my mother's death essay

My mother's death isn't something I survived. It's something I'm still living through.

For years, I’d assumed I would be completely incapable of functioning after my mom died. I had no idea what my life would or even could look like after that. I couldn’t imagine it, just like I couldn’t imagine, when I was a kid, what it would be like to drive a car or go to college or even just be a grown up; it felt like I would just have to cease to exist when she did.

And yet, here I am, two and a half years after my mom’s death on May 15, 2018. I don’t know if I’m thriving, or even “surthriving,” a term that makes me think of a preternaturally peppy Molly Shannon character on “Saturday Night Live.” But at least I’m no longer sleeping with the lights on while the Mel and Sue years of “The Great British Baking Show” drone on at the edges of my consciousness … most of the time, anyway.

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I didn’t do anything in particular to survive her death except continue to stay alive. I certainly haven’t processed the pain, and I doubt I ever fully will; it’s all simmering just beneath my skin, ready to escape at the next Instagram story from The Dodo about interspecies friendship.

Immediately after her death, there were things that had to be done — writing an obituary, canceling her credit cards and hiring an estate attorney. And I did them; they filled some time. I had help — a lawyer, friends, family, the health aide who became a second daughter to her and a sister to me. Plus Mom had been very organized; she’d even prepared a list of all of her logins for me. Logistically, it was as easy as a death could be.

The most important thing I learned about grief is that it isn’t linear, and it isn’t logical.

But at the end of the day, I was her only child. And she was my only mom. And she was gone. Just gone.

So I let her answering machine fill up with messages, because I couldn’t cope. No one sat shivah for her in Texas; I didn’t even know where to begin to organize that. I had a panic attack in the housewares section of Target.

In the months after that, I declined a lot of social invitations; I whiffed deadlines; I stayed up all night playing video games and listening to true crime podcasts by myself. In short, whatever remaining concerns I had about meeting most societal norms went out the window.

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It wasn’t all terrible; there were small mercies that I’ll never forget. Even when I was at my worst, my loved ones did what they could to soothe the unbearable. My friends came and sat shivah with me in New York City when I arrived home, filling my apartment with carbohydrates and flowers. They flew to me when I needed them but couldn’t say. They took me into their homes when I showed up; or they took me hiking along the Pacific Ocean or to karaoke.

Still, my grief cruelly took away my ability to concentrate on books, movies or even any TV shows that required more than the bare minimum of intellectual processing. I had nothing left to invest emotionally or intellectually in anything I normally loved — or even anything I was once pleasantly distracted by. I struggled to pitch my editors. I flubbed an interview with a celebrity so disastrously I still think about it late at night.

Eventually, I allowed myself the luxury of going to therapy twice a week instead of just once.

If this all sounds awfully familiar to you, it’s because we’re all grieving in some way.

The most important thing I learned about grief is that it isn’t linear, and it isn’t logical. You have to be very careful with yourself and with who you’re around, and you have to make sure they’re extra tender to you, too. Even the most big-hearted people will do or say the wrong thing; I still do it myself. Most of their missteps are forgivable, but you’ll decide which ones aren’t, and that’s important, too.

Special bonds were formed in the last two years between me and the friends who’ve also experienced the loss of their mothers; it’s a very particular, complicated sort of loss that can feel extra messy and ugly. And, let’s face it, not many people can tolerate hearing about the disgusting indignities of aging and death unless they get paid by the hour — nor should they. There is also a kind of relief that you feel after a death like that, and the relief feels shameful, but even the shame feels like a relief, sort of like popping a pimple.

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I’m no longer scared when the phone rings (mostly). When a famous person dies, I no longer calculate how much older or younger they were than my mom, as if that somehow affected her odds of survival. Dead parents, it turns out, are great ice breakers on first dates and at cocktail parties. I’m thankfully off the hook for airport travel over the winter holidays. When certain dates roll around — like the anniversary of my parents’ respective deaths — I’m not sad so much as simply disassociated.

If this all sounds awfully familiar to you, it’s because we’re all grieving in some way. We’ve collectively experienced wave after wave of loss in the past nine months, and it scares me to think of how shattering it will be once the constant flow of news and tragedy relents just a little.

I didn’t do anything in particular to survive her death except continue to stay alive.

This sounds horrible but, without the death of my mom — and specifically the experience of grieving her death — I wouldn’t have emotionally or mentally survived the pandemic. While I’m still no expert at tolerating discomfort, I’m better at it than I used to be; there’s not much else to do when you’re laying sideways across your bed at 4 a.m. staring at your cat and feeling desperately, bitterly lonely, except to feel desperately, bitterly lonely.

Plus, now I don’t have to worry about her during the pandemic; she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and an increasingly knotty conflagration of disorders that would have made her an over-the-top risk for Covid-19, and she lived in Texas. She worried about me all the time anyway, even when there wasn’t an airborne virus ravaging us, and I’d have felt guilty for worrying her, and she’d want me to move back to Dallas, and, well, we’ve all seen “Grey Gardens,” right?

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In the before-times, when I was on a subway stopped between stations, I’d try to sense the millisecond it began to lurch back into motion, until I could no longer tell the difference between standing still and moving. Grief is like that, but with fury and fear and sadness and a terrifying blankness that nothing can soothe. You can’t tell when the subway will start moving again; you can’t magic it into motion. You can only wait and see what happens, and make sure you’re holding on when it starts moving again.

You won’t believe the kinds of things you can survive. I didn’t. I still don’t.

More from our project on surviving 2020 and what comes next:

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• My father's murder disrupted my schooling. But I survived and got back on track.
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Jenni Miller is a freelance writer who covers movies, TV, sex, love, death, video games and assorted weirdness for a variety of publications online and in print.

Why the Death of Your Mother Is a Life-Changing Event

Shock, relief, loneliness, and gratitude, perhaps all at once..

Posted December 29, 2022 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

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Regardless of the quality of the relationship, losing your mother is a major life event. Many people fear the grieving process; grieving your mother’s death will turn that process on its head. The known becomes unknown, the predictable becomes uncertain, and warring emotions compete–starting immediately with the shock that someone so integral to your presence can suddenly just be gone.

Though our brains are astounding in their ability to adapt to changing circumstances, that skill can complicate the grieving process. The thread of a mother’s existence runs throughout your life, humming in the background from childhood through adulthood. It doesn’t matter if you struggled to get along or found her to be your best friend; even for those who never knew their biological mother, her death will be momentous.

Coping With Shock

If your mother was a significant part of your life, her death will somehow bring everything to a screeching halt while life continues to march forward. The world around you will change, seasons will pass, and holidays will fly by, but your world may seem to stop. Your brain will be forced to grasp how someone can be present in every way but also physically gone forever – a dissonance that creates significant stress and anxiety .

The first days after the death of your mother are filled with the mechanisms of survival mode: finding the will to shower, making the plans that accompany death, remembering to eat, and reminding yourself to keep breathing. Those days will pass in a blur, and later you may look back at them with little to no memory of what happened – a completely normal reaction to your body's shock.

As you progress through waves of shock and sadness, you may be in awe at the depth of your grief . It can come on gradually and suddenly. There will be triggers you are aware of and may even seek out, just to get a release on the emotions building up in your chest. There will also be triggers that come out of nowhere and stun you into instant sorrow. You will be surprised at how quickly tears form, with no warning.

Physiological Reactions

Physiological reactions like crying, rapid breathing, digestive issues, and more are the body’s natural way of coming to terms with enormous change. Without these reactions, there would be no outlet for emotions that are too intense to handle otherwise. The process of shock is intimately wrapped up in these reactions: Your body is a pro at connecting the logical dots and making things work, but when it’s trying to navigate the abstract nature of powerful grief, it becomes symptomatic.

Your body will do its best to protect you from the immediate, terrorizing pain of your mother’s loss. As part of its shock reaction, you may find yourself behaving normally and wondering why you don’t feel more sadness, anger , or really anything at all. You may be swimming in the depths of numbness and brain fog . You will likely find sleep to be suddenly unpredictable, and your thoughts may become strangers.

When the Numbness Wears Off

The initial numbness of your mother’s death will eventually wear off. It happens in pieces, one wave at a time, and the feelings that follow will be some of the most extreme you'll ever experience. Anger, guilt , resentment, relief, misery, despair — there are no limits to the emotions that will flood your body and mind. Many people wander in and out of shock for months (and sometimes years) as their minds try to work through these emotions while still going through the motions of living.

Once the loss sinks in, you may feel breathtaking loneliness . You may now be the first of the line, staring your own mortality in the face. You are not as removed from death as the presence of your mother led you to believe, and her absence will be glimmering behind every object, every action, and every thought.

You will feel suddenly and irrevocably responsible for the future. You may experience a crushing weight of “what if” that leaves you almost breathless. There is no longer a mother to bounce ideas off of, call when you’re upset, or get affirmation from. You’re on your own now. You have to be your own cheerleader, support, and shoulder to cry on — and you have to do it all while continuing to live your best life. The responsibility can be grueling.

While adjusting to your foundation crumbling, your emotions will often turn against you. You will suddenly remember every argument, every wasted moment, and every missed opportunity, and you may experience paralyzing regret.

Just as your mind recognizes there is no going back, your emotions may urge you to take up residence in the past. Despite their futility, guilt and condemnation often become a way to cope with the intense pain of your mother’s death.

Moments of Hope

Though it’s nearly impossible to believe, all will not be negative. You may feel relief, particularly if your mother struggled with chronic conditions that will no longer plague her. You may feel released from the conflict or pressure that came with a caregiving relationship. You may even feel a renewed sense of gratitude for your own life and a sharpened ambition to soak up every minute available to you and your remaining loved ones. Death can knit together as much as it can tear apart.

Your mother’s death will change you. That change is likely the only predictable part of the entire process – a process that will break, overwhelm, and rebuild you. The only way out is through, riding each wave as it comes and, through it all, remembering to breathe and keep moving forward.

Facebook image: PeopleImages.com - Yuri A/Shutterstock

Jamie Cannon, MS, LPC, specializes in the treatment of trauma, anxiety, and grief with populations ranging from children and families to victims of domestic violence.

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Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection Essay

Terminal illness, end of life issue.

While dying is part of human life that surrounds each person, some encounters with death are more influential than others. My mother’s passing was an experience that impacted my view of life and end of life care the most. She died before her 60th birthday – her terminal illness was discovered very late, and she passed away less than a year after receiving the diagnosis. Such a rapid change in my life left a mark on my memory and reshaped my view of life and death.

It was difficult for me to come to terms with her death – the period between the diagnosis and her passing was too short. I was in denial for a long time and had trouble accepting what had happened. Looking back at this time, I see how the end of life is not always expected, and why the children of terminally ill loved ones require the attention of medical professionals as well.

End of life care for my mother took a toll on me, and I had to reevaluate my aspirations to see whether I treated life as an endless path. Now, I reflect on the feelings I had in order to remind myself that the end of life cannot be fully preplanned and that each case is unique in its own way. Moreover, I try to remember that one’s existence is finite. In some cases, the best solution is to provide as much comfort to someone and make sure they are making choices to the best of their ability and knowledge to have a happy and dignified time.

I also considered how my mother might have felt at the moment of diagnosis and during her last year. It is incredibly challenging for one to understand what knowing that you will die soon means. Such clarity is not always desired, but I believe that it is vital for people to know about their current condition because it affects their decision-making in healthcare and life, in general. Death is a part of each human’s life, but every step toward it does not feel final because it can come at any moment.

Knowing one’s diagnosis changes the way people and their loved ones think. Although I can only imagine what my mother felt, I understand what the families of terminally ill persons are going through.

If I were diagnosed with a terminal illness and were given a prognosis of six months or less to live, I would try to accept it in good faith before making decisions. Death is inevitable, but it is impossible to be fully prepared for it, even when you think that you are. So, I would look into myself to search for peace with this news in order to take advantage of the time that I have left.

I would feel sad because I would not see my loved ones and miss them dearly. Thus, my priorities for what should be done would change. I would try to see my family and friends as much as I could and spend time with them, making memories for them and myself. I would like to leave some mementoes behind and focus on the good times that we would have together. Planning for several months ahead is difficult when the exact date of death is unknown, so I would do my best to make the most of each day.

However, it is also vital to think about one’s inner comfort and peace. Coming to terms with my passing would be critical to me – it provides some type of closure and allows me to let go of worries related to everyday life. People may cover their fear of dying with activities and concentration on planning and socialization. In doing so, they may overlook their own satisfaction with life, denying themselves a chance to reflect. As such, I would spend some time searching for some last unanswered questions and unachieved goals that could be completed in the short span of time that I would have.

Finally, I would concentrate on my present and my loved ones’ future. I always strive to remember that life is endless in a way that it continues for other people. Although I will eventually die, some of my friends and my family members will continue living long after I am gone, facing problems and challenges that are inherent to humanity.

Thus, I would try to make plans to alleviate some of these issues. Most importantly, I would organize the provision for my child to finance the education – one of the most necessary, but expensive, parts of one’s coming to adulthood. If possible, I would review our housing options, savings, family and friends support network, and address other household and healthcare concerns.

Doctors and nurses in end-of-life care carry a significant burden in working with patients and families dealing with ethical and moral dilemmas. Some of these issues are also regulated legally, although the lines of what is legal or not are much less clear than in other cases. For me, one of the moral dilemmas that I had struggled with was the patients’ and relatives’ differing views on treatment planning. In some situations, the client’s family members may not pursue the same goals as the person under care. These aims can be guided by religious or personal views on health and death. Others can be motivated by financial problems, strained relationships, emotional health, and a multitude of other reasons.

For example, in a hospital, a family may not want the patient to know the diagnosis as it could scare or sadden them. In this scenario, I turn to the some of the medical principles as the basis for my value system. I would highlight the importance of fidelity – people have the right to known about their prognosis and diagnosis (Karnik & Kanekar, 2016). I think that truthfulness is a necessary part of end-of-life care and support, even though telling someone their diagnosis is difficult.

In some situations, children want to keep their parent alive as long as possible and request all possible procedures, while the client denies care and seeks comfort to spend the last days with dignity. Here, the principle of autonomy would guide my practice – people reserve the right to make decisions to the extent of their capacity (De Panfilis et al., 2019).

Moreover, it is vital to remember that rigorous treatment does not equal beneficence in all scenarios. I try to approach each case individually and acknowledge that every person has the right to control a part of their destiny through healthcare or outreach for support, and the duty of caring professionals is to inform our clients of all the choices they can make and what outcomes they can expect. In the end, medical science advances continuously, but death remains an unchanging aspect that requires person-centered thinking.

De Panfilis, L., Di Leo, S., Peruselli, C., Ghirotto, L., & Tanzi, S. (2019). “I go into crisis when…”: Ethics of care and moral dilemmas in palliative care. BMC Palliative Care , 18 (70), 1-8. Web.

Karnik, S., & Kanekar, A. (2016). Ethical issues surrounding end-of-life care: A narrative review . Healthcare, 4 (24), 1-6. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, September 19). Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/

"Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." IvyPanda , 19 Sept. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." September 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

1. IvyPanda . "Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." September 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

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IvyPanda . "Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." September 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

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A Mother’s Love: Essays and Poems Exploring Grief and Loss

A folio curated by jp howard.

