who is my mother's age, I quietly lose her again as I wonder what lunch would be like with my mom as I approach the age that her life came to an end.

That is why, in the field I am in, we no longer talk about stages of grief. If I were to go through grief like a flight of stairs,  I would have been done long ago. 

 

We grieve as we live, and neither is neat, clean and orderly. 

The life long task, is to own self discovery and notice that awareness (even when painful) actually makes life richer, textured and complex in positive ways.

The challenge is to pay attention to the moments of learning and to continue to go out with my friends over 60, because they have so much to teach me.

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