Letters from Rona / Mothers and daughters / Sort by date

Back when Elizabeth Taylor was the world's most scandalous woman, I followed her adventures on the pretext of shopping with my mother. Every supermarket sold Photoplay, and every issue exuded the forbidden scent of lust as only home-wrecking, violet-eyed Liz could inspire it. While my mother filled her cart with egg noodles and cream of mushroom soup, I hung out at the newsstand, drinking in the gossip. [more]

My mother never managed to teach me how to roll out pie crust or sew in a zipper, but thanks to her I can spot the bargains at a post-Christmas sale and beat the crowd to the only 80-percent-off sweater in a certain shade of pink---one that shows up in stores about as often as a cockatoo lands in your back yard. She knew just the right place to train me---Filene's legendary basement. [more]

Twenty-one years ago almost to the day, my mother died without telling me the one thing I most longed to hear. Her silence on a painful subject continued to trouble me, like a bum knee that aches in cold weather. When a wise stranger proposed that I write her a letter, I pooh-poohed the idea (nothing new about letters to the dead). It turned out that I spoke too soon. [more]

After my mother died, I found at the bottom of a closet the scuffed, leather walking shoes in which, just the previous summer, she had walked six miles a day. They lay where she had kicked them after an ordinary ramble that turned out to be her last. Dusty laces trailing, they curled against each other like sleeping puppies that might wake at any minute and hurl themselves at the door in an ecstasy of eagerness. They still held the shape of her toes. [more]

My mother taught me to love the stories at the heart of every life. Now that she's no longer around to meet me for a Mother's Day lunch, her stand-in is the stories we lived together. It's partly in tribute to her that I've created a forum on this website, the mother/daughter gallery, where readers can post defining memories of the women who formed them and the girls they are guiding into adulthood. If you haven't toured the gallery, what better time than Mother's Day? Read on for a preview of the preview of the colourful, unforgettable and sometimes maddeningly complicated characters you'll meet. But don't stop there. You too have a mother/daughter story, and this is the place to share it. [more]

Kate MGarrigle, the singer/songwriter who died of cancer this week at 63, was so wholly and happily bound up in my mind with her sister and partner Anna that in 30-odd years of loving their luminous harmonies I never bothered to distinguish the two. But any fan can tell that "Matapedia" is a story from Kate's life as daughter, mother and middle-aged woman contemplating mortality. I couldn't get Kate off my mind tonight. And so on the elliptical machine, where I usually pump away to hard-driving stuff, I couldn't stop playing "Matapedia." [more]

Last month I shared what life and loss have taught me about the writing of condolence notes. That post already ranks with the most popular I've written since this site began. So here I am with an open file folder of the letters that sustained me after my mother's death. I still reread my favourites. What makes them so consoling? See for yourself. [more]

When I learned last night that Dr. Jerri Nielsen had died of breast cancer at age 57, I couldn't help but take it personally, even though I'd forgotten her name in the 10 years since she made news around the world. I still remembered the tale of her dramatic rescue from the Antarctic research station where she had diagnosed and treated her own disease all winter until a plane could land. [more]

Back when I was a death virgin, unscathed by irreparable loss, I had no idea how to write to the bereaved. Then my mother died and I became a student of condolence. Her friends became my mentors, teaching me the difference between a truly comforting thought and an irritating platitude. [more]

For all of us with empty places at our Christmas table, this is the season of missing. I've been thinking lately about those of you who've lost someone (especially your mother) because it's clear from my daily Google statistics that grief brings many people to this site. Here, a found poem from the searches of women missing their mothers. [more]

Now is the moment for homemade rhubarb pie, and my mother's were transcendent. After she died, I thought no one would ever again bake a rhubarb pie just to delight me. Then one spring at the height of rhubarb season, I went to see a friend who was terminally ill. She had a rhubarb patch. And despite my protests, she insisted on baking me a pie. [more]

Growing up, I never knew I had a first cousin named Rosemary Woolery. Her father and mine were brothers in a complicated family where people seldom to spoke to one another. She died years ago. But thanks to her daughter Louisa, I've met her right here on this site in the Mother/Daughter Gallery. [more]