How does Odysseus’s mother die?

In The Odyssey, Odysseus’s mother Anticleia dies of grief and longing while he is away from home for 20 years fighting in the Trojan War and wandering afterward. When Odysseus meets her spirit in the underworld, she tells him directly that she did not die from illness or old age, but because she missed him so deeply.

Her death shows the emotional cost of Odysseus’s absence on the people waiting for him in Ithaca. While Odysseus seeks glory and struggles to survive abroad, his family suffers quietly at home. Anticleia’s death especially forces Odysseus to confront how much pain his long journey has caused. He learns that his wife Penelope still mourns him, his father Laertes lives in misery, and his mother herself could not endure the sorrow.

The scene is one of the clearest examples in The Odyssey of how memory and grief are tied together. Anticleia never forgets her son, and that love becomes painful enough to destroy her. Her death also marks a turning point for Odysseus, because it deepens his desire to stop wandering and return home to restore his family and household.