Mother and child, divided

Rowan Clarke - 19 May 16

When Damien Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995 with bisected cow and calf in tanks of formaldehyde, I understood very little about what it is to separate the unity between mother and child. Then, it was a sensationalist installation, and part of an exciting movement that subverted art. Now, on the day of the funeral of a friend from my antenatal group, its meaning has changed.

One of things I love about art is that it’s more than the sum of its being; it’s also what the audience gets from it. After twenty years, this piece of art has physically stayed the same, but my changing reaction has made it something entirely new to me.

I don’t think you can fully appreciate the mother-child unity until you become a mother, and the end of that unity becomes your greatest fear. Not only the fear of your children dying, which comes in the darkest of nights and crushes your chest so you can’t breathe, but also the fear that you could leave your children.

Of course I’ve always known that being a mother doesn’t make you invincible. One of my aunts died aged twenty-four, when I was eight and her daughter thirteen months. Her death and the grief of my family had a profound, life-long effect on me. But when an aunt died when I was a mother myself, her children’s loss almost eclipsed my own grief.

When my antenatal friend died leaving two daughters, the title ‘Mother and child divided’ popped into my head. Damien Hirst was an ex-Catholic school boy subverting the traditional imagery of Madonna and child, fascinated by the mystery of death. He was also exploring Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical themes around the impossibility of having or keeping an idealised unity, which is often coupled with a fear of fragmentation of one’s self.

As notions go, that might be a bit full-on for a blog on motherhood. But I identify with that notion of idealising the unity between mother and child. You just have to look at a) popular art, and b) our Instagram feeds to see that we are obsessed with images of happy mothers cradling their children.

You can also understand how our sense of self is interwoven with our children. When we fear losing a child, or being lost to our children, we also fear the surviving member of that unison falling apart. In one of her final messages, my friend wrote “telling my children I’m going to die is the hardest thing I’ve ever done”. More than our regret at leaving them is our fear of the pain it will cause them.

For Hirst (Damien; Hirst, coincidentally, was also my friend’s surname), the cows in his installation were more interesting than they had been in life. “What’s sad is that if you look at my cows cut up in formaldehyde, they have more personality than any cows walking about in fields,” he said.

The same could be said for humans. Not that we should be cut up and pickled, but that we are suckers for idealised chocolate box images of mothers and children. We’re liable to judge ourselves for not living up to this ideal as mothers or daughters, or feel bad if that relationship has ended or failed. It’s only with the shocking finality of death that we look more closely, and start to see how much deeper, more complicated and more extraordinary it really is.

When a mother dies, we really think about what binds her to her children. I’ve personally known only a few, but each time, it’s made me think more deeply and examine more closely the maternal bond with my own children and in general. Damien Hirst said “In a way, you understand more about living people by dealing with dead people.” And I think it’s a good point.

I’m an optimist. I like to see the good in situations. While I see pain and regret in my cousins, I also see strength from having had a unity with their mother that reaches beyond the grave. I like to think that will be true for the daughters of my friend. And also that her death, while sad, helps others like me think, reflect and gain a little bit more from life. I think she’d be happy to think that was true.

Back to the cows. When I look at them now I relate to the mother-child bond, to the idea that by damaging one, you’re damaging the other. But as much as there’s no physical part unseen, there’s something that’s absent, something ethereal and inexplicable. But you know what I mean. It’s the bond that reaches beyond the confines of life and death. And of all things, I take comfort in that.

Rowan Clarke

In order of appearance my accomplishments are: woman, copywriter, mother, swimming teacher, open water swimmer, blogger. My blog is about the physical, practical and psychological aspects of taking up endurance swimming as a mid-thirties female with children. Rowan Clarke is an open-water-mother living near Bristol with her husband and three children Rufus (10), Betty (8) and Caspar (4).

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