Regina Jamison Breena Clarke Cheryl Boyce-Taylor Sonia Jaffe Robbins Amber Flame Lynne Connor

I am writing this introductory essay to this folio exploring a mother’s love on the two year anniversary of my own mother’s passing. Two years into this great loss, I am still remembering, gathering, celebrating, mourning, and holding on to pieces of Mama. Some days she enters my poems and essays and when I turn the page, Mama is there guiding me. Other days I fear I will forget the sound of Mama’s sweet voice saying “ Hey babygirl, how was your day? ” When we lose someone who is literally a part of our heart, we continue to work through our grief and loss over time. This time of year, filled with holidays and family celebrations and gatherings, can be a trigger for those of us processing our grief, while everyone around us is going about the business of living and loving.

My own writing community, Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, is filled with writers and friends who have experienced great loss these last few years. Since last December, we have lost three dear friends, all members of our Salon, poets Monica Hand, Jayne A. Pierce and Esther Louise. Each of these women were not only talented poets, but also fierce Mamas to their children. I am grateful we have their poems and our memories, yet I know that their families and our writing community will always miss them. So many of us have had to deal with the heartbreaking loss of a child, parent, spouse or significant other, either recently or years ago. As writers, it is nearly impossible for us to experience these losses without it also affecting our writing process. I have invited six amazing women writers to reflect on their own experiences with grief and loss for this special folio. These writers are all mothers; some have written about losing their own mothers, while others have written about losing their only child. Each piece is exquisite in its honesty and filled with love and often longing. By sharing the particular pain of losing a child or losing a mother and reflecting on the love that endures, each writer allows us a glimpse into their healing process.

I want to take this opportunity to praise each of our contributors to this folio. I recognize that it was an incredibly challenging and tremendously personal task. I see reflections of myself in their stories as I continue to work through my own loss and I am grateful for the gift of their words. Over time, artist Amber Flame learns to “feel” as she processes her mother’s death, “ I am choosing to feel it all, feel it deeply. ’ While novelist Breena Clarke shows us the healing power of writing as she processes her only child’s sudden death in her stunning essay “ I started to write regularly and purposefully because doing so was palliative as well as rewarding. I simply felt better, less sore. Writing was soothing. ” Poet, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, in her extraordinary zuihitsu poem about the loss of her only child, explores how we sometimes hold fiercely onto our grief: “ I eat and eat from the table of loss finally when it’s all gone I want more / afraid to live with/without it   miss the daily discipline of tears as company / miss the scorch loss brings to my face…..” Regina Jamison’s poetry explores death as a literal disconnect: My mother’s death / severed us from her like a heavy metal door. Lynne Connor, writer, workshop facilitator and a new mother herself, moves from initial grief over her mother’s death towards affirmation, in her nuanced essay: “B ut the flip side of loss, of being lost, is acceptance. I come from the land of not enough. From shame and unknowns. But my daughter will come from full disclosure. ” Editor Sonia Jaffe Robbins learns how to be a different type of mother to her own daughter, as she reflects on how her mother walked through the world: “ From her, I learned to keep my feelings hidden even from myself. Writing helps me let them escape. I talk to my daughter in ways I never did with my mother. ” There is often a learning and a clarity that ebbs and flows over time when we lose loved ones. Thank you Cheryl, Breena, Regina, Lynne, Amber, and Sonia for allowing us on this journey with you in these remarkable contributions.

–JP Howard

JP Howard with her Mom Ruth King ~ two Leo Divas smiling

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Lessons from My Mother

By James Wood

At my mother’s funeral, I was calmer than I had ever imagined being. She was eighty-seven and had lived a long and fruitful life, and for some time her body had been signalling its eagerness to depart: almost blind from macular degeneration, emaciated, she had been bedridden for months, after a bad fall. She died alone, but my father and I were at her side a few hours before her death. In the hospital room, grief conspired with natural curiosity: so this is how a body near death functions; this is how most of us will go. . . . Six or seven seconds passed between deep breaths; each was likely to be the last, and the renewal of breath, when it came, seemed almost like a strange, teasing physiological game—no, not yet, not quite. In the days before she died, a sentence from “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” kept coming to my mind. Peter Ivanovich is looking at Ivan Ilyich’s corpse: “The expression on the face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly.” Those words sustained me. A long life, a fulfilling career as a schoolteacher, a merciful end (relatively speaking), three children and a devoted husband: what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly.

And there was another “right” thing, which would have satisfied Tolstoy in his late religious phase. My mother died a Christian, sure that she was going to meet her Redeemer. I don’t share that belief, but in those last months I was sometimes consoled by the thought of my parents’ consolation. My mother had chosen all the readings and the hymns for her funeral, and I admired the optimism that filled the church. We ended the service with an old Methodist rabble-rouser, “Thine Be the Glory, Risen Conquering Son,” sung to a tune from Handel’s “Judas Maccabaeus.” It was hard not to be moved when the minister said that my mother was finally at one with the Lord she had spent a lifetime serving: she was now in the glory of his presence. Could these words, beautifully improbable, possess the power entrusted to them? For a moment, it seemed as if the ugly oak coffin, sitting on trestles near the altar, were less a final box than the husk of another husk, the body now joyously unimportant, finally discarded. The ancient promise: the soul has thrown off its impediments and is flying away.

There was a moment when I came close to tears, and it involved another set of words. I feared discomposure, didn’t want to be an embarrassment (that shaming English shame). But it was not so easy when the minister read this prayer: “O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” It’s a beautiful plea—“a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” But the phrase I found most moving was “and our work is done.” Like most mothers, mine worked very hard: the never finished labor of maternity. In many ways, she was an almost stereotypically Scottish mother (the goyish version of the Jewish caricature)—passionate, narrow, judgmental, always aspiring. Her children were her artifacts, through which she created the drama of her own restless ambitions. These ambitions were moral and social. She wanted us to be morally successful, to get the best possible grades from the Great Examiner. It was my mother who told me that my untidy bedroom was unworthy of good Christian living (it showed “poor stewardship”), that I should speak not of “luck” but of “blessing,” and who was made distinctly nervous by my talk of having a beer in a pub (“only ever half a pint, I hope”; her own Scottish mother had signed the “temperance pledge,” and never drank). The emphasis, in Protestant fashion, was rigorous and corrective. There was plenty of happiness in our household, but it was rarely religious happiness. The self was viewed with suspicion, as if it were a mob of appetites and hedonism. As an adolescent, I was often told that “ self , self , self is all you think about,” and that “selfishness is your whole philosophy.” Life was understood to be constant moral work, a job that could never really be “done,” because the ideal was Jesus’ unsurpassable perfection. My mother and I quarrelled over the corpse of my religious faith. She told me that at night she prayed I would “come back into the fold.” As a young man, I lined up my pagan, life-loving heroes—Nietzsche, Camus, D. H. Lawrence, Keith Moon, Ian Dury—in glorious defensive formation: reasons to be cheerful.

Her social aspirations weren’t always compatible with her religious aspirations, though they proceeded from the same extraordinary will. The woman who wanted to assign luck to godly providence also believed deeply in the earned fortune of hard work. She understood, again in familiar Scottish fashion, that social advancement was best achieved through education. Her own origins were lower middle class, petit bourgeois: she had an uncle who was a doctor—the star of the family—but neither of her parents had gone to university. Her mother had a Scottish accent; hers came and went. She told me that she had been bullied at her fairly ordinary state school for affecting, like Margaret Thatcher, a “posh” accent a few stations above her class; it was always difficult for me to assess Mrs. Thatcher with any neutrality, because in demeanor and sheer force of will she so reminded me of my mother.

Teaching ran in my family. My father was also a teacher, and my mother’s grandfather was in charge of a small junior school, long gone, in a house situated in gentle fields outside Edinburgh. Mother remembered visiting him during the summer holidays, when, so she told me, he would coach private pupils, boys headed for expensive boarding schools in Scotland and England. Over the years, a few of these boys, suitably crammed with exam-busting power, went to Eton, and it was this knowledge that gave my mother the idea that if she had sons she would “send them to Eton.”

An absurd story, in part because women of my mother’s class were not exactly invited to think of Eton as within their reach. They had not enough money, and certainly not enough social standing. But I believe what she told me, because it sounds so magnificently like her, and because she achieved her ambition. It was financial insanity, even with the help of scholarships and bursaries, to try to send two sons to Eton and a daughter to a boarding school in Scotland, and it brought my parents to the verge of ruin. (I will never forget the moment when my father phoned me to ask if he could borrow five hundred pounds. He was sixty-two, and perilously close to being broke; I was twenty-five, had just started working for a London newspaper, and had my first regular salary.)

Eton was also unnecessary: there was a good grammar school not far from our town, a place that sent kids every year to Oxford and Cambridge. But who is defining necessity? I guess that my mother considered the unnecessary surplus of private education—the invisible social lift that a place like Eton offered—absolutely necessary. If not, why else put her family through the hardship and labor? And mostly that’s what it was. Not for me, the lucky beneficiary of my mother’s quixotic and self-abnegating striving, but for my perpetually impoverished parents. My father, a zoologist, had no more money than his modest salary from an English university; Mother taught at the local girls’ school. They needed every penny. Had they sat down, at the start of it all, and run the numbers on the back of an envelope, they would never have contemplated private education for their three children. But they believed in sacrifice, and they probably imagined that they could muddle through somehow, borne aloft by my mother’s surging triumphalism. And by extra work: in addition to his teaching, my father marked Open University and high-school exam papers in the summer vacation. And my mother, in addition to her weekday school teaching, took on a Saturday job, at a bookshop in town. There cannot be many old Etonians, in the entire history of that fabled and fortunate place, whose mothers, daunted by debt, worked a Saturday job, standing behind a cash register. When I was young, I wasn’t proud enough of her; indeed, I was probably a bit ashamed.

Yet that tremendous force of character was riddled with anxiety and doubt. Her anxiety was structurally related to her ambition; her vigilance resembled the omniscient uncertainty of immigrant parents. (The story of social class in Britain is, figuratively, one of emigration and immigration: a voyaging out of one station or place and into another. At Eton, I was a spy from the obscure North of England and the equally obscure middle classes, quickly learning the language and the signification of the surprisingly hospitable enemy.) My mother fiercely desired her children’s success, but never quite believed in it. We were like the parishioners who Jonathan Edwards warned were suspended over Hell by “a slender thread,” which an angry God might sever at any minute. Was this a theological fear that became a social one, or the other way around? Certainly, the two anxieties were inextricable: look away from the struggle, for one second, and you may fall. In our household, there could be no complacency. Mother didn’t assume I would go to Cambridge or Oxford; she didn’t assume I would get to university at all, despite indications to the contrary. If you get to university—that was the menacing conditional. Exams were sites of strenuous terror, doors that opened onto everything desirable but that could as easily be closed in one’s face.

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For the same reason, she only warily encouraged my desire to be a writer. I might just be able to pull it off, but only if I worked at it, with devotion and Protestant modesty. The profession of letters was generally admirable, but the idea of my being a writer made her anxious: How would I earn a living? What sort of social status could I ever achieve? Was writing, at bottom, even a moral activity? I tried to make my case, aware of how flimsy and amoral my ambitions sounded. Her idol was the writer and politician John Buchan, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister who rose from that relatively humble background to the heights of Oxford, later becoming a Member of Parliament and the governor-general of Canada: a man of substance. I didn’t take him very seriously as a writer; as I saw it, Buchan’s worldly success richly compensated for—and effectively obliterated—the eccentricity of his wanting to be a writer in the first place. But I understood why his example meant so much to my mother, and why she used it to push me on. John Buchan, she would intone, rose at five in the morning to write his books (not least “The Thirty-nine Steps”), before going out into the world and earning a living: “You will have to work like that if you want to achieve anything comparable.” She preferred the security of the law, or medicine (the path my brother took), or the academy (a shabby but dependable cousin to these grander professions). Her expressed hope was that when she answered the phone and a stranger asked to speak to Dr. Wood she could reply, “Which one? My husband, or one of my three children? We have four Dr. Woods in this house.” (She ended up with only two, her husband and my brother.)

In many ways, she was a natural teacher. She marched her children around English stately homes and told us the history of these places, in loud, confident tones; we sometimes feared that she might be mistaken for a docent. She took us to many museums, and to the great sites of Scottish history—Culloden, Glenfinnan, Glencoe. She certainly encouraged us; more often she goaded, enforced. But she also defended us. When my first-grade teacher reported that I could read “fluently enough, but without much comprehension,” she took it up with the school. Years later, when I got a B in an English exam (it was my best subject, so I was “supposed” to get an A), she made me sit for the exam again, the unspoken but hovering implication being that I would keep retaking it until the expected grade was achieved. My father, in his usual mild manner, went along with all these incursions and improvements.

It was a joke in our family that my mother and Muriel Spark’s great fictional creation, Miss Jean Brodie, shared a certain temperament, as well as a profession that was really a vocation. Like Miss Brodie (or like Maggie Smith’s impersonation, in the 1969 movie), my mother had a genteel Anglo-Scots accent, taught at a private girls’ school, was forceful and opinionated, had firm ideas about education, and was clearly a wonderful presence in the classroom, filling the girls’ heads with strange stories, historical gossip, unusual dates, nice prejudices, delicious facts. I know that she loved talking to her classes about her own children; over the years, I would encounter some of her former pupils, and was amused by how much these young women knew about our family life. (They invariably knew that I played the trumpet, and had been to Eton.) When my mother used John Buchan’s work ethic as a moral goad, it was hard not to hear Miss Brodie telling her girls that she was going to learn Greek: “John Stuart Mill used to rise at dawn to learn Greek at the age of five, and what John Stuart Mill could do as an infant at dawn, I too can do on a Saturday afternoon in my prime.”

In Spark’s novel, we never see Miss Brodie not performing, we never see her just at home, offstage, not being a teacher. If she was anything like my mother, that may be an authorial mercy. Though authoritative with her young pupils and with her own children, my mother was not a confident or worldly woman. The anticipation of teaching made her extremely nervous, physically sick at times. The days just before the beginning of term, after the blessing of the holidays, were always tense and furious, full of melancholy and complaint. If she was a natural teacher, she was never an easy one. One of my fondest childhood memories is of standing outside the bathroom door and listening to her on the other side, as she methodically whispered words and dates: she had a history textbook with her in the bathroom, and was cramming for class. If I had been asked, when I was a child, how my mother liked teaching, I would have replied that she hated it. And because of this knowledge my siblings and I were sometimes condescending toward my mother’s work. Today, I would probably say that she disliked it but was powerfully, helplessly drawn to it. Now that I am myself a parent, I realize how perpetually exhausted and overloaded she must have been, how every muscle and nerve must have been pulled taut: three children, a week’s work at school, an extra job on Saturdays, the constant drag of debt. And Sunday, alas, was not a day of rest, but more work—what seemed like endless churchgoing.

A few months after the funeral, I got an e-mail from one of her former students, Katrina Porteous. I knew her name, because she is a poet, who has written eloquently about the North of England, in particular about the Northumberland coast, where she lives. She was one of my mother’s great success stories—Durham High School for Girls, a brilliant history degree at Cambridge University, a Harkness Fellowship to Berkeley and Harvard, and several acclaimed books of verse since the publication of her first collection, “The Lost Music,” in 1996. Mother had spoken of Katrina, and, a year before she died, had given me one of her books. But she was five years older than me, and we hadn’t known each other. We had learned of each other’s movements, literary and otherwise, intermittently and remotely, through my mother.

