Waiting Loss

My friend C has been at his mother's side in hospice for a few days now. The family has gathered about and the end is near. C is an English major and in times like this the ability to convey the depth of feeling words sparsely but effectively makes a difference. 

He sent us a note about what was going on and I read it a few times because it was so beautifully written. When she does pass, I am not sure we will have the appropriate words to comfort him. Reading this essay where Henry James is quoted on the topic of his mother's passing brought C to mind. The essay starts with a quote about motherhood more universally:

“Every man or woman who is sane, every man or woman who has the feeling of being a person in the world, and for whom the world means something, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman,” the visionary psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote as he considered the mother as a pillar of society. Having a mother is a lifelong complexity. Losing a mother, no matter the nature or duration of the relationship, is the cataclysm of a lifetime.