Today, it is Mother’s Day. It doesn’t mean that much for my family or me given that my mom and closest aunt are Jehovah’s Witnesses, so I can’t really wish them a Happy Mother’s Day or send flowers or gifts. But it’s a reminder to me yet again about the hard life my mother has lived and all the pain she’s endured that I only know a fraction of.

She doesn’t celebrate Mother’s Day, but I know she thinks about it. She probably thinks about her life as a mother to Ed and me, and how Ed is no longer with us. I’m sure that hurts a lot to know that you gave birth to and were a mother to your son for over 33 years, and then he took his life by jumping off a bridge. That son is no longer here. He’s dead. I feel a lot of pain when I think about the sequence of events even on the day of and leading to my brother’s death. The more time passes, the less it’s really about pain for myself and my parents as it is for pain for Ed, to think about how he felt, his suffering, and how he just wanted all the pain and agony to end. He just wanted some quiet. When I think of this, I feel even worse and think I could have done more. I get angry at myself because I know I had only spoken to him briefly on the Friday before that Monday, and at length on the Wednesday before that Monday. I knew he was reaching his limit. It’s a terrible thing to feel powerless to help someone you really love. And it’s even worse to think that as a mother, you cannot help your child enough to save him and his life.

Being a mother – what a scary thing. I’m reading Elizabeth’s Warren’s A Fighting Chance now, and I just finished reading Wendy Davis’s memoir. Like they say, being a mother never “ends,” and it rarely gets easier, especially from a emotional level of attachment. Maybe when your child is a teen or a full grown adult, you won’t need to spoon feed him or change his diapers or rock him to sleep, but that doesn’t make him any less your baby. Ed will always be my mom’s baby, just like I am, even if he isn’t physically here anymore.