Being Mother of the Bride: The Feeling I Couldn't Name

I was standing all alone in the house. No one there. Nothing was there. No furniture, no curtains, no rugs, no pictures. Just me waiting. Waiting for someone to come and get me.

Then I woke up.

It was a week before my daughter’s wedding. Up until that point I had only felt excitement. The planning, the anticipation was buoying me along with a sort of giddiness. Family and friends were coming from all over so along with the wedding plans, we were getting our house ready for their arrival.

And then it hit me. 

Out of the blue, I found myself getting weepy for what seemed like no particular reason. I was drawn to looking at pictures of my daughter when she was a child. When I rehearsed the speech I planned to give, I could never seem to be able to get through it without some sort of breakdown.

I had to get myself together. I didn’t understand where all this pent up emotion was coming from. I was so happy for my daughter and future son-in-law. They had been together since they were teenagers and I knew this day would come. But why was I such a mess now?

As the day approached, I consciously tried to cry as much as I could in private to try and (as psychologists might say) “process” this life transition. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t joy. I just couldn’t seem to name the emotions I was feeling.

Then the day of the wedding came. And as I helped my daughter step into her wedding dress, I realized exactly what this emotion was.  

It was gratitude. Gratitude for having been her mother and the honour to have raised such a wonderful, kind, strong and independent woman - that was always my hope for her and she had achieved this. 

But the marking of time is something else that these milestones often also force us to see with the hardest part stepping aside to let life continue forward. But this feeling of needing to step aside was not me actually shrinking. It was me actually knowing she had become her own person. I no longer needed to play the role of a mother of direction but now needed to transition to the role of a mother of support. 

This milestone also served as a reminder to me that the conveyor belt of life was still moving forward and as much as I didn’t want to face it, I was now getting closer to the end of it. As much as I wanted, I couldn’t run back and start again. It was life’s way of marching forward.

At the wedding,  I consciously put away my phone so that I could make sure I was fully present. As I watched my daughter glow with happiness, I would blink my eyes as I mentally recorded a memory of the moment.

When I arrived home after the wedding, I walked in and just stood and listened to the silence of the house. I realized that even though my home was quieter, it still echoes with the joy of a family having lived there. Kids rushing to get ready for school, Sunday dinners, homework at the kitchen table - it was now these memories that filled the house. But I am confident that new memories will be filling in the spaces now left open. Ones with now extended family gatherings and our grandchildren now playing where our children once did.

And that’s not an empty home.