Personal Narrative: My Mother's Death

One dies only when one is forgotten. However, there is not an effective way to shut down feelings, neither good ones nor bad ones. So even if one has died physically, one still lives mentally and emotionally in the minds and hearts of the ones left behind, and there is no worst feeling than missing something or someone that will never come back. Death is unexplainable and trying to make sense out of it is useless. But one thing is for sure; you can never love someone as much as you can miss him or her. So when a person one loves dies, one refuses to let oblivion take over. One wishes to hold on to even the smallest and most nonsense details and memories, due to the fact we, understandably, refuse to let that person go. Facing the devastating

It has been extremely difficult for me to go through my loss, but I would never want to be in my mother’s shoes. My mother’s life has changed completely. She does not go a day without remembering my grandmother and she currently reminds me of how important it is to be a loving daughter. My mother strongly believes that my grandmother is now as happy as she has always deserved. However, now my grandmother’s loved ones carry an amount of pain that cannot go unnoticed. This relates to what Lily feels because the absence of her mother has affected every aspect of the teenage life she now lives. The importance of a mother’s role in a girl’s growth is unarguable. Lily thinks: “You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair. My hair was constantly going off in eleven wrong directions”(3). As silly as it might sound, those little types of details a mother does are what distinguish her presence from everybody else’s. Lily does not have nice clothes or the bracelets every girl has in her school, and she does not feel comfortable with the unfeminine way of being she has adopted. Worsening Lily’s internal issues, her lack of femininity excludes her from the other girls and these are the type of issues only motherly love and guidance can solve. Moreover, if her father would act as a proper father figure maybe Lily could solve her social and internal conflicts. Instead, T. Ray is the exact

Ray’s cruel manners, one might think that if he would have been a more affectionate father he might be able to fill her mother’s void. The truth is that many loved ones or family members can help fill one’s mother’s absence, but it is never the same. On the other hand, a mother could easily take the place of all others. Kidd makes reference to this at the beginning of the book in a quote about bees from Man and Insects. It says: “The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.” In reference to the Queen Bee, a mother is what represents order, calmness, sweetness and shelter. That is why, without the presence of the mother everything can turn into chaos. Anyone can play a mother figure, but mother is only one. However, Rosaleen’s sincere love and care towards Lily act like blessings for her. Rosaleen represents the strong, determined, polite and good willed role model every girl should have. It is fair to say that Rosaleen saved Lily’s future as an independent woman. Without her, Lily would have never reached the Boatwrights and she would have never escaped her dark childhood, which easily foreshadows trouble and downfall as a young adult or grown up