Katrina had not been in touch with my parents for a long time, and was writing to ask if my mother was in good health, “and whether it might be possible to contact her.” She went on, “I’d like to thank her for the encouragement and inspiration she gave me. She really was the most wonderful teacher. I’ve recently published a new poetry collection with Bloodaxe, and would love to send it to her. Would that be possible?”

It was strange to receive this message, so soon after my mother’s funeral, as if Katrina had some eerie premonition that all was not well, as if the long silence were speaking to her, laden with significance. It was strange, too, to be communicating as two middle-aged people. In my mind, my mother’s “old girls” were still girls, as I was still my mother’s boy. What linked us was lost in our far-off childhoods; and here we were, two graying adults talking across a waste of gain and loss. I wrote to her on Christmas Day, and told her that my mother had died in July. I added that I had been moved by the tributes my father had received from former Durham High School girls. Her e-mail, I told her, was one of the most moving: because she was a writer, and because of the accident of its timing.

Katrina replied four days later. She said she was especially touched to hear from me at Christmas, when she was at home with her own parents, now in their eighties, “in the house from which I travelled to Durham High School every day as a child. One is powerfully transported back to earlier times in those moments.” She continued, “Your mother was and will always remain a profound influence in my life. She gave me the confidence to believe in myself as a ‘writer’ at a precocious age, when I had no right to think of myself as such, but every opportunity to become one. (I am still trying.) Growing up in Consett, the only child of a scientist and a lovely but utterly unbookish mother, I encountered in yours the first ‘woman of letters’ I had met. She was also kind, sensitive, principled and spirited. I adored her. I am so sorry not to have taken the opportunity when I had it to tell her how much her example has meant to me.”

Had Katrina spoken this at my mother’s funeral, I would not have stayed so calm. She, as a pupil, said what I, as a son, could not. Her words were simple and forthright and grateful, while mine would have been complicated and wary and not grateful enough. Did I want to take Katrina’s words as my own? Was I jealous of the easy literary encouragement she received? Perhaps, though surely what made her tribute so moving was precisely that it came from someone else. All sons adore their complicated mothers, in one way or another. But how powerful to encounter, from someone else, the beautifully uncomplicated statement “I adored her.” And Katrina’s message was a revelation, as if one of Miss Brodie’s girls had materialized, in order to write a letter to me. I had a sense that my mother was a good teacher, but I had no idea that she had been such an influential one, and in the very area I had chosen, and struggled to succeed in, often in the face of parental doubts. She had been not just a good teacher but a crucial literary encourager, and I had not been able to see this well enough—because as a mother her pedagogy was so fraught, so anxious and vicarious, and was such a difficult companion of her role as a parent.

Sometimes, in anger or rebellion, I had felt that it was at best a frustration and at worst a misfortune to be the son of such a possessive and sharply gifted teacher. But my father knew better. To my surprise, he had these words put on her gravestone: “A devoted mother and grandmother and dear friend of many, including her former pupils.” He had properly assessed the components of her identity, the parts of her great labor, the variety of her lifework. What was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Her work was done. ♦

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How to Deal With the Death of a Mother

Theodora Blanchfield is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and mental health writer using her experiences to help others. She holds a master's degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University and is a board member of Still I Run, a non-profit for runners raising mental health awareness. Theodora has been published on sites including Women's Health, Bustle, Healthline, and more and quoted in sites including the New York Times, Shape, and Marie Claire.

Daniel B. Block, MD, is an award-winning, board-certified psychiatrist who operates a private practice in Pennsylvania.

EMS-FORSTER-PRODUCTIONS / Getty Images

The death of one's mother is one of the hardest things most people will go through in life. Whether you two had a great relationship, a strained relationship, or something in between, this event will likely have a significant impact on your life.

In one survey, between 20% to 30% of participants stated that losing a loved one was the most traumatic event in their lives—even among those who had reported 11 or more traumatic events over the course of their life. For that group, 22% still ranked the loss of a loved one as their most traumatic event.

Why the Death of One's Mother Is So Hard

Whether you are grieving the death of a mother who birthed you or a mother (or mother figure) who raised you, you are either grieving the bond you had or the bond you wish you had.

John Bowlby , a British psychologist, believed that children are born with a drive to seek attachment with their caregivers. While others before him believed that attachment was food-motivated, he believed that attachment formed based on nurturing and responsiveness.

Therefore, it makes sense that grieving that attachment—or lack thereof—would be incredibly difficult.

A mother is such an integral part of our lives in our society, in part because we are not raised in communities with a variety of caretakers,” says Liz Schmitz-Binnall, PsyD, who has done research on mother loss and resilience.

Her research specifically focused on adult women who had lost their mothers as children and found that they scored lower on resilience than those who had not lost mothers as children.

She says she sees many people who didn’t have a good relationship with their mother but are surprised at the strength of their grief reaction following their mother’s death.

How a Mother's Death Can Affect Someone

While mother loss differs from other losses in some key ways, some of the same effects that come from any kind of loss or bereavement are present. Some thoughts and feelings typical of grief:

• Difficulty concentrating

Less known is that grief can show up physically , in addition to the more-known mental or spiritual indications. In your body, grief may look like:

• Digestive problems
• Energy loss
• Nervousness
• Sleep disturbances
• Weight changes 

Risk of Psychiatric Disorders

In others, however, a loss of a loved one may activate mental health disorders even in those with no history of mental illness. One study found an increased risk for the following disorders, in addition to discovering a new link between mania and loss:

• Major depressive disorder
• Panic disorder
• Posttraumatic disorder

Specifically in adults over the age of 70: 

• Manic episodes
• Alcohol use disorders
• Generalized anxiety disorder 

What Is Complex Bereavement?

All grief is complex, but upon losing someone, many people are able to slowly readjust to their daily routines (or create new routines). Mental health professionals may call it complicated or complex bereavement if it has been at least a year and your daily function is still significantly impacted. 

(Note: the current clinical name is Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder, but the American Psychiatric Association recently approved a change of name to Prolonged Grief Disorder. )

Some of the signs of prolonged grief are the following symptoms still significantly impacting your daily functioning after 12 months:

• Difficulty moving on with life 
• Emotional numbness 
• Thoughts that life is meaningless
• A marked sense of disbelief about the death

In one study, 65% of participants with complicated grief had thought about wanting to die themselves after losing a loved one. So if you, or someone you know who is grieving, is having suicidal thoughts, know that you aren’t alone and this is not uncommon for what you are going through.

If you are having suicidal thoughts but feel you can keep yourself safe, you should talk to a mental health professional. If the thoughts become unbearable and you are in imminent danger of hurting yourself, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support from a counselor who is trained in this.

How to Heal from the Death of a Mother

When loss is fresh, it feels like you will feel that way forever—but you won’t.

“If you allow yourself to grieve, and if others allow you to grieve,” says Schmitz-Binnall, “you will probably notice that the really intense feelings will lessen during the first few months after the death of your mother.”

She says that while most people intuitively realize it can be hard to lose a mother, they don’t realize quite how hard it can be—or how long it can take. “People in our society often think we can move through grief in a month and be done with it.”

And even if we don’t acknowledge those feelings, that doesn’t mean they aren’t existing and impacting our lives anyway.

Liz Schmitz-Binnall

Too many people push us to ‘get on with life’ too soon after a significant loss. We need to be able to grieve, but...we also need to adjust our expectations of ourselves.

Some of her tips:

• Feel the feelings
• Or let yourself feel nothing
• Talk about your feelings
• Spend time by yourself
• Spend time with others
• Talk to her (in whatever way that means for you and your beliefs—it may also include writing letters to her.)

Talk to a Professional

Therapy can be helpful after a major loss like this. While most therapists will have worked with grief, as it's one of the most universal life experiences, there are also therapists who specialize in working with clients with grief. To find one, search for grief therapist or grief counselor in your area.

Get Help Now

We've tried, tested, and written unbiased reviews of the best online therapy programs including Talkspace, BetterHelp, and ReGain. Find out which option is the best for you.

Find a Community

Since grief can feel like such an isolating experience, many find comfort in support groups, whether they be in-person or an online support group. If you are a woman who has lost a mother, you may be interested in the Motherless Daughters community , which is both virtual and has offline meetups.

A Word From Verywell

The death of a mother is one of the most traumatic things someone can experience. If you are currently grieving your mother, give yourself grace. Whether you had a good relationship or not with her, there will always be grief associated with either the actual relationship you had or the one you wish you had.

Hasin DS, Grant BF. The national epidemiologic survey on alcohol and related conditions (Nesarc) waves 1 and 2: review and summary of findings .  Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol . 2015;50(11):1609-1640. doi:10.1007/s00127-015-1088-0

Schmitz-Binnall E. Resilience in adult women who experienced early mother loss .  All Antioch University Dissertations & Theses .

• Keyes KM, Pratt C, Galea S, McLaughlin KA, Koenen KC, Shear MK. The burden of loss: unexpected death of a loved one and psychiatric disorders across the life course in a national study .  AJP . 2014;171(8):864-871. doi:10.4088/jcp.v67n0209
• Szanto K, Shear MK, Houck PR, et al. Indirect self-destructive behavior and overt suicidality in patients with complicated grief.   J Clin Psychiatry . 2006;67(2):233-239. doi:10.4088/jcp.v67n0209

By Theodora Blanchfield, AMFT Theodora Blanchfield is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and mental health writer using her experiences to help others. She holds a master's degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University and is a board member of Still I Run, a non-profit for runners raising mental health awareness. Theodora has been published on sites including Women's Health, Bustle, Healthline, and more and quoted in sites including the New York Times, Shape, and Marie Claire.

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“Those we love never truly leave us… There are things that death cannot touch.” ~J.K. Rowling

Growing up, I was glued to my mother’s hip, ready to follow her wherever the world took us.

I used to sleep at her feet on the floor of her law school lecture halls while hundreds of students poured over scores of legal terms and historical court cases.

When I was six, we packed our bags to jet off on her semester abroad in Paris, and at fourteen, I stood beside her as she battled stage III breast cancer.

After my stepfather passed away, I became her main source of emotional support during sleepless nights of grief , and helped her raise my twelve-year-old brother.

When the periods of illness and trauma subsided, I supported her decision to buy a flat in Paris, despite many family friends misunderstanding her creativity and her courageous leaps of (sometimes irresponsible) faith.

We journeyed to the heights of Machu Picchu, through the narrow alleys of Fez, Morocco, and camped in the jungles of the Amazon.

If she wanted to explore a foreign destination, I was her wing woman.

If I was overwhelmed by the insecurities of young adulthood, she served as my rock and confidence.

My mother and I were interwoven, two threads running through the same stitch, navigating tragedies of life together. When she died this year, I felt betrayed, but began to search for meaning.

While there are moments when I feel stranded and abandoned, terrified of the unknown future, I am beginning to uncover lessons that she left behind. This is what I’ve learned from my mother and through her death thus far.

1. Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Reach out to strangers.

When my mother and I would travel to different countries together, she always conversed with strangers. She would tell our life story and I was often embarrassed. I figured that people thought she shared too much and was inappropriate.

I now recognize the importance of the connections my mother made. After she died, I received hundreds of messages, emails, and phone calls from people all over the world. They called to offer their condolences, but mainly to share how much my mother had meant to them. Whether she offered legal advice or simply shared a story, they gushed to me about how she had changed their lives .

When she first decided to buy an apartment in Paris after she went into remission for cancer, she contacted the writers of her favorite blogs and instantly began to form a French community. They spent hours eating carefully selected cheeses and sipping rosé while discussing favorite Parisian restaurants. These are the people I now call my French aunts and uncles.

What I judged as my mom making a fool of herself was her way of sharing her strength and charm. This taught me to step forward into fear and to not let self-criticism govern anything I do. Now, I speak up. I talk to strangers. I extend myself and because of it, I receive.

2. If you don’t like something, own it.

When we let go of shame and our fear of judgment, we free ourselves to do what we want.

After my mom finished her last round of chemo, she made a vow to stop worrying as much about what others thought. From there on out, she did what she wanted.

Life is too short to do things for approval or to avoid conflict. If you don’t like where you are, get up and leave. If you don’t like what the waiter brought you, order something else. If you aren’t happy with what someone says, respectfully let them know. You must be your own advocate.

The more honest I am, the more I love. I have a difficult time being honest when I feel negative and vulnerable. Since my mother’s death, I practice expressing myself even if another’s response isn’t what I imagine. If it goes well, I only feel closer to the person I am honest with. If we don’t see eye-to-eye, then I feel closer and stronger within myself.

3. Be willing to spend money on experiences.

My mother and her family grew up extremely poor. They immigrated to Los Angeles from Taiwan and lived in my grandfather’s assigned student housing at UCLA, squeezing five people into a tiny apartment for two.

Despite her childhood poverty, instead of gripping onto money earned, she believed in spending to create incredible experiences. She always paid for friends to join us for family events and dinners, in order to include all who were important to me.

Dining out at different restaurants was one of her greatest pleasures, and she told each guest to order whatever they wanted. She believed that good quality food meant good quality life. She planned wild trips abroad and made sure to include strange excursions so that the memories would live with us.

Don’t worry about saving every penny. I believe that if you have the means to let go, then let go. There’s nothing like sharing laughter with a friend over a good meal, or the adventure of taking a last minute road trip to a nearby state. If you have the money and you can afford to relax with it, spend it. Spend it, because you can’t take it with you to the grave.

4. Don’t make impulsive decisions when you are feeling extremely emotional.

Grief leaves me exhausted on most days. One minute I’m grounded, feeling confident in my ability to move forward slowly, and the next I am completely doubled over with fear and pessimism, a blubbering mess of tears. Combine this with the pressure of Estate legal dramas and you have a cocktail for extremely reactive impulses.

These feelings have taught me a lot about the wisdom in pausing. Even if someone wants an immediate response from you, it’s your job to make sure that you take care of yourself first.

If a situation doesn’t feel right, pause. If you aren’t sure, pause and consult multiple people. No matter what anyone instructs or insists, you have a right to tend to your mental sanity and clarity first. Whether this takes a couple of hours, days or weeks, is entirely up to you.

Wait for feelings and situations to settle, for time to pass, and for more answers to reveal themselves to you. You don’t have to do anything right away. Your job is to take care of yourself and more will unfold on its own.

5. Don’t overthink or rationalize your way out of everything.

Even though it’s always okay to take time and ride emotions out, you may never be entirely comfortable enough to make the “right” or “perfect” decision.

There is something to be said about risk and trust in one’s intuition. This will lead you into some incredible experiences that might not happen with rational thought.

If I always waited to feel safe then I wouldn’t have spent four nights in Prague where I exchanged life stories at a bar with a French man, received advice from a writer for Vice magazine, and connected with a girl from the Netherlands who gave me Art Nouveau history lessons during our sightseeing ventures.

My rule of thumb is this:

If there’s high long-term risk involved, such as decisions on investments or legal issues, or if it can strongly impact other people’s lives, then let yourself breathe, think, and consult someone else before coming to any conclusion.

If there isn’t much long-term risk involved but you are scared because you don’t know the logistics of everything, you can’t tell the future, and you want everything to be in your control, then take a leap of faith. You can always change your mind.

I spent the past four years afraid to change my mind, afraid to disappoint others, and afraid of ridicule. I am now learning to empower myself, by allowing room for change and the freedom to decide differently.

I may have said no to something yesterday that now feels like a good idea, and that’s okay. You are allowed to alter the path.

