It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail. 

—Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch

There is a year nearly every daughter who has lost her mother describes as being very significant. This is the year when she becomes the age of her mother when she died. This was also true for me. 

When I turned thirty-four, the age my mother was when she died, I had a serious uterine infection. The doctor prescribed antibiotics, but my infection wasn’t responding. Finally, my fever was so high, and I was in so much pain, the doctor sent me to the hospital. I was bent in half as I sat in the wheelchair for the nurse to take me to my room. They put me on an intravenous antibiotic, daily penicillin shots, and ordered an ultrasound. The test showed a mass in the area. The doctor was baffled about its origins, but in my mind, the elephant in the room was cancer. The doctor decided to repeat the ultrasound the next day, after the antibiotics had a chance to take effect. 

The circumstances felt ominous to me. I feared that I was about to be the third generation of women to die at an early age. Unlike most early loss daughters, until this moment, I hadn’t given much thought to the anniversary of my mother’s death, nor her mother’s. But, on this long and anxious day, I did the math. I realized I was the age my mother was when she died. Further, my oldest daughter was the same age I had been. It only recently occurred to me that my youngest daughter was the same age that my mother was when her mother died. It was truly a circle-of-life moment. 

In the evening, my little girls, ages eight and three, came with their dad to visit me. We named the IV stand “Fred” so it would seem less ominous to them. We walked the hall so they could see me out of bed. Was I remembering the days I’d spent visiting my mom in the hospital? I don’t think so, but perhaps my intuition was telling me to consider my daughters’ possible fearful feelings more than the average hospitalized mom might. I knew what it was like to have a mother who never returned from the hospital. I also had experienced losing a mother at a young age and I didn’t want them to imagine they too could be motherless. 

When I was eight, and my mother was ill, I turned to God for solace and intervention. Now sick myself, I again turned to God in prayer. I knew I needed to be clear and ask for what I wanted. Here’s what I said. 

“Dear God, as you know, Winnie is the same age I was when my mother died. She is independent, strong, and has a great dad. She will be fine. But I have this little girl, Katie. She is only three years old, much too young to be left without a mother. Sorry, God, I can’t leave her yet. I’m not going now. Please stand with me on this. Amen.” 

The next day, my husband came to the hospital by himself to be with me as we heard the results of the second ultrasound. Dr. Johnson looked bewildered as he entered my hospital room late in the afternoon. He said, “The mass is completely gone.” He had no explanation as to the cause of the mass or the reasons for its disappearance. “Let’s keep doing what we’re doing with the antibiotics and see how you improve in the next few days. Your fever is down, and I believe you’re on the road to recovery.”

I didn’t need further explanation. I knew God had answered my prayer. I would get to be a mother for a while longer. Was this a miracle? Believers like me think so. Was it the power of suggestion? Perhaps. Was it all a mistake? Maybe they had misread the first ultrasound? I don’t know, nor do I care. I was profoundly grateful I had escaped this crisis and had a chance to see my children grow up. I knew there were no guarantees, but I was hopeful as I sailed away from my anniversary year. 

I was also tremendously relieved when my oldest daughter, Winnie, moved into her forties, surpassing her grandmother, Winnie, and her great-grandmother, Winnifred. Winnie is now fifty-five with three daughters of her own, just like her great-grandmother. 

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