When you lose your father...

Last night, I hung out with two friends and we got on the topic of fathers and mothers. We'd all lost our fathers when young. One friend's father was murdered when he (I'll call him Tim) was 2 years old. The other friend and I simply had fathers who were absentee and in other ways "not the best dad in the world". 

We lamented that a bit, and then as we reviewed the landscape, I said in passing, "I'm the only one who lost his mother early." (My mother passed when I was in my early twenties.) Tim replied with a heartbreaking statement. "When you lose your father, you also lose your mother." He then unpack his words.

"When your father is gone, your mother has to take on his role, which erodes her ability to do the mothering she'd rather be doing."

Food for thought, and for compassion. And for lament. I measure a great loss in my mother's absence, but I had her for 20+ years. Tim had his mother (and his father) for two. After that, he had a single parent struggling to raise ten (!) kids in the slums of Mexico City.