Many of my mother’s closest friends told her they didn’t think it was a financially sound or responsible decision to buy an apartment in Paris. She did it anyway and because of this, I was able to witness some of the happiest moments of her life, in her fifties, in the apartment of her dreams, in the last few years before she died.

6. Your story and talents are needed.

My mother’s friends call me to confess how amazed they were by her willingness to help.

“No matter what, I could always count on your mom. She would be in a hospital bed looking into legal matters in regards to my divorce, just to give me advice.”

“Two weeks before your mother died, she was researching how I could deal with my US Green card from Croatia. She always wanted to help.”

Even if you think your experience isn’t valuable, it is. My mother never felt like she knew or accomplished enough, but she used all of her life experience and knowledge to help others.

You never know when what you give will be returned. Because of all of the support my mom gave, I have an international community of people who want to support me.

There is always a friend or acquaintance who can benefit from your support, or someone who wants to know that another person has gotten through what they’re going through now. Don’t dim your light. Don’t remain silent. Share yourself and recognize the value in your individuality.

7. Find a little thing to be grateful for in each moment.

After my mom died, many of my illusions and fantasies were shattered. I realized how disconnected from reality I could be, absorbed in my world of false fear and anxieties.

This single moment is all there is to live. Longing for the future or the past is indulging a mental fantasy.

Find a “best thing” in each moment even if it’s small. Recognize at least one thing that you are grateful for in order to practice bringing yourself back to where you are. This will help you to feel the joy in the mundane and the preciousness in the practicalities of life.

8. Do not take every piece of advice everyone gives you.

Try not to let the common sense or “better sense” of others confuse your own intuition. Gather opinions if you are uncertain about a decision, but return back to your own internal guidance system. Allow others’ advice to help strengthen your intuition by tossing out what doesn’t resonate and hold onto what does. This will help you get clear about what is really true for you.

9. “Stuff” doesn’t matter; connection does.

My mother worked hard and rewarded herself through shopping. I’d frequently come home to new gadgets. About a week after she died, a jellyfish tank was delivered to our house. Now I have a jellyfish tank with no jellyfish, and no clue what to do with it.

Since going through many of my mom’s personal items, I’ve recognized how insignificant material things are. She liked to buy interesting things, but mainly so that they could be shared. She sent spices and food ingredients to people in other states because she wanted them to try a new recipe that she discovered.

On the Paris Home Hunters International episode that we starred in, she said to her friends in LA, “I’m also buying this property so you guys can now have a place to enjoy in Paris too”.

The point of life is to share it. It’s not the objects that are valuable; it’s connection. Having a room full of things cannot make up for a lack of love or community. Spend money to enhance everyone’s experience and if you can’t do that, focus on the qualities to give that actually matter, like love, presence in conversation, communication, and your time.

10. You’re never too old to do something new and completely different.

My mom constantly wanted to know, learn, and be more. For her, getting a PhD in molecular biology and being an accomplished lawyer wasn’t enough. She also wanted to be a dancer, and fulfilled this by dancing three to four times a week at her favorite ballet studio for thirty-seven years. Then, at the age of fifty, she decided that she wanted to share her life story with the world and in order to do so, she had to complete a master’s degree in Creative Writing.

Many people thought my mom was irrational and wanted to do too much for her own good, but she marched forward and kept achieving.

I believe that it’s best to narrow down what is most important to you to accomplish. Some of us have a list of things we want to master, but it’s best to begin with one goal and to give that goal your consistent attention.

There is something admirable about committing and seeing something to the end. Try not to give up halfway if it gets tough. Like my mother, push on until you get that degree, but don’t ever tell yourself it’s too late to step into the dream.

11. Life isn’t about fixing yourself; it’s about letting yourself love and be loved.

I spent many years trying to figure out how I could “heal” from emotional trauma only to realize that there will be no final “fixed” product of me. I am constantly evolving, and what I believe has changed me for the better is that I’ve learned to wait and to fully feel my emotions through.

If I want to react out of anger, if I want to respond quickly to someone’s text or opinions, I don’t. Instead, I pause, I express what’s coming up for me either out loud to myself, or to my mentor, and I give it a day before proceeding.

Sometimes I scream in my car, bawl my eyes out while clutching my dog, or I curse my life circumstances. Will I ever stop having these reactions or emotions? No, and at one point I thought that “healed” meant exactly that. I thought being healed meant finally being rid of these impulses or consuming moments, but I now know that isn’t true.

It’s my ability to fully embrace and ride them out, to hold myself and say “yes” to those painful moments that makes me “healed.” I choose myself in my entirety now, with all of my pain, reactions, desires, and emotions.

Life is about putting yourself out there. How much can you continue to risk battle after battle? This is what is beautiful. It is the resilience of growth and continuing on.

Even after all of the grief I’ve endured, I always try to open my heart after it closes in fear. I can confidently say that I am proud of my willingness to show up time and time again, even in often messy and uncertain ways.

It is my way of showing the world that I am here to receive the fortune, the ease, and the joy to come because I am willing to endure the difficult.

About Georgianna Chiang

Georgianna Chiang is a recent Fine Arts Graduate from UCLA. She has been photographing her travels around the globe for nine years and is on her way to finishing her 200 hr Yoga RYT. You can view her work at her website  georgiannachiang.com,  her most recent and casual creations are found on Instagram , and her writing is published on her blog  and at  instagram.com/womanandwolves.

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For many people the loss of their mother is harder than the loss of their father. Not because they loved them any less, but the bond between mother and child is a special one. Your mother gave birth to you. She fed you and nurtured you throughout your childhood. The mother is one who tends to have the most responsibility for the care of the child, and is at home with the children more often than the father in most cases.

Your mother is the one you turn to when you break up with your first boyfriend or girlfriend, when you need advice or when you have a problem. Your mother is not only your greatest advocate, she is part of you. You might even look like her. She might be your best friend as well as your mother. It is like losing a part of yourself.

No-one is ever as interested in everything you do as your mother, or as proud of you.

Grief for your mother is one of the hardest things we face in life

Mothers tend to hold families together. They are the ones who keep in touch with all the family members and spread the news around. They are the ones who arrange get togethers, keep the family home together, and generally are the hub of family life. Once the mother is gone, the family either fragments or you have to step in to her role as the main communicator and organiser.

Even if you didn't have the perfect relationship with your mother, her loss can be just as devastating. You no longer have the chance to put things right, to hear her say I love you, or I'm proud of you.

Although the loss of a parent is a normal part of growing up, and it happens to everyone, it is no less devastating. But many people are surprised at how much it affects them. Their friends and family perhaps won't realise just how big a blow it can be, especially if they were old or ill for a long time and it was expected.

Grief for the death of a mother is one of the hardest things we face in life, but nearly all of us have to face it at some time. Everyone's grief is different, and we all have our own ways of coping. We may feel some or all of the emotions of grief at times, or we might just feel numb and blank.

When I lost my own mother I went into denial.  It was easy to bury what had happened because I was living far away and had two young children to cope with.  Have a read of my story about how I failed to grieve properly here. 

The importance of support after the loss of your mother

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Read my article on Men and Grief for more understanding. 

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In 1964, Simone de Beauvoir, arguably one of the greatest writers of 20th century Europe, published an account of the final 6 weeks of her mother’s life. It is a beautifully written, raw, honest, and powerful evocation of that period from the viewpoint of a relative. Its themes are universal—love, ambivalence in family ties, loss, and bereavement. Given that the events preceded the modern palliative care movement, reflections are made on differences in medical practice since the book’s publication.

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https://doi.org/10.1136/jmh.2004.000163

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A 78 year old woman has two daughters. She has been widowed for 24 years. She begins to complain of anorexia and intermittent abdominal pain. The symptoms abate. One day she collapses at her home. Her left femur is fractured. She is admitted to hospital. The gastrointestinal symptoms return. After a series of investigations, she is discovered to have a sarcoma involving the small intestine. Soon after, she develops, in rapid succession, an acute bowel obstruction, ruptured viscus, and peritonitis. A laparotomy is performed, pus is drained, and the tumour resected. Complications ensue and she dies four weeks after the operation. At no stage is either her diagnosis or prognosis discussed with her. The time is 1963, the place is Paris, and one of her daughters is Simone de Beauvoir.

Simone de Beauvoir was a leading French writer, philosopher, and feminist. She wrote The Second Sex , a classic text of feminist literature and several volumes of autobiography. The autobiographical volumes include Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1958; The Prime of Life, 1960; Force of Circumstance, 1963 and All Said and Done, 1972. De Beauvoir also wrote fiction (perhaps the best known is The Mandarins , published in 1954) philosophy, travel books, and essays, some of them book length, the best known of which is The Second Sex, 1949. A year after her mother’s death she wrote A Very Easy Death . 1 This book is an extremely personal, indeed intimate account of the death of a woman by her daughter. Madame de Beauvoir was abruptly plunged into a cascade of illness, debility, and finally death and we accompany all parties through the frustrations, false hopes, turmoil, and duplicity of her last weeks. At its heart, the book is about a mother and daughter. But it is also a reflection on suffering, family, faith, and mortality. The insights it gives us as health professionals are fascinating—here we have one of the great minds of 20th Century Europe struggling through, and recording with aching honesty, the terminal phase of her own mother’s life. This paper reflects on the book, but also on medical practice and the changes brought to that practice by the modern palliative care movement.

The book is a narrative and can be read as such. Through that narrative, however, lie several universal themes. They include:

The role of doctors.

Information giving and “betrayal”.

The role of time and change.

Love of life and grief do not respect age.

The power of ritual.

THE DOCTORS

The depictions of doctors in this book are a study in contrasts. When Mme de Beauvoir collapses at home, a doctor in the same set of apartments assists. Her local doctor takes great umbrage that he was not personally called and refuses to see her. A neighbour is appalled: “After the shock and after her night in the hospital, your mother needed comforting by her usual doctor. He wouldn’t listen to a word of it” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 12).

Various hospital doctors are involved with her care and two are described well—Drs P and N. Their styles and capacity for communication are very different. When she develops an acute bowel obstruction, Dr N, who is described as a resuscitation expert, is summoned. When Simone arrives she finds her sister in tears:

“But what’s the good of tormenting her, if she is dying? Let her die in peace”, said Poupette, in tears…Dr N passed by me; I stopped him. White coat, white cap: a young man with an unresponsive face. “Why this tube? Why torture Maman, since there is no hope?” He gave me a withering look. “I am doing what has to be done”. He opened the door. After a moment a nurse told me to come in… “Would you like me to have left that in her stomach?” said N aggressively, showing me the jar full of a yellowish substance. I did not reply. In the corridor he said “At dawn she scarcely had four hours left. I have brought her back to life.” I did not venture to ask him “For what?” (De Beauvoir, 1 pp 27–8)

Later she describes him as “smart, athletic, energetic, infatuated with technique…he had resuscitated Maman with great zeal; but for him she was the subject of an interesting experiment and not a person. He frightened us” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 52). The doing what had to done was coupled with a mechanical, tactless, and detached manner. Late in the illness Simone records:

When she opened her eyes during the day they had an unseeing, glassy look and I thought, “This time it is the end.” She went to sleep again. I asked N, “Is this the end?”“Oh, no!” he said in a half-pitying, half triumphant tone, “she has been revived too well for that!” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 76)

And again later she narrates:

I spent that night beside her. She was as much afraid of the nightmares as she was of pain. When Dr N came she begged, “Let them inject me as often as necessary”…“Ha, ha, you are going to become a real drug-addict!” said N in a bantering tone. “I can supply you with morphia at very interesting rates.” His expression hardened and he said coldly in my direction, “There are two points upon which a self-respecting doctor does not compromise—drugs and abortion” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 79).

It is tempting to view Dr N as a caricature but de Beauvoir does not write in that fashion and otherwise appears to be recording extremely faithfully.

In contrast, Dr P is altogether warmer. Simone states : “I liked Dr P. He did not assume consequential airs; he talked to Maman as though she were a human being and he answered my questions willingly.” 1 When asked, he promised the sisters that their mother would not suffer. Later, after a very poor day of pain they confront him again:

He came and we seized upon him. “You promised she wouldn’t suffer.” “She will not suffer”. He pointed out that if they had wanted to prolong her life at any cost and give her an extra week of martyrdom, another operation would have been necessary, together with transfusions, and resuscitating injections…But this abstention was not enough for us. We asked P, “Will morphia stop the great pains?” “She will be given the doses that are called for.” He had spoken firmly and he gave us confidence. We grew calmer (De Beauvoir, 1 p 82).

“We grew calmer”—would that this were the epitaph of all our careers!

Communication is a crucial part of medical practice. Currently, communication forms part of undergraduate curricula in many countries. One hopes that modern health professionals respond more sensitively to patients and relatives than was the experience of de Beauvoir. Nevertheless, poor, abrupt, and inadequate communication remains an issue. As Lesley Fallowfield, a leading expert in psycho-oncology, states: “many doctors invest considerable energy cultivating a posture of cool detachment on the grounds that it represents the more professional type of response expected of doctors. Unfortunately patients and relatives can view this detached attitude as evasive, cold, and unsympathetic, occurring at just the time that they are in much need of empathy and support.” 2

The other issue pertinent to modern practice is pain and its management. Mme De Beauvoir pleads with the doctor: “Let me be injected as often as necessary”. This entreaty may indeed be a template of the modern approach to analgesia: that pain relief is best provided by regular analgesia with additional (or “breakthrough”) doses when required. In the narrative, the issue of analgesia was further complicated by the fear of addiction. Fear of opioid use continues into the modern era and remains one of the many barriers to adequate analgesia. Concern about opioid addiction, tolerance, and dependence plus unrealistic expectations about precipitating adverse side effects all recur in modern surveys of the attitudes of doctors and nurses to opioids. 3, 4 †

Although certainly not universal, opiophobia is coupled with opioignorance, with survey respondents repeatedly acknowledging that they have received insufficient training in or exposure to pain management. 5

INFORMATION GIVING AND “BETRAYAL”

Throughout the book, Simone is troubled, and often grievously so, by a sense of betrayal of her mother. Firstly, by allowing the operation to occur, and secondly, in being complicit in withholding the diagnosis from her. In the context of the operation, Simone captures perfectly the sense of responsibility relatives feel in these situations, especially when the choices are viewed as extraordinarily bleak:

And that evening too, as I looked at her arm, into which [the intravenous fluid] was flowing a life that was no longer anything but sickness and torment, I asked myself why ?At the nursing home I did not have time to go into it... But when I reached home, all the sadness and horror of these last days dropped upon me with all its weight. And I too had a cancer eating into me—remorse. “Don’t let them operate on her.” And I had not prevented anything. Often, hearing of sick people undergoing a long martyrdom, I had felt indignant at the apathy of their relatives. “For my part, I should kill him.” At the first trial I had given in: beaten by the ethics of society, I had abjured my own. “No,” Sartre said to me. “You were beaten by technique: and that was fatal.” Indeed it was. One is caught up in the wheels and dragged along, powerless in the face of specialists’ diagnoses, their forecasts, their decisions. The patient becomes their property: get him away from them if you can! There were only two things to choose between on that Wednesday—operating or euthanasia. Maman, vigorously resuscitated, and having a strong heart, would have stood out against intestinal stoppage for a long while and she would have lived through hell, for the doctors would have refused euthanasia…A race had begun between death and torture. I asked myself how one manages to go on living when someone you love has called out to you “Have pity on me” in vain (De Beauvoir, 1 pp 56–8).

