kristy bowen | horror writer & book artist

  I often think about mothers, and losing them, and what that means as we grow older. Some lose their mothers early due to neglect, abandonment (physical or emotional). Others lose them young, though one may question how young is too young, since it inevitably happens earlier than we'd like. In the few months after I lost mine, a friend at work found me crying at my desk not because of my own loss, but a student worker, only 20, had lost her mother to cancer and this seemed terribly sadder than my own, with whom I had had many adult years. I was, after all, in my forties, the age at which such losses inevitably begin. Some lose their mothers to illness, to accidents. Some to estrangement and boundaries.  While my relationship with my mother in my teen years may have been volatile, we were close enough in my adulthood and I say enough, because there were still many things my mother was not aware of (particularly romantic things I preferred to keep private.) While my visits to R...