I was a “sad child”; My mother had me in her 40s, after my grandmother died

• My mother had me nine months after my grandmother died – I was a sad child.
• She was 42 years old, and when I was born, my siblings were already teenagers.
• Now I’m in my 40s and I lost my mother to dementia and I understand why she had me.

My mother’s mother had died nine months earlier, and my mother, struggling to feel something other than intense sadness, had died I accidentally got pregnant with me.

Now I was on board to enter the world of i heal her broken heart. No pressure.

It was mid-July and New York was longing for a storm. My mother told me she was sitting outside, hot, sticky, and eight months pregnant. She held a sip of cold beer in one hand and a salty pretzel stick in the other. She was 42 years old.

She called me her “sad baby”

My parents already did it four teenage children when they found out I was going to make my big debut. Reactions ranged from terrified teenage disgust at the thought of sexually active parents, to nervous tears and outrage, to the flustered excitement of one of my brothers who, ironically, ended up with me, sharing a birthday only 17 years apart.

The transition from her mother’s death to my life was almost instantaneous, as if my grandmother and I could high-five each other as we passed through the veil. I was supposed to be at my grandmother’s birthday, but I was born a week later. Either way, my mother connected us forever, as if we were connected by some invisible soul thread. True or not, my mother always made that connection.

The circumstances of my conception also led my mischievous Irish mother to affectionately call me her “sad baby” because this deep sadness somehow joy came.

The whole family existed before I joined them

I grew up in a house with six adults. It’s like the whole family existed before I came on the scene. That’s technical of course made me the “baby” of the family on paper, but if you look closely, “precocious only child” was a more accurate depiction.

My siblings and I were very close, but we didn’t have what you would call a traditional sibling dynamic. I figured out how to keep myself (and everyone else in the room) entertained. I quickly realized that when I made adults laugh, I had to be part of the crew.

I gained a crazy perspective on how to read people and make them happy, which some might call empathy, but I’m pretty sure it was my survival mechanism. AND I have my parents to myself mostly; something my siblings never let me forget.

They mockingly called me a “rich kid,” and in some ways I was. My parents had disposable income and more time to spend with me. I dated them in middle age; leaf peeping on Sunday drives in the Catskills, shell concerts featuring the ultra-hip Barbershop Quartets, seriously watching “Murder, She Wrote” – I was a little old lady in an OshKosh-B’gosh jumpsuit.

Related stories

She said I care about her youth

The best times were when Mom and I were alone at home. She would play her old records and we would sing and dance around the table, listening to Elvis, Johnny Cash and The Clancy Brothers. “Thanks to you, I am young,” she said with her easy smile.

We would go for ice cream at Barbara’s Candy World and she would tease me because she knew I would order the same thing, vanilla with rainbow sprinkles. Mom would get Rocky Road, which somehow always ended with her, and we would laugh and giggle alike.

I am now the same age as my mother was when she had me, and although my mother is still alive, we are losing her to dementia. I have never experienced such cruel pain.

I was always acutely aware of the fact that my mother was older than everyone else (I was so excited when she won the “oldest mom in class” contest in second grade!). I knew I would lose my mom this way before my friends lost theirs, but I figured I’d be prepared for this reason. I have always been a perfectionist and thought I could get through grief by accepting its inevitability, but now I realize that nothing can prepare you for this type of loss.

The “sad child” idea is starting to make sense, at least on some level; a puppy, a script, a thousand homemade cakes, whatever. I don’t know what it’s like to have a child, but I know I feel the same grief over losing the mother I knew. I understand that these feelings have to go somewhere.

I realize that it’s not that you need this baby to fill you up, but that you have so much love that you still need to give.