Neither the diagnosis nor the prognosis is ever discussed with Mme de Beauvoir. It is a duplicity that is initiated by the doctors but thereafter everyone is complicit. For Simone it constitutes a betrayal. After the operation they ask the surgeon: “But what shall we say to Maman when the disease starts again, in another place?” “Don’t worry about that. We shall find something to say. We always do. And the patient always believes it” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 45). Even when her mother asks the question: “Do you think I shall come through?” Simone scolds her (De Beauvoir, 1 p 65) and immediately regrets it:

My unfair harshness wrung my heart. At the time the truth was crushing her and when she needed to escape from it by talking, we were condemning her to silence; we forced her to say nothing about her anxieties and to suppress her doubts: as it had so often happened in her life, she felt both guilty and misunderstood. But we had no choice: hope was her most urgent need (De Beauvoir, 1 p 66).

Even though Simone never betrayed this conspiracy of silence she railed against it and clearly saw what openness could bring and what silence could lead to:

…all this odious deception! Maman thought that we were with her, next to her; but we were already placing ourselves on the far side of her history. An evil all-knowing spirit, I could see behind the scenes, while she was struggling, far, far away, in human loneliness. Her desperate eagerness to get well, her patience, her courage—it was all deceived. She would not be paid for any of her sufferings at all... Despairingly, I suffered a transgression that was mine without my being responsible for it and one that I could never expiate (De Beauvoir, 1 p 58).

This silence is maintained and preserved to such an extent that in the very hour of their mother’s death, Simone’s sister is compelled to respond to an explicit entreaty by her mother:

…she murmured in a rather thick voice, “We must…keep…back…desh.”“We must keep back the desk ?”“No,” said Maman. “Death.” Stressing the word death very strongly. She added, “I don’t want to die”.“But you are better now!” [said Poupette] (De Beauvoir, 1 p 88).

Professional and public attitudes to non-disclosure of diagnosis and collusion between relatives and health professionals have, in many countries, changed significantly since the events narrated in this book. There is clear evidence that most North American and European patients wish to be informed about a diagnosis of cancer, 6– 8 and health professionals have changed their practice to reflect these expectations. There is also, however, significant evidence from other cultures that suggests that non-disclosure and collusion with families are common practice. Some cultures perceive the disclosure as a harmful act, violating the principle of non-maleficence. 9, 10 Brurea et al surveyed palliative care specialists in French speaking Europe, South America (Argentina and Brazil) and Canada. All the clinicians said they would personally like to be told the truth about their own terminal illness. Whereas 93% of Canadians physicians thought the majority of their patients would wish to know, only 26% of European and 18% of South American clinicians thought so. 11 Many Chinese families object to telling the patient a “bad” diagnosis or prognosis and doctors in mainland China often inform the family members instead of the patient. 12, 13

PALLIATIVE CARE

A further dilemma reflected upon in the book is the stark choice de Beauvoir sees confronting her mother, between “operating or euthanasia” and then, postoperatively, “between death and torture”. In retrospect, a third alternative was palliative care. The events of the narrative preceded the modern palliative care movement. Indeed, it was precisely clinical situations such as this narrative reveals, and the recognition of the inadequacy of symptom control and end of life care that motivated the pioneers of that movement. That movement’s founding and primary aim is to care for all people with life threatening illnesses and their families. The most recent definition of palliative care by the World Health Organization includes the objective of “early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual”. Palliative care, as practised today would have been perfect for the situation described: better symptom control, anticipation of worsening symptoms, attention to the psychosocial and spiritual needs of the patient, and assisting the relatives in the vigil leading to the patient’s death. Indeed, this book would provide a useful teaching exercise in palliative care education. Among many questions that the narrative raises, one that could be posed to students would be: how would a modern palliative care service deal with the challenges faced by the patient and her family?

TIME AND CHANGE

Mme de Beauvoir had an unhappy childhood. She brought at least some of that unhappiness into her role as a mother. Simone describes her mother as difficult, possessive, and overbearing. “Her love for us was deep as well as exclusive, and the pain it caused us as we submitted to it was a reflection of her own conflicts…With regard to us, she often displayed a cruel unkindness that was more thoughtless than sadistic: her desire was not to cause us unhappiness but to prove her own power to herself” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 40). Simone pictures her as an unhappy woman who struggled with both her desires and her daughters:

Thinking against oneself often bears fruit; but with my mother it was another question again—she lived against herself. She had appetites in plenty: she spent all her strength in repressing them and she underwent this denial in anger. In her childhood her body, her heart and her mind had been squeezed into an armour of principles and prohibitions. She had been taught to pull the laces hard and tight herself. A full blooded, spirited woman lived on inside her, but a stranger to herself, deformed and mutilated (De Beauvoir, 1 pp 42–3).

However, a strange thing happens. As Simone visits her mother she notices changes in her mother, changes in herself, and finally an outpouring of love and grief that is both powerful and unexpected. For the first period of her illness, Mme de Beauvoir remains difficult and emotionally demanding, but then, vulnerable and recovering, glimpses of another self emerge:

What touched our hearts that day was the way she noticed the slightest agreeable sensation: it was as though, at the age of seventy eight, she were waking afresh to the miracle of living. While the nurse was settling her pillows the metal of a tube touched her thigh—“It’s cool! How pleasant!” She breathed in the smell of eau de Cologne and talcum powder—“How good it smells”…She asked us to raise the curtain that was covering the window and she looked at the golden leaves of the trees. “How lovely. I shouldn’t see that from my flat!” She smiled. And both of us, my sister and I, had the same thought: it was that same smile that had dazzled us when we were little children, the radiant smile of a young woman. Where had it been between then and now? (De Beauvoir, 1 p 50)

The softening continues.

Her illness had quite broken the shell of her prejudices and her pretensions: perhaps because she no longer needed these defences. No question of renunciation or sacrifice any more: her first duty was to get better and so to look after herself; giving herself up to her own wishes and her own pleasures with no holding back, she was at last freed from resentment. Her restored beauty and her recovered smile expressed her inner harmony and, on this deathbed, a kind of happiness (De Beauvoir, 1 p 60).

Finally, after days of sitting with her mother Simone reflects:

I had grown very fond of this dying woman. As we talked in the half darkness I assuaged an old unhappiness; I was renewing the dialogue that had been broken off during my adolescence and that our differences and our likenesses had never allowed us to take up again. And the early tenderness that I thought dead for ever came to life again, since it had become possible for it to slip into simple words and actions (De Beauvoir, 1 p 76).

GRIEF AND LOVE OF LIFE DO NOT NECESSARILY RESPECT AGE

Mme de Beauvoir is 78 years old. Her daughter is content, almost as a reflex, to initially consider this is “of an age to die”. Age, however, is irrelevant. Her mother was aware of this much earlier than her daughter. Simone writes of her mother: “She believed in heaven, but in spite of her age, her feebleness, and her poor health, she clung ferociously to this world, and she had an animal dread of death” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 14).

It was that ferocity that her daughter came to understand. Her mother’s loss she came to see as a form of defeat where time and age were irrelevant. After the funeral she reflects on how empty is the sentiment “they are of an age to die”:

The sadness of the old; their banishment: most of them do not think that this age has yet come for them. I too made use of this cliché, and that when I was referring to my mother. I did not understand that one might sincerely weep for a relative, a grandfather aged seventy or more. If I met a woman of fifty overcome with sadness because she had just lost her mother, I thought her neurotic: we are all mortal; at eighty you are quite old enough to be one of the dead…But it is not true. You do not die from being born, nor from having lived, nor from old age. You die from something . The knowledge that because of her age my mother’s life must soon come to an end did not lessen the horrible surprise: she had sarcoma. Cancer, thrombosis, pneumonia: it is as violent and unforeseen as an engine stopping in the middle of the sky... There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation (De Beauvoir, 1 pp 105–6).

In one sense, the book is a daily description of a vigil—a 6 weeks long wait by their mother’s bedside. For both Simone and her sister the vigil becomes their reality. As doctors we have all witnessed this aspect of the dying process—the daily visits by relatives and friends, the harried looks as they search for any changes, however small or transient in their loved one, the sleepless nights either at home or next to the patient in the hospital or hospice, the whispered family discussions, the long periods of inactivity, the shared silence. De Beauvoir captures well the heightened sense of reality that comes with the intensity of the wait and also the sense that, throughout this long period, nothing else matters:

The world has shrunk to the size of her room: when I crossed Paris in a taxi I saw nothing more than a stage with extras walking on it. My real life took place at her side, and it had only one aim—protecting her. In the night the slightest sound seemed huge to me—the rustling of Mademoiselle Cournot’s paper, the purring of the electric motor. I walked in stockinged feet in the daytime. The coming and going on the staircase, and overhead, shattered my ears. The din of the wheeled tables that went by on the landing…loaded with clattering metal trays, cans and bowls, seemed to me scandalous” (De Beauvoir, 1 p 76).

Equally, de Beauvoir depicts how her view of her world, even outside the confines of the hospital, has changed irrevocably:

I had the feeling of play acting wherever I went. When I spoke to an old friend …the liveliness of my voice seemed to me phoney: when with perfect truth I observed “That was very good” to the manager of a restaurant, I had the impression of telling a white lie. At other times it was the outside world that seemed to be acting a part. I saw a hotel as a nursing-home; I took the chambermaids for nurses; and the restaurant waitresses too—they were making me follow a course of treatment that consisted of eating. I looked at people with a fresh eye, obsessed by the complicated system of tubes that was concealed under their clothing. Sometimes I myself turned into a lift-and-force pump or into a sequence of pockets and guts (De Beauvoir, 1 pp 74–5).

THE RITUAL OF DEATH

Once their mother had died the shock came in waves, and often unexpectedly, for both of her daughters. Returning to the hospital on the morning after her death they face an empty room. Their world for the past weeks was literally bare:

Once again we climbed the stairs, opened the two doors: the bed was empty…on the whiteness of the sheet there was nothing. Foreseeing is not knowing: the shock was as violent as though we had not expected it at all (De Beauvoir, 1 p 96).

Throughout the book de Beauvoir honestly concedes that a purely material or rationalist approach to the dying and death of her mother neither does nor should apply. Even with the immediate aftermath of her mother’s death, Simone finds regret:

But I did reproach myself for having abandoned her body too soon. She, and my sister too, said “A corpse no longer means anything”. Yet it was her flesh, her bones, and for some time still her face. With my father I had stayed by him until the time he became a mere thing for me: I tamed the transition between presence and the void. With Maman I went away almost immediately after having kissed her, and that was why it seemed to me that it was still her that was lying, all alone, in the cold of the mortuary (De Beauvoir, 1 p 97).

This sense of the unique, the individual, even the sacred extends beyond their mother’s body to simple, even prosaic objects:

As we looked at her straw bag, filled with balls of wool and an unfinished piece of knitting…her scissors, her thimble, emotion rose up and drowned us. Everyone knows the power of things: life solidified in them, more immediately present than in any one of its instants. They lay there on my table, orphaned, useless, waiting to turn into rubbish or to find another identity… (De Beauvoir, 1 p 98).

De Beauvoir concludes that what they face is not rational:

It is useless to try to integrate life and death and to behave rationally in the presence of something that is not rational: each must manage as well as he can in the tumult of his feelings. I can understand all last wishes and the total absence of them: the hugging of the bones or the abandonment of the body of the one you love to the common grave (De Beauvoir, 1 p 98).

Inevitably, de Beauvoir reflects at the end of the book on the events of the prior months. Equally such reflection centres on the rapidity of the disease and her role as her mother’s daughter. There are layers of self reproach and balancing out “respite” and “remorse”:

And is one to be sorry that the doctors brought her back to life and operated, or not? She, who did not want to lose a single day, “won” thirty: they brought her joys; but they also brought her anxiety and suffering. Since she did escape from the martyrdom that I sometimes thought was hanging over her, I cannot decide for her. For my sister, losing Maman the very day she saw her again would have been a shock from which she would scarcely have recovered. And as for me? Those four weeks have left me pictures, nightmares, sadnesses that I should never have known if Maman had died that Wednesday morning. But I cannot measure the disturbance that I should have felt since my sorrow broke out in a way that I had not foreseen (De Beauvoir, 1 pp 93–4).

Illness and death brought to an aching, almost exquisite, focus the importance and the place of her mother. In describing this she eloquently stated the complexity of all close relationships—the uniqueness, the joys, and the regrets:

We did derive an undoubted good from this respite [after the operation]; it saved us, or almost saved us, from remorse. When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets. Her death brings to light her unique quality; she grows as vast as the world that her absence annihilates for her and whose whole existence was caused by her being there; you feel that she should have had more room in your life—all the room, if need be. You snatch yourself away from this wildness: she was only one among many (De Beauvoir, 1 p 94).

The regrets are finally balanced against the closeness, intimacy, and solicitude of the final weeks:

But since you never do all you might for anyone—not even within the arguable limits that you have set yourself—you have plenty of room left for self reproach. With regard to Maman we were all guilty, these last years, of carelessness, omission, and abstention. We felt that we atoned for this by the days that we gave up to her, by the peace that our being there gave her, and by the victories gained over fear and pain. Without our obstinate watchfulness she would have suffered far more (De Beauvoir, 1 p 94).

The book raises many points for reflection. In terms of clinical practice, the themes of adequacy of symptom control, opiophobia, sensitivity and clarity in communication and disclosure versus collusion, remain as relevant today as they did then. Certainly our capacity to meet those challenges has developed significantly. As a piece of literature this book is beautifully written. As an account of one individual’s terminal illness it superbly captures the rhythms of the progression of a disease. As a reflection by a daughter on her mother it is strikingly honest and raw. The illness and death of Mme de Beauvoir brought an extraordinary array of emotions to the surface, for many of which Simone was unprepared. In confronting those, de Beauvoir gives the reader, medical or otherwise, an insight into the universal currents that flow through all our lives both personally and professionally—the sadness of loss, the ambivalence and complexity of children’s relations with their parents, the solace that comes with time and reflection, the uniqueness of all lives, and the sense of violation when that life has ceased. It is that testimony and those insights that make this a document of great richness.

