Catherine Connors is a mother, writer and recovering academic who traded the lecture hall for the playroom and discovered that university students and preschoolers have much the same attention span. She still dips her toes into academic waters by writing the occasional scholarly article about the place of motherhood in Western philosophy, but mostly now she changes diapers and wipes noses and indulges in long reflections on whether Yo Gabba Gabba is a harbinger of the decline of western civilization. Oh, and she blogs: in addition to Bad Mother blogging at BeliefNet, she is, among other things, the author of HerBadMother.com, Managing Editor of MamaPop, moderator of Her Bad Mother’s Basement, co-founder and co-editor of WeCovet, Contributing Editor at BlogHer, and (deep breath) founder of and contributor to Canada Moms Blog. And in her spare time… oh, wait. She doesn’t have spare time. But she’s okay with that.
It’s the last day of the year, the last of the decade. And it’s a hard one for me, because I’ve been spending these last days trying to get closer to finishing the work of dealing with my father’s death – cleaning his home, packing up his remaining things, emptying his space of, well, him.
It’s hard work. It’s brutally hard work, because it is work that I want both to finish, and to never finish. And to be struggling with the competing desires for closure (as if there ever is any) and un-closure (as if we can ever move on without any semblance of closure) in the final days, final hours, of the year is particularly difficult. I should be looking to the new year for rejuvenation. I should be looking for hope.
It is hard to look for hope when I am wrapped up in saying goodbye. When I am so sad.
I’ll find that hope, I know. But right this moment it seems so very distant, and obscure.
posted December 31, 2009 at 8:41 am
I lost my mother when I was 24 and my father when I was 32. Each day will get a little easier but 11 years later I still break down crying over my mother. That’s ok, I’m ok with that. Death is a natural part of life. A wise old woman once said to me “grieving is hard work”. Boy oh boy was she right. Take care of yourself during these times. Be gentle to yourself.