by Vera Grant AMMM                                                Ireland                      29.09.2024

And so the saying goes:
‘A daughter is a daughter all of your life, a son is a son until he takes a wife’.

Does it ring true? Not to the many people to whom I have spoken.

As parents to our children we accept the responsibility ‘like an eagle that watches its nest, that hovers over its young’(1) and when the time comes for them to spread their wings it is hard to accept that they are like arrows in the hands of a warrior.(2) We release them hoping and yet knowing they will find their destination.

I have often heard the lament that once they get married, they forget they have a mother.  When the grandchildren arrive then it’s as if you ceased to exist.

What we did not expect was to lose something of ourselves, our identity and our role.  From being number one we find ourselves slipping down the rungs of the ladder…our pole position pulled from under us.

It is not just sons and daughters but also brothers and sisters. A friend, one of six children, recognised that the responsibility of looking after her elderly mother had slowly and without any consultation become her role. She says is happy to be there, living with and caring for her mother recently diagnosed with dementia but what she finds intolerable is the attitude of her siblings who feel they have the choice if not the right to prioritise their own lives, their work and their own families.

The once-a-week visit is often curtailed by the all too familiar comment, ‘I need to get back home / get the dinner on / see what they are up to…. The excuses are endless. ‘I am at the bottom of their list, last in the pecking order,’ she says with a roll of the eye.

Sadly, it’s not just the married sons and daughters but the same for can be said of those young people starting university and moving away from home. Once the tears have dried, promises made it is not long before the excuses start, ‘I want to stay on this weekend, its freshers’ week and everyone is going out. Yes, I will miss Sunday dinner but sure there’s always next week, love you lots, see you soon, bye’ and the screen goes blank. Staring into the emptiness the loss and rejection seem overwhelming.

We have all been there, in one way or another and so it felt like an answer from God when the priest at Mass talked about loneliness, lack of purpose and feeling totally unloved or even worse unlovable.

He asked us to remember that we are loved, we are lovable, we are children of God and his love far surpasses all.

(1) DEUT 32:1-12
(2) PSALM 126(127)