• ↵ De Beauvoir S . A very easy death . New York: Pantheon Books, 1985 .
• ↵ Fallowfield L . Communication and palliative medicine. In: Doyle D, Hanks G, Cherny NI, et al , eds. Oxford textbook of palliative medicine . [3rd ed]. Oxford University Press, 2003 : 103 .
• ↵ Pargeon KL , Hailey BJ. Barriers to effective cancer pain management: a review of the literature. J Pain Symptom Manage 1999 ; 18 : 358 –68. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
• ↵ Martino AM . In search of a new ethic for treating patients with chronic pain: what can medical boards do? J Law Med Ethics 1998 ; 26 : 332 –49. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
• ↵ Elliott TE , Elliott BA. Physicians’ attitudes and beliefs about use of morphine for cancer pain. J Pain Symptom Manage 1992 ; 7 : 141 –8. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
• ↵ Blanchard C , Labreque M, Ruckdeschel J, et al. Information and decision making preferences of hospitalised adult cancer patients. Soc Sci Med 1988 ; 27 : 1139 –45. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
• Cassileth B , Zupkis R, Sutton-Smith K, et al. Information and participation preferences among cancer patients. Ann Intern Med 1980 ; 92 : 832 –6. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
• ↵ Meredith C , Symonds P, Webster L, et al. Information needs of cancer patients in west Scotland: cross sectional survey of patients’ views. BMJ 1996 ; 313 : 724 –6. OpenUrl Abstract / FREE Full Text
• ↵ Blackhall L , Murphy S, Frank G, et al. Ethnicity and attitudes toward patient autonomy. JAMA 1995 ; 274 : 820 –5. OpenUrl CrossRef PubMed Web of Science
• ↵ Mitchell JL . Crosscultural issues in the disclosure of cancer. Cancer Pract 1998 ; 6 : 152 –60. OpenUrl
• ↵ Brurea E , Neumann CM, Mazzocato C, et al. Attitudes and beliefs of palliative care physicians regarding communication with terminally ill patients. J Palliat Med 2000 ; 14 : 287 –98. OpenUrl Abstract / FREE Full Text
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↵ † For a comprehensive list of the reasons why physicians underprescribe analgesics see A M Martino. 4

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Personal Narrative Essay: The Death of my Parents

In October 2019 my life changed, possibly forever. Most of my family on my dad’s side lives in Virginia and that I accepted my aunt and uncle in New Jersey for 7 years. My parents lived in Virginia for a year, I visited my family all the time in Virginia. At some point my parents were driving back from the doctor. The breaks gave out and that they went sliding down a hill. The car flipped over into the James River. My dad was pronounced dead within the hospital. every week later my mom died.

My parent's death was a negative experience on my behalf . I didn’t take it well once they died. the sole time I told my mom I loved her was when she was laying down on her deathbed. I felt abandoned by everything I hoped for within the future with them, their grandkids, walking me down the aisle on my day . I didn’t have anyone to assist me through it. I completely shut everyone out and began counting on myself. Which may be a grief stage and that i am still browsing it and that i are doing a touch better. I don’t celebrate holidays anymore because they only don’t feel an equivalent . I always visit their grave sight.

If I could change anything that event I might have called them and told them I loved them. I don’t I don’t want to be the sort of person that’s mean. i'm a really nice person but i'm a far better person because i'm trying to form up for not calling whenever they called. I never bend them. It hurts but i'm getting through it each day at a time. I treat my sister like she is my very own daughter. I always look out for her like I promised my mom I might . I tell my sister and my family I really like them now because you’ll never get that back. It doesn’t hurt me to mention but i used to never be an honest daughter to my parents. But I wanna be a far better person for myself and my sister.

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Best Descriptive Essay Examples

Descriptive essay about my mother.

708 words | 3 page(s)

My mother passed away after my 16th birthday. Her sudden death brought me to my knees with the most heart wrenching and painful surprise of my life. I felt devastated and utterly hopeless and alone. I did not want to speak to or see anyone for months. I cried endlessly for days, and sometimes I would even blame God for taking her away from me. She was not just the person who gave me life, she was the person who loved me the most. Before her passing, I could have never imagined that she would leave me by myself and take a part of me along with her. I always thought that she was always going to be there for me for the important events in my life like attending my college graduation, helping me pick my wedding dress, and meeting my future children, but life does not always turn out as we hope and imagine. Today my mother might not be here with me physically, but the memories of the extraordinary human being she was, will forever be in my heart.

My mother’s very name was as unique as her personality. Genesis was the eldest of ten children, and at five foot ten, she was willowy and as graceful as a ballerina. Her alabaster skin was in stark contrast to her thick, waist length raven black hair. She had deep set, piercing coal black eyes that she never mired with makeup. The eyes are said to be the windows of the soul, and I felt like I was looking directly into hers each time she fixed those eyes on me. To say she was a strikingly beautiful woman is definitely an understatement. She was super model perfect in both her carriage outward appearance, but yet she never acted haughty or took advantage of her looks. She married my father when she seventeen, and two years later became pregnant with her first child-me. One day I asked her if she ever regretted marrying and having children at such a young age while simultaneously working so hard to balance her life between her family and law school. She gazed at me for a moment and seemed to measure her words before she spoke. “I wouldn’t change a thing about my past, because if I did, maybe you would not have been around today in my life,” she said. I still remember that moment in startlingly clarity, for it went to the very heart of who she was-a giving, loving woman who lived life to the fullest without ever looking in the rear view window.

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Genesis was more than just a phenomenally gorgeous woman. She was extremely smart. In fact, she was so smart that she was accepted to law school at Oxford University. Her very personality in the courtroom was a marvel to behold. Her calm and patience made her both a wonderful mother and a top notch litigator. Fellow lawyers were afraid of her in the courtroom because she never yelled, never lost control, and would patiently wait for just the right moment to deliver a death blow to the opposing attorney’s case. She used those obsidian eyes to her advantage, and jurors and witnesses alike found it extremely difficult to ignore her.

Her smile was like a lit candle shinning in a dark room, and she smiled frequently. In fact, her favorite saying was, “Life is too short to be angry, so let’s just have fun.” Fun was never in short supply around Genesis. She took an ordinary event and turned it into something extraordinary. She was a strong collective woman, a planner who worked very hard like a honeybee stockpiling the honeycomb with reserves anticipating a cold, harsh winter.

My mother was a beautiful woman, both inside and out. It sounds trite to say that, but Genesis was anything but trite. She is my role model and her influence is still felt by the ones whose lives she touched. She was, and still is, the most influential person in my life to the point that I will follow in her footsteps and become a lawyer. The memories of the amazing and loving human being she was will forever be in my heart.

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Grieving the loss of your mom: How to cope with grief on Mother's Day

Grief is normal. it is a part of life and it's ok to sit and feel these emotions, experts say..

Mother's Day is on Sunday May 12, but those grieving the loss of their mother or child may feel a lot of dread around this time of year.

"Mother's Day is not a universal celebration for everyone," said Sherry Cormier, an author and psychologist who specializes in bereavement.

She encourages people going through grief to be kind to themselves and provide what they need to make themselves feel comfortable this weekend.

She adds that feeling that loss and sorrow while others might be celebrating is okay.

"People move forward, they don't really move on," she said. "The grief is always part of you. That loss of your mom or your child always stays with you in your heart."

Mother's Day: To the single woman, past 35, who longs for a partner and kids on Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a 'trigger day'

According to the psychologist, Mother's Day can be a "trigger day."

These kinds of holidays or special occasions can be a trigger, meaning they cause an intense emotion that is usually negative.

"Things like Mother's Day or birthdays or anniversaries or holidays, for example, are hard," said Cormier.

She adds that it's best to have a plan on these kinds of days. Plan a day and schedule that will work best to help you cope and deal with your emotions, but be flexible.

The plan can include anything from a self-care day to spending time with friends and family to exercising and moving your body, but she recommends tuning in with yourself and staying flexible. The plan doesn't have to be the end-all-be-all for that day if it is no longer needed.

"I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with that have a plan for a trigger day, and then the day comes and they end up saying, 'You know what? I felt the worst the day before," she said.

Cormier suggests staying away from social media to avoid seeing posts about Mother's Day. She said it can help with trigger days because people are posting pictures with their moms or children and seeing that may do more harm than good.

"If you're already sitting there longing for your child who's passed or your mom who passed, and then you see all these pictures, that may make you feel worse," said Cormier.

Journal about your grief

Journaling for 10 to 15 minutes about your grief a few times a week is another helpful exercise, said Cormier.

"This can be very therapeutic just sitting down and writing," she said. "Just not even thinking, letting your body flow and writing about how you're feeling."

She adds that all one needs is a piece of paper and a writing utensil. However, it can also be done on a phone, computer or tablet. Cormier even said folks could draw their grief, but the point of the exercise is to sit with the grief and acknowledge it.

"If you're dreading Mother's Day, the first thing is to feel what you feel," said Cormier. "Feel what you feel, and that's dread, that's sadness, that's sorrow. That may be anger in some cases, so feel what you feel."

However, she warns that going over the time and writing about it for too long may cause the grief to become "all consuming."

Journaling validates the grief, but "you don't want the grief to take over your life," said Cormier.

Don't force someone to grieve in a certain way

Sometimes, people might try to help, but they do it by forcing their own beliefs and habits onto the person they're trying to help.

"Helping is a form of control" is a quote from Anne Lamott that Cormier said she loved.

Cormier said she does not, "under any circumstance," recommend people force those mourning a loss to grieve in a specific way.

"So often when we think we should 'help' one with grief, what we really mean by that is that we're trying to control the way that they grieve," said Cormier.

Everyone goes through loss differently, and how someone grieves, vents and gets support is entirely up to them, she said. What might work for one person may not work for another and forcing someone to grieve in a specific way is a form of coercion.

"We all find comfort and solace from different people," she said.

At the end of the day, grief is a normal feeling

Now, there are exceptions to this rule. If someone who is mourning says they are contemplating suicide or can possibly be a danger to themselves, it is ok to get involved and recommend calling the crisis hotline, a grief therapist or suicide counselor.

"If you feel like you're ever going to be in a crisis, go to your emergency room," said Cormier.

Helping a child grieve

Just like with adults, a grown-up can not force a child to grieve in a specific way or ignore the day to help them cope with their feelings.

"There are people who would rather avoid the day than acknowledge it, and they do it for good reason," said Vicki Jay, the CEO of the National Alliance for Children’s Grief . "They're trying to protect the child from having difficult feelings where we know that you can't hide it from them, so the best thing is to acknowledge the day and open conversation so that the child feels free to talk or not talk."

According to Jay, it's best to let the child take the lead in this situation.

 "Let the child help determine what that day looks like," said Jay.

The only one who really knows how the child is feeling is the child themself, and Jay advised that the grown-ups in their life give them the space to express their feelings.

"You may assume that it's really difficult for them, and that may or may not be true, and so what you wanna do is learn from them," said Jay.

She adds that children might start to deal with difficult feelings before Mother's Day.

"It starts when the child is at school, and everybody else is talking about Mother's Day or making Mother's Day cards or whatever it is," she said. "And so just holding that opportunity open to have discussions, you know and even just [asking] what was the best and worst thing that happened at school today may open the door."

She adds that enrolling a child into a peer support group may also help them cope with their feelings about death.

"We found that peer support is amazing because kids don't want to be different than any other kids," said Jay. "To find out you're not the only one, in this case, who doesn't have a mom is so, so very supportive."

Remember the people in between

Not everyone who is grieving their mom is doing so because she died.

"There are a lot of other situations that need to be recognized where kids, in particular, don't have moms for various reasons," said Vicki Jay, the CEO of the National Alliance for Children’s Grief.

Whether it is because the person is estranged from their parent or child or simply can't be with them because of other circumstances, they may be grieving on this day, too.

And this is not only true for children, but adults too.

"Maybe they never had a chance to be with their birth mom or know their mom," said Jay. "Maybe you know they live in separate situations where they never get to see their mom, and I think those kids often get overlooked because it's not in our face that somebody died, but that loss is huge to those kids."

I was estranged from my father when he died. It didn't make the pain of losing him any easier.

• My parents divorced when I was 21, and that was the start of the end of our relationship. 
• He knew I had remarried but never met my daughters. 
• Losing my dad, even though we weren't speaking, hurt a lot. 

As I headed to the funeral home in black leggings and a messy bun to retrieve my estranged father's ashes, my brother called to ask where I was . "I'm picking up Dad," I said and we laughed since we share our dark humor. The funeral home offered curbside pickup, but I couldn't relive this experience every time I did Target Drive-up.

I placed his ashes in the front passenger seat because it felt weird to put him in the trunk with my kid's portable potty.

My father was amazing for the first 26 years of my life. When I was little, I stood on his feet to dance. We went on dinner dates . We traveled a lot. We grew up backstage at the Bob Marley Festival because of the relationships he fostered with the family. He was in the garment industry, probably the origin of my love of statement tees. I grew up feeling insanely lucky.

My parents divorced

My parents divorced when I was 21. That was the first shift in our relationship. He went into a downward spiral, which led to our estrangement. It was hard not to take sides as I watched my mom's car get repossessed because he stopped paying. I tried to maintain a separate relationship and compartmentalize the complications of being a child of an acrimonious divorce. I bounced between anger and nostalgia.

He knew I divorced and remarried but never met my daughters. I'd rather them not know him, then love him and risk the torment that came with the territory. He lived in a dilapidated assisted living, was missing teeth, and couldn't stand. I kept him at bay to avoid the inevitable heartache that came with being his daughter.

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His health declined, and I got good at tracking him down. He frantically slurred from the hospital room landline that they were "trying to kill him." The doctors called it hospital-induced delirium . His face was gaunt, with a long gray beard. He was heavily sedated to keep him from ripping off all the tubes. I sat in the chair sobbing.

His health declined

A year later, another doctor found my brother online. My dad couldn't communicate and was breathing with a ventilator. She urged us to say goodbye and sign the DNR. My mom and stepdad picked us up, and we all walked into the ICU in white paper gowns and masks. One big modern family. He looked like a feeble stranger. One eye was stuck open. It was evident that life was not kind to him.

I was the first to lean over and talk to him. I told him I loved him and it was OK to go. His blood pressure spiked, and a single tear fell from his eye. It undid me. I thought I was already emotionally disconnected enough over the last 20 years, and it wouldn't be as painful. It was excruciating.

Everyone thought he would die that night. He didn't. I fidgeted at the security desk for my picture. Do you smile when you are visiting your dying father? I went every day and played Bob Marley's Three Little Birds — "Every little thing is gonna be all right." He spent the last decade in shitty nursing homes accruing bed sores from neglect. He burned bridges with everyone, made unfortunate choices, and was catfished by someone in China, sending them whatever money he had. I searched his face for evidence of the good parts.

I fell apart when he died

Days were consumed with the heaviness of impending death. I cold-called cremation facilities from the carline and ogled urns at my kids' dance lessons. The one day I needed a break from visiting was when the call came. I fell apart, and if my husband hadn't been there, I probably would have hit the ground and shattered.

We opened the cardboard box that could easily double as an Amazon package for our impromptu funeral at my grandparent's graves. White ashes scattered from a plastic bag with an industrial-strength twisty tie. I did my part as a loving daughter, despite years of heartache, to end it with dignity and love, regardless of the past.

I learned that it doesn't matter if your parent was estranged or at your table for every holiday. It's a loss, it hurts, and it changes you. He was my greatest lesson in love, loss, resilience, and the non-linear nature of grieving. Also, nobody at the funeral home mentioned my leggings, so I guess anything goes when death is the backdrop.

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General Hospital's Johnny Wactor has GoFundMe set-up to support loved ones after death

S carlett Wactor, mother of General Hospital star Johnny Wactor, has endorsed a GoFundMe campaign created in the wake of her son's tragic death.

Taking to Instagram , she posted a screenshot of the fundraiser with the caption: "This is approved by me and Johnnys family."

• Devastated General Hospital stars pay tribute to Johnny Wactor after mom's pain
• Johnny Wactor haunting words after General Hospital exit and eerie foreshadowing

The beloved actor was the victim of a fatal carjacking incident early Saturday morning in Downtown Los Angeles.

The fundraising effort, organized by Johnny's godmother Michaelle Kinard, aims to support the family.

On the GoFundMe page, Kinard expressed her devastation: "On May 25, my dearest and best friend's son was murdered. He was the victim of the most senseless crime!"

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Kinard's tribute to Johnny highlighted his kindness and the shock of his untimely passing: "Johnny Wactor, (known to many as Brandon Corbin on General Hospital), was living his dream in LA He was fatally shot early Saturday morning when he came upon a crime.

