By Younis Elayyan
Anna Thompson
138 Maple Street
Apartment 6B
New Haven, CT 06510
March 15, 2017
Eleanor Thompson
Whispering Pines Cemetery
Section 4, Grave No. 182
Willow Creek, CT 06516
Dear Mother,
She has your eyes. The same hazelnut brown that I have only glimpsed through a faded photograph, where your laughter seems frozen in time, a sound I have long wanted to hear but never will, in the one single photo I have of you that never parts its space from my purse. Holding her now—my daughter—I am being drowned in a fear so intense it threatens to consume me. This fear comes not just from the present moment but from what lies ahead. How her every breath is a reminder of a new role, a role for which I feel utterly unprepared to wear its shoes.
I am terrified. The stillness that fills the room when she looks at me, as if expecting me to have all the answers up my sleeve, fills me with dread. I am haunted by the thought of failing her, haunted by the question of how to be a mother when I never experienced the love of one myself. This fear eats at me constantly, a clear reminder of the emptiness your departure left behind, now deepened by my need to ask for your advice in a world you were torn from too soon.
In her, it kills me that I see the continuation of a story you began but were never able to finish. In the silence of the night, I find myself whispering questions, hoping against reality for answers I know will never come. How do I teach her about love when its warmth was a stranger to me? How do I instill in her a sense of security when my own is built on the shifting sands of loss?
In the loneliness of my own childhood, in the empty space where you should have stood, I searched for you, Mother. In every unfamiliar face, in every whispered lullaby that was not sung by your lips, I felt the pain of your absence. My heart, a small vessel for such a big sea of wanting, often threatened to be crushed under the weight of what I missed. A mother’s guidance, her true love, and her comforting presence during bedside stories or magical healing aura when they scraped their knees—these were the chapters of a story I could only dream of, but never lived.
I grew among the echoes of what we might have been, imaginary conversations with you swirled in my head, asking the stars the questions I wished to ask you. How do you find a sense of belonging when you’ve never had a home that felt like your own? Questions carved in my head like one would with stone, shaping the silhouettes of my fears and dreams.
I know it might seem like I’m whining like a child, despite being a grown woman who has just given birth. But the truth is, in many ways, I am still that child—grown in age, perhaps, but inside, there’s a part of me that was never nurtured to maturity. My heart, it seems, hasn’t caught up to the rest of me, lingering in the past, in the emptiness of your absence. Life forced me into adulthood early, bouncing from one foster home to another, learning to stand up for myself without the guidance of a parent. But that survival, it came at a cost—my inner child remained waiting, stunted in a state of hunger for what was never given. The women who came and left tried, but no love is like what I saw my friends got when their mothers came to pick them up.
To an outsider, my words seem like the daydreams of a delusional woman, speaking to one’s imagination, a mother who exists only in the want of what could have been. But you, Mother, thinking of you is the sole source of comfort I’ve ever known, even in your absence. Watching other girls with their mothers, I finally understood a mother was what I desired most, what I needed to fill the gaping spaces within me.
In this new daily life I am trying to adjust to, some moments quietly stitch the bond between us, moments that feel like a fresh start.
When she wraps her tiny hand around my finger, it’s more than a touch; it grips my heart, grounding me in the present, during my swirling fears for the future. The first genuine smile she offered in response to my voice sliced through my sea of doubts like a lighthouse guiding a lost ship to shore. It’s during these times I truly grasp what love means — not as a concept I missed but as concrete presence, alive between us, healing the silence left by your absence.
I really am trying my best. Every day with her is a lesson in what it means to love and be present. I read stories to her at night, voices of characters filling the quiet room, and I realize there’s another listener: the little girl I once was, soaking in every word, healing alongside my daughter.
Forcing myself to learn to be the mother she needs and, in doing so, somehow
becoming the parent I needed, too. It’s in the simple things—bedtime stories, her laughter, the way she looks at me with complete trust. These moments are teaching me that maybe I can do this, that maybe the cycle of absence stops here with us.
She started crying… Sorry, I am cutting it short when my heart doesn’t want to stop blurting all that is in it out. Better go see her. Till I write you another letter, if I get the courage to write another one, I guess.
Your daughter, always,
Anna