There's No Age Limit to a Parent's Worry

Natasha Richardson fell down on a ski slope, banged her head and immediately assured everyone around her that she was fine.

Less than two hours later, she lay in a hospital's intensive care unit fighting for her life.

Two days later, she was dead.

In headlines around the world, 45-year-old Richardson was identified as many things: Tony Award-winning actress. Daughter of theatrical giants Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson. Wife to larger-than-life actor Liam Neeson. Sister to television actress Joely Richardson.

But the part of Richardson's life that set off waves of anguish among so many women who never knew her was this: She was the mother of two sons, who are only 12 and 13.

Susanna Schrobsdorff wrote for Newsweek.com that it was the utter randomness of Richardson's tragic death that forced so many mothers like her to dwell on the unthinkable.

"And of course sometimes kids do fall, and there you are in the emergency room, freighted with guilt or panic or both," Schrobsdorff wrote after Richardson's death from a brain injury.

"Most of the time, they are fine, and you get used to a certain level of parental worry. But there's another opposite and almost equally terrifying thought that we don't talk about as much: what if something happened to us before our kids were old enough to take care of themselves?"

Richardson's death, Schrobsdorff continued, "was so jarring that we couldn't stop talking about the how and the why. We hoped that an autopsy would show that something else, a pre-existing condition maybe, caused her death. But no. These things happen. It could have been any of us."

Most parents of young children hover around the edges of this unbearable fear. I certainly did when my children were young, and it didn't take much to set my mind to churning.

I still remember the occasional discussions in my weekly parenting group, the kind that started with an offhand comment by one mother who knew another mother who'd just been diagnosed with cancer.

What I didn't know then is what often keeps me up at night now: When it comes to our children, we never think they're old enough to live without us. And we never stop worrying.

My children are grown, which brings some degree of peace, but only some, and I am astonished by the fleeting nature of this calm. Bigger kids, bigger problems. One phone call, one cryptic e-mail and the day explodes. At 51, I am still only as happy as my unhappiest child.

For a few short years, we kiss away whatever hurts them, but then adolescence kicks in. When we do our jobs right, our children leave us. After that, we are, at best, only cushions for the fall.

Before we're ready, they launch their own versions of the grown-up life. We are elbowed to the sidelines as they graduate or not, leave home suddenly or in stages, and take jobs or start careers, which sometimes soar but often sputter, especially in these tough economic times.

When our children were little, our worlds absorbed the expanding reaches of theirs, but we set the boundaries. Now they add and remove rings to our orbits with abandon, one spouse or partner or grandchild at a time.

Still, some of us allow ourselves the occasional sigh of satisfaction that despite our missteps and good intentions gone haywire, they seem to have made it. Lurking just behind our grateful smiles, though, is the gnawing suspicion that they're only one crisis away from needing us all over again.

Even when they don't know it. Especially when they don't know it.

Or maybe that's just my hope.

Maybe the dependence is all mine.

The longer I live the more often I am asked the same question by mothers increasingly younger than I: When do you stop worrying about your children?

My response never wavers:

I'll let you know.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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