"Johnny was the kindest soul. My heart is utterly broken and somehow we NEED justice for Johnny!"

She also detailed the purpose of the funds: "I want to raise money for his mother, Scarlett, and his brothers, Lance and Grant to be able to travel the distance of 2000 miles (the many times it may take) to take care of this heartbreaking business which they have been sentenced."

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Kinard concluded with a call for justice and closure: "With God's will the killer will be arrested and the family will see him face to face.

"This may help bring closure to this tragedy. Any excess donations will be donated to the charities the family chooses in memory of Johnny."

A GoFundMe campaign, "Justice for Johnny: Family Support," has managed to raise $2,085 of its ambitious $100,000 goal at the time of reporting.

Johnny was leaving his part-time job at a rooftop bar around 3:25am on Saturday morning with a female colleague when he mistakenly thought his car was being towed.

He soon discovered that three men were attempting to steal the catalytic converter from his vehicle and bravely positioned himself between the thieves and his co-worker. After being shot, the culprits fled the scene and are still on the run.

Emergency services arrived promptly but Johnny was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital. He was just 37-years-old.

Johnny's younger brother Grant Wactor told the Daily Mail: "We're Southern, born and raised, and we would never let a female walk to their car by herself.

"He came across them and he thought his truck was being towed. So he said something to the guys, like, 'Hey, are you towing? And then once he turned around, he saw what was happening and he put his co-worker behind him. And that's when they shot him."

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When Prison and Mental Illness Amount to a Death Sentence

The downward spiral of one inmate, Markus Johnson, shows the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill.

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By Glenn Thrush

Photographs by Carlos Javier Ortiz

Glenn Thrush spent more than a year reporting this article, interviewing close to 50 people and reviewing court-obtained body-camera footage and more than 1,500 pages of documents.

• Published May 5, 2024 Updated May 7, 2024

Markus Johnson slumped naked against the wall of his cell, skin flecked with pepper spray, his face a mask of puzzlement, exhaustion and resignation. Four men in black tactical gear pinned him, his face to the concrete, to cuff his hands behind his back.

He did not resist. He couldn’t. He was so gravely dehydrated he would be dead by their next shift change.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

“I didn’t do anything,” Mr. Johnson moaned as they pressed a shield between his shoulders.

It was 1:19 p.m. on Sept. 6, 2019, in the Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security prison a few hours south of Chicago. Mr. Johnson, 21 and serving a short sentence for gun possession, was in the throes of a mental collapse that had gone largely untreated, but hardly unwatched.

He had entered in good health, with hopes of using the time to gain work skills. But for the previous three weeks, Mr. Johnson, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, had refused to eat or take his medication. Most dangerous of all, he had stealthily stopped drinking water, hastening the physical collapse that often accompanies full-scale mental crises.

Mr. Johnson’s horrific downward spiral, which has not been previously reported, represents the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill. Many seriously ill people receive no treatment . For those who do, the outcome is often determined by the vigilance and commitment of individual supervisors and frontline staff, which vary greatly from system to system, prison to prison, and even shift to shift.

The country’s jails and prisons have become its largest provider of inpatient mental health treatment, with 10 times as many seriously mentally ill people now held behind bars as in hospitals. Estimating the population of incarcerated people with major psychological problems is difficult, but the number is likely 200,000 to 300,000, experts say.

Many of these institutions remain ill-equipped to handle such a task, and the burden often falls on prison staff and health care personnel who struggle with the dual roles of jailer and caregiver in a high-stress, dangerous, often dehumanizing environment.

In 2021, Joshua McLemore , a 29-year-old with schizophrenia held for weeks in an isolation cell in Jackson County, Ind., died of organ failure resulting from a “refusal to eat or drink,” according to an autopsy. In April, New York City agreed to pay $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Nicholas Feliciano, a young man with a history of mental illness who suffered severe brain damage after attempting to hang himself on Rikers Island — as correctional officers stood by.

Mr. Johnson’s mother has filed a wrongful-death suit against the state and Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit health care contractor in Illinois prisons. The New York Times reviewed more than 1,500 pages of reports, along with depositions taken from those involved. Together, they reveal a cascade of missteps, missed opportunities, potential breaches of protocol and, at times, lapses in common sense.

Prison officials and Wexford staff took few steps to intervene even after it became clear that Mr. Johnson, who had been hospitalized repeatedly for similar episodes and recovered, had refused to take medication. Most notably, they did not transfer him to a state prison facility that provides more intensive mental health treatment than is available at regular prisons, records show.

The quality of medical care was also questionable, said Mr. Johnson’s lawyers, Sarah Grady and Howard Kaplan, a married legal team in Chicago. Mr. Johnson lost 50 to 60 pounds during three weeks in solitary confinement, but officials did not initiate interventions like intravenous feedings or transfer him to a non-prison hospital.

And they did not take the most basic step — dialing 911 — until it was too late.

There have been many attempts to improve the quality of mental health treatment in jails and prisons by putting care on par with punishment — including a major effort in Chicago . But improvements have proved difficult to enact and harder to sustain, hampered by funding and staffing shortages.

Lawyers representing the state corrections department, Wexford and staff members who worked at Danville declined to comment on Mr. Johnson’s death, citing the unresolved litigation. In their interviews with state police investigators, and in depositions, employees defended their professionalism and adherence to procedure, while citing problems with high staff turnover, difficult work conditions, limited resources and shortcomings of co-workers.

But some expressed a sense of resignation about the fate of Mr. Johnson and others like him.

Prisoners have “much better chances in a hospital, but that’s not their situation,” said a senior member of Wexford’s health care team in a deposition.

“I didn’t put them in prison,” he added. “They are in there for a reason.”

Markus Mison Johnson was born on March 1, 1998, to a mother who believed she was not capable of caring for him.

Days after his birth, he was taken in by Lisa Barker Johnson, a foster mother in her 30s who lived in Zion, Ill., a working-class city halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. Markus eventually became one of four children she adopted from different families.

The Johnson house is a lively split level, with nieces, nephews, grandchildren and neighbors’ children, family keepsakes, video screens and juice boxes. Ms. Johnson sits at its center on a kitchen chair, chin resting on her hand as children wander over to share their thoughts, or to tug on her T-shirt to ask her to be their bathroom buddy.

From the start, her bond with Markus was particularly powerful, in part because the two looked so much alike, with distinctive dimpled smiles. Many neighbors assumed he was her biological son. The middle name she chose for him was intended to convey that message.

“Mison is short for ‘my son,’” she said standing over his modest footstone grave last summer.

He was happy at home. School was different. His grades were good, but he was intensely shy and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in elementary school.

That was around the time the bullying began. His sisters were fierce defenders, but they could only do so much. He did the best he could, developing a quick, taunting tongue.

These experiences filled him with a powerful yearning to fit in.

It was not to be.

When he was around 15, he called 911 in a panic, telling the dispatcher he saw two men standing near the small park next to his house threatening to abduct children playing there. The officers who responded found nothing out of the ordinary, and rang the Johnsons’ doorbell.

He later told his mother he had heard a voice telling him to “protect the kids.”

He was hospitalized for the first time at 16, and given medications that stabilized him for stretches of time. But the crises would strike every six months or so, often triggered by his decision to stop taking his medication.

His family became adept at reading signs he was “getting sick.” He would put on his tan Timberlands and a heavy winter coat, no matter the season, and perch on the edge of his bed as if bracing for battle. Sometimes, he would cook his own food, paranoid that someone might poison him.

He graduated six months early, on the dean’s list, but was rudderless, and hanging out with younger boys, often paying their way.

His mother pointed out the perils of buying friendship.

“I don’t care,” he said. “At least I’ll be popular for a minute.”

Zion’s inviting green grid of Bible-named streets belies the reality that it is a rough, unforgiving place to grow up. Family members say Markus wanted desperately to prove he was tough, and emulated his younger, reckless group of friends.

Like many of them, he obtained a pistol. He used it to hold up a convenience store clerk for $425 in January 2017, according to police records. He cut a plea deal for two years of probation, and never explained to his family what had made him do it.

But he kept getting into violent confrontations. In late July 2018, he was arrested in a neighbor’s garage with a handgun he later admitted was his. He was still on probation for the robbery, and his public defender negotiated a plea deal that would send him to state prison until January 2020.

An inpatient mental health system

Around 40 percent of the about 1.8 million people in local, state and federal jails and prison suffer from at least one mental illness, and many of these people have concurrent issues with substance abuse, according to recent Justice Department estimates.

Psychological problems, often exacerbated by drug use, often lead to significant medical problems resulting from a lack of hygiene or access to good health care.

“When you suffer depression in the outside world, it’s hard to concentrate, you have reduced energy, your sleep is disrupted, you have a very gloomy outlook, so you stop taking care of yourself,” said Robert L. Trestman , a Virginia Tech medical school professor who has worked on state prison mental health reforms.

The paradox is that prison is often the only place where sick people have access to even minimal care.

But the harsh work environment, remote location of many prisons, and low pay have led to severe shortages of corrections staff and the unwillingness of doctors, nurses and counselors to work with the incarcerated mentally ill.

In the early 2000s, prisoners’ rights lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Illinois claiming “deliberate indifference” to the plight of about 5,000 mentally ill prisoners locked in segregated units and denied treatment and medication.

In 2014, the parties reached a settlement that included minimum staffing mandates, revamped screening protocols, restrictions on the use of solitary confinement and the allocation of about $100 million to double capacity in the system’s specialized mental health units.

Yet within six months of the deal, Pablo Stewart, an independent monitor chosen to oversee its enforcement, declared the system to be in a state of emergency.

Over the years, some significant improvements have been made. But Dr. Stewart’s final report , drafted in 2022, gave the system failing marks for its medication and staffing policies and reliance on solitary confinement “crisis watch” cells.

Ms. Grady, one of Mr. Johnson’s lawyers, cited an additional problem: a lack of coordination between corrections staff and Wexford’s professionals, beyond dutifully filling out dozens of mandated status reports.

“Markus Johnson was basically documented to death,” she said.

‘I’m just trying to keep my head up’

Mr. Johnson was not exactly looking forward to prison. But he saw it as an opportunity to learn a trade so he could start a family when he got out.

On Dec. 18, 2018, he arrived at a processing center in Joliet, where he sat for an intake interview. He was coherent and cooperative, well-groomed and maintained eye contact. He was taking his medication, not suicidal and had a hearty appetite. He was listed as 5 feet 6 inches tall and 256 pounds.

Mr. Johnson described his mood as “go with the flow.”

A few days later, after arriving in Danville, he offered a less settled assessment during a telehealth visit with a Wexford psychiatrist, Dr. Nitin Thapar. Mr. Johnson admitted to being plagued by feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and “constant uncontrollable worrying” that affected his sleep.

He told Dr. Thapar he had heard voices in the past — but not now — telling him he was a failure, and warning that people were out to get him.

At the time he was incarcerated, the basic options for mentally ill people in Illinois prisons included placement in the general population or transfer to a special residential treatment program at the Dixon Correctional Center, west of Chicago. Mr. Johnson seemed out of immediate danger, so he was assigned to a standard two-man cell in the prison’s general population, with regular mental health counseling and medication.

Things started off well enough. “I’m just trying to keep my head up,” he wrote to his mother. “Every day I learn to be stronger & stronger.”

But his daily phone calls back home hinted at friction with other inmates. And there was not much for him to do after being turned down for a janitorial training program.

Then, in the spring of 2019, his grandmother died, sending him into a deep hole.

Dr. Thapar prescribed a new drug used to treat major depressive disorders. Its most common side effect is weight gain. Mr. Johnson stopped taking it.

On July 4, he told Dr. Thapar matter-of-factly during a telehealth check-in that he was no longer taking any of his medications. “I’ve been feeling normal, I guess,” he said. “I feel like I don’t need the medication anymore.”

Dr. Thapar said he thought that was a mistake, but accepted the decision and removed Mr. Johnson from his regular mental health caseload — instructing him to “reach out” if he needed help, records show.

The pace of calls back home slackened. Mr. Johnson spent more time in bed, and became more surly. At a group-therapy session, he sat stone silent, after showing up late.

By early August, he was telling guards he had stopped eating.

At some point, no one knows when, he had intermittently stopped drinking fluids.

‘I’m having a breakdown’

Then came the crash.

On Aug. 12, Mr. Johnson got into a fight with his older cellmate.

He was taken to a one-man disciplinary cell. A few hours later, Wexford’s on-site mental health counselor, Melanie Easton, was shocked by his disoriented condition. Mr. Johnson stared blankly, then burst into tears when asked if he had “suffered a loss in the previous six months.”

He was so unresponsive to her questions she could not finish the evaluation.

Ms. Easton ordered that he be moved to a 9-foot by 8-foot crisis cell — solitary confinement with enhanced monitoring. At this moment, a supervisor could have ticked the box for “residential treatment” on a form to transfer him to Dixon. That did not happen, according to records and depositions.

Around this time, he asked to be placed back on his medication but nothing seems to have come of it, records show.

By mid-August, he said he was visualizing “people that were not there,” according to case notes. At first, he was acting more aggressively, once flicking water at a guard through a hole in his cell door. But his energy ebbed, and he gradually migrated downward — from standing to bunk to floor.

“I’m having a breakdown,” he confided to a Wexford employee.

At the time, inmates in Illinois were required to declare an official hunger strike before prison officials would initiate protocols, including blood testing or forced feedings. But when a guard asked Mr. Johnson why he would not eat, he said he was “fasting,” as opposed to starving himself, and no action seems to have been taken.

‘Tell me this is OK!’

Lt. Matthew Morrison, one of the few people at Danville to take a personal interest in Mr. Johnson, reported seeing a white rind around his mouth in early September. He told other staff members the cell gave off “a death smell,” according to a deposition.

On Sept. 5, they moved Mr. Johnson to one of six cells adjacent to the prison’s small, bare-bones infirmary. Prison officials finally placed him on the official hunger strike protocol without his consent.

Mr. Morrison, in his deposition, said he was troubled by the inaction of the Wexford staff, and the lack of urgency exhibited by the medical director, Dr. Justin Young.

On Sept. 5, Mr. Morrison approached Dr. Young to express his concerns, and the doctor agreed to order blood and urine tests. But Dr. Young lived in Chicago, and was on site at the prison about four times a week, according to Mr. Kaplan. Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, was not one of those days.

Mr. Morrison arrived at work that morning, expecting to find Mr. Johnson’s testing underway. A Wexford nurse told him Dr. Young believed the tests could wait.

Mr. Morrison, stunned, asked her to call Dr. Young.

“He’s good till Monday,” Dr. Young responded, according to Mr. Morrison.

“Come on, come on, look at this guy! You tell me this is OK!” the officer responded.

Eventually, Justin Duprey, a licensed nurse practitioner and the most senior Wexford employee on duty that day, authorized the test himself.

Mr. Morrison, thinking he had averted a disaster, entered the cell and implored Mr. Johnson into taking the tests. He refused.

So prison officials obtained approval to remove him forcibly from his cell.

‘Oh, my God’

What happened next is documented in video taken from cameras held by officers on the extraction team and obtained by The Times through a court order.

Mr. Johnson is scarcely recognizable as the neatly groomed 21-year-old captured in a cellphone picture a few months earlier. His skin is ashen, eyes fixed on the middle distance. He might be 40. Or 60.

At first, he places his hands forward through the hole in his cell door to be cuffed. This is against procedure, the officers shout. His hands must be in back.

