It’s been a while since I last completely bawled my eyes out. Where you can’t see for tears, you’re snotty, and you can barely breathe through the pain, which runs deeper than you remember. A pain deep in the pit of your stomach, that morphs into a sound you barely recognise – and then you realise the sound is coming from you.
I hadn’t felt the depth of that pain for many years – not since a couple of years after Mum died. I think I had almost forgotten what it felt like … but it came in a wave without warning just weeks after I realised I was pregnant.
Andy and I were deliriously happy when we found out we had a “mini-me” on the way. I knew from the moment I met him at a friend’s party the year before, that he was “the one”. So, after moving in together, having a child seemed like the next natural step.
When I realised there was a whole other person inside me, I was sitting on this beautiful fluffy cloud of tranquillity. Telling our families was our favourite bit, their joy and relief (we’re both nearly 40: there is a chance they had given up on us) that we were creating a new person together was brilliant. It just made everybody so bloody happy.
But, after a few weeks, the fear kicked in. Although we made the child together, it hit me that I was essentially the sole person responsible for its wellbeing. Me. And the thought of that responsibility just enveloped me. That happy cloud became something I suddenly feared.
At that moment, curled up in the bath one morning before work, the fear turned to tears, the crying turned to wailing, and the sound bouncing off the walls was the sound of me missing the one person I needed and wanted for the next nine months. My mum.
Dorrett Ionie White died in 2002, when I was 21. She was there for the usual milestones: first kiss, first proper boyfriend, contraception chat, dumping first proper boyfriend, telling me off for how I dumped first proper boyfriend, getting back with first proper boyfriend etc. And she was brilliant.
No one instinctively knew me as well as she did (I’m not sure if anyone ever will again). She taught me how to navigate the world, and made sure I knew my job was to pass that on to my siblings when she was no longer around. Our chats towards the end of her life (when she was still lucid) were mainly about how to help my dad raise my siblings, Carina and Josh, making sure they were supported, and what would happen if my dad found happiness again.
I was too young for advice about what to do when I had kids: my mum knew that the chances of my doing it in my 20s were very slim, so there was no real need. But I kind of wish she had.
I have no point of reference really. My aunt and dad have been great with trying to recall what they can about Mum’s pregnancies, but only she could possibly know what it was like. And I had never asked her. So I’ll never know. And I think that’s where some of the pain came from that day.
I’ve had no nausea, sickness or cravings … I worried that it meant my pregnancy wasn’t normal, that something was wrong with the baby. The doctor telling me it was all fine didn’t really help, but if I knew that Mum had been the same – that would have calmed me. Then there’s the constant fear of failing. Yes, people say this is totally normal … but I wanted my mum to tell me that – I wanted her to tell me that everything I was thinking and feeling was normal. She was the only person in the world who could allay those fears. But she’s not here, and that also added to the pain.
Over the years, I’ve become friends with women who are also motherless. It’s not that we have a beacon that flashes “NO MOTHER HERE” on our heads, but I think there’s a certain trace of grief that we carry around. Indistinguishable to most, but noticeable to others. Through talking to them I realise these feelings are a road well travelled for we motherless mothers.
I talked to my friend Jo, who has two children. She said that when she was first pregnant: “I was revisited by the irrational anger that holds hands with grief. I felt shameful rage for those who had their mothers to help them through their pregnancies.”
I can identify with that more than you can imagine. And my friend Mel, who has twin sons, told me: “I think about it every day. It hit me when I had these newborns and no one to come over to cook, clean, or even relieve me so I could wash!”
In Caribbean culture, the mum is around a lot in the early days of the baby being born, cooking Jamaican “hard food” almost round the clock to ensure you’re eating properly – passing on old wives’ tales for getting babies to sleep, or preparing old-school remedies to make them better when they are ill. Tidying, cleaning, teaching, guiding. They can basically end up moving in for a couple of weeks. So my pain is tinged with anger … that I will never really know what that’s like.
But it also made me realise that after losing her, I gained so much: a wonderful partner, and an army of girlfriends who are constantly by my side. Family who are always on the other end of the phone to tell me it’s going to be all right, and I think I’ve got the best in-laws and mother-in-law in the world. But, above all else, I’m thankful for the weird role-reversal between me and my younger sister – who became a mother seven years ago. I helped to raise my sister, because I was older and knew more (she would argue that point, obviously) so I would always help guide her. But now she’s the one guiding me, preparing me for motherhood. I didn’t know I could love her more than I do already, but in the last few months it’s become immeasurable. And, in place of my mum, she will be in the room with me and Andy the day our lives change for ever.
I love this little person in my belly so much, and I just can’t imagine the weight of love I will feel when we finally meet. And that’s where the real depth of the pain came from that day (and continues to). The sudden realisation 16 years later, that that was the love my mum said goodbye to three times over, the night she died.
Charlene White is a British TV news anchor for ITV News