Naming the Ache

By Elle Dooley

“A poet’s true job is not to offer advice, but rather to aptly name the ache.”

Joy Sullivan

Ah, the ache. Which one? I read this advice to writers from Joy Sullivan and at once began to gently probe for memories still tender to the touch.

I find my mother there, or rather, my relationship with her through the years. Like many who engaged in therapy to find themselves, there was a litany of qualities I expected a “good mother” to have, a list of the ways my mother failed me. The anger of my adolescence was set in stone into adulthood, until I became a mother myself. I eased up a little but, I admit, not much.

My mother died from complications of Alzheimer’s in 2004. My relationship with her continued, continues to deepen to this day. It becomes clearer to me as time passes.

I was the eldest of seven children and when I left home there were still five at home. They needed schooling, needed clean laundry, regular meals, and general tending. Because my alcoholic father worked only intermittently, my mother worked full time. Those were tough and anxious times for her.

Through the years, my mother would drive an hour and a half on her day off to see me. I have a treasure trove of letters (handwritten and posted) letting me know she was thinking about me, sending love to me and her grandchildren, filling me in on what was happening with my younger brothers and sisters. She called, even when time was limited, and I know she must have been tired. On the occasions when I showed up at her door with my kids in tow, there was always room for us, an extra bed, a place at the table.

But I had such strong ideas of the way a mother should have loved me that I missed the ways in which my own mother actually did.

I am so grateful now for the mother love that I took for granted. I have a relationship with this mother-memory that is so much deeper than any I had when my mother was alive. It continues to grow and evolve as I do.

On some days I am certain that my mother is experiencing this deepening of relationship right along with me. I do hope so. Because the desire for this and missing what it was my mother gave to me, that is the ache. The one that hasn’t left me, the one that doesn’t go away.