He will not, or cannot, comply. He wanders to the rear of his cell and falls hard. Two blasts of pepper spray barely elicit a reaction. The leader of the tactical team later said he found it unusual and unnerving.

The next video is in the medical unit. A shield is pressed to his chest. He is in agony, begging for them to stop, as two nurses attempt to insert a catheter.

Then they move him, half-conscious and limp, onto a wheelchair for the blood draw.

For the next 20 minutes, the Wexford nurse performing the procedure, Angelica Wachtor, jabs hands and arms to find a vessel that will hold shape. She winces with each puncture, tries to comfort him, and grows increasingly rattled.

“Oh, my God,” she mutters, and asks why help is not on the way.

She did not request assistance or discuss calling 911, records indicate.

“Can you please stop — it’s burning real bad,” Mr. Johnson said.

Soon after, a member of the tactical team reminds Ms. Wachtor to take Mr. Johnson’s vitals before taking him back to his cell. She would later tell Dr. Young she had been unable to able to obtain his blood pressure.

“You good?” one of the team members asks as they are preparing to leave.

“Yeah, I’ll have to be,” she replies in the recording.

Officers lifted him back onto his bunk, leaving him unconscious and naked except for a covering draped over his groin. His expressionless face is visible through the window on the cell door as it closes.

‘Cardiac arrest.’

Mr. Duprey, the nurse practitioner, had been sitting inside his office after corrections staff ordered him to shelter for his own protection, he said. When he emerged, he found Ms. Wachtor sobbing, and after a delay, he was let into the cell. Finding no pulse, Mr. Duprey asked a prison employee to call 911 so Mr. Johnson could be taken to a local emergency room.

The Wexford staff initiated CPR. It did not work.

At 3:38 p.m., the paramedics declared Markus Mison Johnson dead.

Afterward, a senior official at Danville called the Johnson family to say he had died of “cardiac arrest.”

Lisa Johnson pressed for more information, but none was initially forthcoming. She would soon receive a box hastily crammed with his possessions: uneaten snacks, notebooks, an inspirational memoir by a man who had served 20 years at Leavenworth.

Later, Shiping Bao, the coroner who examined his body, determined Mr. Johnson had died of severe dehydration. He told the state police it “was one of the driest bodies he had ever seen.”

For a long time, Ms. Johnson blamed herself. She says that her biggest mistake was assuming that the state, with all its resources, would provide a level of care comparable to what she had been able to provide her son.

She had stopped accepting foster care children while she was raising Markus and his siblings. But as the months dragged on, she decided her once-boisterous house had become oppressively still, and let local agencies know she was available again.

“It is good to have children around,” she said. “It was too quiet around here.”

Read by Glenn Thrush

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro .

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice. He joined The Times in 2017 after working for Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, The New York Daily News, The Birmingham Post-Herald and City Limits. More about Glenn Thrush

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Court hears Winnipeg mother's murder left family devastated, living in fear

Crown asking for 16-year parole ineligibility on life sentence, defence recommending 14 years.

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A Winnipeg courtroom heard Thursday how the fatal beating and stabbing of a Winnipeg mother in 2022 has left her family broken and one of her children living in fear for their life.

About a dozen family members and friends of Tessa Perry gathered for her confessed killer's sentencing hearing.

Perry's on-and-off-again boyfriend, Justin Robinson, pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder in her death, which carries an automatic life sentence.

On Thursday, the Crown asked Justice Shawn Greenberg for Robinson to be ineligible for parole for 16 years. His defence recommended 14 years.

Outside court, Perry's mother, Angelina Perry, said neither would bring her daughter justice. She had experienced intimate partner violence before and needed protection, Angelina said.

"The justice system has failed us, and I'm sure it has failed a lot of others," she said.

Earlier in court, Angelina was composed and firm as she read her victim impact statement.

Robinson looked down at the floor in the prisoner's box as court heard how Perry's death has devastated her family.

Angelina detailed how she has lost her spirit and hasn't been able to return to work as a probation officer, or sleep well since her daughter's death.

She said she misses her daughter, who was full of life.

"Beautiful, happy, humorous, straightforward," Angelina said outside court.

• Man pleads guilty to brutal 2022 killing of young Winnipeg mother
• Aunt wants homicide victim Tessa Perry to be 'remembered by her spirit and how bright it was'

She was surrounded by family, including Perry's aunt, Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, a longtime advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

"What this ultimately boils down to is the justice system failed Tessa, and you know, as a result of it, she was murdered," Anderson-Pyrz said, pointing to Robinson's history of violence.

He had assaulted Perry before and was on probation for assault at the time of the murder, court heard Thursday.

Perry was beaten and stabbed to death on May 28, 2022. She had gotten back from grocery shopping when Robinson began assaulting her in front of two of her kids, including one they share together.

In March, court heard how Robinson hit Perry multiple times before taking the children to an upstairs bedroom. He came back and hit Perry several times with a frying pan then stabbed her with a paring knife multiple times. When Perry attempted to leave the home, Robinson followed her outside and struck her face and head 15 to 20 times with a wooden table leg that had a screw sticking out of it.

Child witness afraid for life

In court Thursday, Crown attorney Zita De Sousa read statements from Perry's children.

Perry's 14-year-old called her their best friend and the most caring and funny woman.

Perry's seven-year-old, who was five when they witnessed part of the attack, said they were sad every day and every birthday.

"I miss Momma Tessa and when she tells me I'm beautiful," the child wrote, with the help of a mental health worker. "I wish we could snuggle, hug and kiss."

"I'm scared that my dad will find out where I am. I'm scared he will hurt me, and I don't want to pass away like Momma Tessa." 

The Crown, calling the attack brutal and "vicious," said multiple factors, including that the case involved intimate partner violence and that Perry was Indigenous, influenced their decision to push for a 16-year parole ineligibility.

"This incident and this hearing represent another Indigenous daughter, sister and mother who's erased from the families," De Sousa told court.

However, she said Robinson's guilty plea played in his favour.

Apology doesn't mean anything: Perry's mother

Robinson's defence lawyer Mike Cook said his client had a "chaotic" and unstable childhood and was sexually abused in his teens. Robinson later struggled with addictions and takes full responsibility for Tessa's death, Cook told court. 

Robinson apologized to Perry's children and her family, saying, "I will regret my actions for as long as I live."

Outside court, Angelina said Robinson's apology didn't mean anything to her.

"I know my daughter … she accepted all apologies, but we've tried to stick by his side back in the day and for him to get help, and it hasn't worked."

After nearly two years of feeling angry and tortured by her daughter's death, Angelina said she's taking it one step at a time.

She said her daughter believed in her and would want her to be strong for her other children, grandchildren and the community.

"Hopefully be able to help others that go through things like this," Angelina said.

Greenberg is reserving her decision until June 13.

Murdered Winnipeg mother's family tells sentencing hearing of the devastating impact of her death

About the author.

Rosanna Hempel is a journalist with CBC Manitoba. She previously worked at Global Winnipeg, where she covered the arrival of Ukrainian refugees in Manitoba, along with health, homelessness and housing. Rosanna obtained her bachelor’s of science in New Brunswick, where she grew up, and studied journalism in Manitoba. She speaks French and German. You can send story ideas and tips to [email protected].

• Follow Rosanna Hempel on X

With files from Caitlyn Gowriluk

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Celia Keenan-Bolger Confronts Challenges of Motherhood: ‘Get Comfortable with Not Always Being Liked’ (Exclusive)

The actress talks with PEOPLE about her Tony-nominated role in Broadway's 'Mother Play,' and the tough lessons she's learned balancing her career and motherhood

Dave Quinn is a Senior Editor for PEOPLE. He has been working at the brand since 2016, and is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of the Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It.

Jemal Countess/Getty 

• PEOPLE caught up with stage veteran Celia Keenan-Bolger to discuss her Tony Award-nominated role in Mother Play
• The play exposes the difficult choices one makes in motherhood, something the actress says she can relate to as a mom to a 9-year-old son herself
• Winners of the 2024 Tony Awards will be announced on Sunday, June 16, in a show televised on CBS and Paramount+

Celia Keenan-Bolger is embracing the imperfections of motherhood, eight shows a week.

The Tony Award-winning actress is treading the boards on Broadway in Mother Play , Paula Vogel's acclaimed drama about a daughter recalling the traumas of her childhood with her brother Carl ( Jim Parsons ) and their single mother Phyllis ( Jessica Lange ).

It's a piece that forces one to confront the idea of forgiveness — something Keenan-Bolger, who received a 2024 Tony Award nomination for her work in the production, tells PEOPLE she feels is one of the piece's biggest lessons.

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Brooke DiDonato

"Paula is really asking this crucial question of, 'How can you forgive without abandoning yourself?' " the actress, 46, tells PEOPLE at the Tony's Meet the Nominees junket earlier this month. "Those boundaries are actually very important; because we don't just forgive to forgive. My character continues to come back to the table, even though there are a lot of reasons for her to wash her hands of that family. But she does it on her terms when she's ready."

"We have to be gentler with ourselves in times like this," Keenan-Bolger adds. "Even Paula has talked about this because the play is semi-autobiographical. And she's said that writing the play is actually one of the main ways that she's been able to forgive her mother, even after her death. So sometimes we come to forgiveness while our family is still alive, and other times, it's a life-long process. But giving ourselves the space to get there is key."

Joan Marcus

Keenan-Bolger is a mother herself, sharing 9-year-old son William Emmet with husband John Ellison Conlee .

Performing in Mother Play each week forces Keenan-Bolger to face the reality that there will likely come a time in her life when her son might need to forgive her.

"As somebody who is a real people pleaser and a real perfectionist, that is one of the most challenging parts of motherhood — knowing that you aren't going to do things right all the time," Keenan-Bolger tells PEOPLE. "You have to get comfortable with not always being liked. And wrapping your head around that and being able to really sit in that is big, hard work."

To help her through that — and many of the other obstacles being a working mom on Broadway brings — the To Kill a Mockingbird vet has learned to lean a community of moms in the industry, including her close friends (and her Gilded Age costars) Kelli O'Hara and Laura Benanti .

"I look to them all the time for guidance and support," Keenan-Bolger says. "It's truly wonderful to have people like that in my life who understand it."

Conlee, who is also an actor, is a rock for their family too, his wife notes.

"It's funny, when I was working on The Gilded Age , Laura, Kelli and I were talking about our husbands and the kind of man it takes to have an ambitious wife and to be okay with being the full-time caregiver when needed," Keenan-Bolger recalls. "The three of us were just saying how lucky we felt, and that feeling is really never lost on me when I think about John."

ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty 

"I really do think it requires a village," she continues. "And as hard as it is on the family system when the mom is not there for most nights for bedtime, I just feel lucky to have such an amazing husband and such an amazing kid who have been really understanding. It's meaningful to me that my son gets to see me do work that I feel so proud of and grateful to be a part of."

And despite having two parents in the business — and his uncle, Andrew Keenan-Bolger — don't expect to see William Emmet on stage anytime soon.

"It definitely runs in the family, but he hasn't gotten the acting bug yet," his mom says. "He's a really funny kid, but he does not like to perform on command. I think he's sort of like, 'Nah, not for me.' "

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

Mother Play is up for four Tony Awards including best play. Parsons, 51, and Lange, 75, are also nominated.

The play, which opened on April 25, is now in performances through June 16 at the Hayes Theater in New York City. Tickets can be purchased through the Second Stage Theater company's official website .

As for the 2024 Tony Awards , they will take place on Sunday, June 16, at Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater in N.Y.C. Viewers can watch the show on CBS and Paramount+ beginning at 8 p.m. ET. Select awards will also be handed out on a pre-show that will stream on Pluto TV.

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George Floyd's brother says he still has nightmares about his 2020 murder

By Nikole Killion

Updated on: May 24, 2024 / 3:55 PM EDT / CBS News

George Floyd's family is still grieving, four years after he was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. 

"(It's) absolutely hell," sister-in-law, Keeta Floyd tells CBS News. "They don't realize the things that are going on behind the scenes, for every life that has been lost since the death of George Floyd. It's extremely painful. It's a wound that never heals." 

Several members of the Floyd family joined members of the Congressional Black Caucus this week for the reintroduction of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The measure, sponsored by Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, would enact stricter reforms to address police misconduct and strengthen accountability standards.

"We want this law to be passed, period," Floyd's brother, Philonise, told CBS News. "We've been fighting for this same law for 2020 since my brother was murdered. The day after the funeral, I had come here to speak to Congress. Nothing has been passed. Every time you look up, they say 'Oh, we're going to do this, we're going to do that.'" 

Before Republicans took the majority, the House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act twice — both times while the House was under Democratic control, in 2020 and 2021. The bill limited qualified immunity for officers, prevented racial profiling and restricted the use of excessive force. It collapsed in the Senate after bipartisan negotiations broke down between New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker and South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott over a proposal to ban chokeholds, no-knock warrants and expand federal data collection efforts.

"We have had bill text that had been supported by the nation's largest police union, by chiefs associations around the country, by civil rights activists and more but in the Senate because of the filibuster, you need 60 votes to pass anything," Booker told CBS News. "And while I am confident we have over 50 votes to pass many common-sense reforms, it is still frustrating to me that we have not been able to do bills that would reflect changes that have been made in red and blue states." 

CBS News reached out to Scott's office for comment. Last year, the GOP Senator delivered a lengthy floor speech on police reform after the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols , who was killed by officers in a Memphis police unit during a traffic stop. 

"Politics too often gets in the way of doing what every American knows is common sense," Scott said. "Here we find ourselves again…having the same conversation with no action having happened so far."  

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures , nearly 400 policing policy bills were enacted last year including measures that address officer training.

"Colorado said that we're going to stop qualified immunity, Connecticut said it, New Mexico said it," Philonise Floyd said of several state laws that have taken effect since his brother's death in 2020. "It's these other states that haven't opened up their eyes and seen what's going on. But what will happen is, once it hits their front door, then they're going to make change, then they're going to say, 'Hey, let's not be reactive. Let's be proactive."

President Biden signed an executive order in 2022 requiring federal law enforcement agencies to implement reforms and incentivize state and local forces to improve policing practices. In a statement, Jackson Lee said Congress must "do it's part."

"While we applaud the administration's efforts, this action is not as permanent or as comprehensive as the reforms we can accomplish through congressional action," Jackson Lee said. 

Floyd, 46, was killed after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for over nine minutes as Floyd gasped, "I can't breathe." The incident, captured on video, sparked global protests and a racial reckoning during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Chauvin was convicted and is currently serving a 22 ½ year prison sentence. 

Philonise and his wife say he still has nightmares about his brother's murder. 

"He's in a mental health crisis himself," Keeta explained. "They don't get to see that, how it tears families apart. They don't get to see that. You know, the world does not see that. And so, we're healing. We're constantly healing." 

"I can't talk to my brother," said Philonise, who called George "a beacon of hope." 

"All of these families that are standing with us, who don't know, who never had this, they're standing for a reason because they say our fight is your fight," Philonise Floyd said. "George was my brother. Every mother said, 'That was my son.' So if people are standing like that, they're standing for a reason, because they want people to be able to change these laws."

Nikole Killion is a CBS News congressional correspondent based in Washington D.C. As a correspondent, Killion played a key role in the Network's 2020 political and election coverage, reporting from around the country during the final stretch of the campaign and throughout the Biden transition.

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