Someone wrote a book about my experience, is all I could think. Just the mere thought that there might be other women in the world, other girls, lost and lonely and desperate in their grief over their mothers…it was utterly overwhelming. It was also this defining moment in which I realized, perhaps for the first time ever, that I might actually survive this. Staring down at Hope’s photo on the back cover, seeing another woman who had experienced what I had, and gone on to tell about it, I realized that I might actually emerge from my mother’s death and one day find a way to feel whole again.

To say this book has had a profound effect on my journey of grief following my mother’s death, is an understatement.

Hope was literally the first person who ever gave me hope in the wake of my loss. I finally met her in person for the first time last year, at a little coffee shop in Santa Monica. I’ve met so many authors in the last decade but this was most awestruck I’d ever felt in the presence of one. We sat outside with our coffee and I could barely bring myself to speak, so instead I listened to Hope tell me that she had just read my book, and how much she loved it, and then I really couldn’t speak.

So instead, I gave my best attempt to tell Hope in a wobbly voice, tears in my eyes, just how much her book had meant to me, how much light and promise it had given to my poor, broken 20 year old self all those years ago, and how grateful I was to her because of it.

I’m sure you can imagine how honored I am to tell you that I’ve been asked to be the guest speaker this year at the annual Motherless Daughters Luncheon hosted by Hope Edelman and Irene Rubaum-Keller.

If you’re a motherless daughter or you know one who is, please join us! Here is a link to the official invitation. 

This morning, like a lot of mornings over the last month, I thought about the parents of the Newtown. About how they once said goodbye to their children each morning with ease and confidence, and how that has forever changed. I thought about how it’s been 33 days since those children were killed and how so many of us have gone back to our regular lives, occupied by other news stories, new years resolutions, bills, travel plans. But while the rest of us are moving on, many of those parents in Connecticut are perhaps just now entering into the real throes of their grief.

The first year of grieving someone you love is like no other. There are whole swaths of denial, moments and days when it just doesn’t seem real. And then worse, it does start to feel real and then there are whole moments and days when the pain is almost unbearable. I can recall many times in my life when I’ve stood in empty rooms of houses where someone I loved once lived and how I sank to the floor, utterly consumed by what felt like endless waves of grief and torment over their absence.

One of the most common questions I’m asked, both as a therapist and as someone who writes about grief, is how long it lasts. How long will I grieve? Does it ever end?

My answer is always the same: It’s different for everyone. But I can tell you that grief almost always lasts longer than the people around you expect it to. Sometimes people are surprised when I tell them that grief can last years. Others are relieved to hear this, because they already know it to be true.

I do believe that there can be an end to active grieving. I think there comes a time when the real, raw pain of grief ends, when you no longer think about that person’s absence first thing in the morning. There comes a time when you move forward in life without thinking about how they’re not beside you while you do it. Eventually the regret and remorse, the unanswered questions and all the what-ifs surrounding the loss, start to soften. After a while the sad memories of the end are replaced by better ones from the beginning. Eventually enough time  passes and it becomes easier to talk about them without crying, easier to remember them without wanting to sink to your knees.

But just because grief has an end doesn’t mean your love for that person does too. I think we always miss the people we lose, that we never stop wishing they were still here with us. It’s just that we learn to live with their absence, we learn to live our lives without them, as impossible as that can often seem in the beginning.

I’ll don’t think I’ll ever stop wishing my mother and father were still around to see my girls, to meet my husband, and to see how I’ve grown into adulthood. But I can move forward through my life now without breaking down over their absence. There was a time when each new thing I accomplished — graduating college, getting a great job, publishing an article or entering into a new relationship — was bittersweet in their absence. But that is no longer true for me. The pain of it all is gone. In its place is a kind of weathering, not just the kind that comes with age, but one that comes with deep sorrow and yearning, a particular kind of crinkle around my eyes, or in the lines around my mouth. If you look hard enough you can see it in all of us who have mourned, how we have given ourselves over to time because we have had to, because its the only thing that brings us both closer to and farther away from the people we love.

So however long it takes us to find that place, however long it takes us to put one foot in front of the other again, however long it takes to smile, to love life again, is simply how long it takes. There is no right answer. Think about how much you love your most cherished people. While that love may have appeared instantaneously in some cases, over time it grew and grew until it was so big that there became no separation too vast, no amount of time too great, in order to reverse it.

We grieve until we don’t anymore, but we love forever.

I’m sitting here in my little house in Los Angeles, wishing more than I have in a long time that you were still here. Some terrible things have happened in our country and I don’t know which way to turn. I feel angry and confused and sad. So, so sad. I suddenly don’t know who to be or how to be and nothing, nothing feels right.

It’s getting late and I’m tired but I had to write to you. Almost seventy years ago today, your entire life changed when a bomber plane you were piloting during WWII was attacked and shot to pieces in the air. You lost half of your crew in that attack and you were forced to parachute to the ground below, only to be captured by German soldiers and detained for the remaining six months of the war. This incident shaped everything about the man you would become. It made you brave and wise and compassionate. It made you strong and courageous and so, so generous.

I still remember when I finally got through to you the morning of the attacks on 9/11. Me calling from my cell phone in New York to your little condominium in Southern California. I’ve never thought about how worried you must have been about me, until just now, and to think of it causes tears to stream down my cheeks. I had tried all morning to call but the phones weren’t working, and I wasn’t able to get through to you for the first hours after the attacks. I imagine you now at home in front of the television, worried for your young twenty-four year old daughter in Manhattan.

I had never thought much about a parent’s worry. Until I became one.

And then again this week in an even deeper way.

But that morning on September 11 I finally got through to you, and I was crying and so scared, and you were you. Calm and wise, telling me that everything would be okay, even if you weren’t really sure if it would be.

And now I want to call you again. I want you to tell me that everything is going to be okay. That I’m going to be okay. That my sweet, young daughters are going to be okay.

But I can’t. You aren’t here anymore.

I’ll never forget the voice you used with me when I was scared or sad. It was a voice I never heard you use with anyone else. You were patient and kind and gentle and, no matter what, you always made me feel like everything was going to be okay.

I know that Greg and I have to be that for our girls now. We have to be calm and kind and strong and brave, and we have to create a world where everything is okay again. Because that’s what parents must do for their children. We take care of the world for them, until they can do it themselves.

If we are so lucky.

Thank you for the lessons. I miss you so, so very much.

With love, and unwavering admiration,

Claire