This is a hard post for me to write.
I often don’t have much difficulty with Mother’s Day. My normal strategy is to try as much as possible to ignore it, and to spend very little time on Facebook on the actual day.
I don’t usually talk about how it can be hard. I know Mother’s Day is supposed to be a happy day, a day of appreciation and celebration, and I don’t want to take away from that. I want my friends to celebrate their moms, and to have their own motherhood celebrated. That can be a beautiful thing.
And talking about death and grief, well, it can be awkward. People don’t know what to say. I find that when the topic comes up, I’m usually spending most of my energy trying to make it easier for my conversation partner. “It happened a long time ago,” I say. Or, “Yes, it was the anniversary of my mom’s death, but I wrote about it, so that made me feel better.” Or I change the subject as quickly as possible.
I don’t know how to stop doing this. Sometimes, with people I don’t know very well, I think it is the best strategy for me. When I called a friend for support after my friend Jay died last summer, he later told me he thought I should have called someone else, which is sometimes par for the course. Not everyone has the emotional maturity to engage with these issues. But I also know that it is important to talk about the experience of grief. It is by talking about it that we normalize it, and normalizing it cuts down on isolation and shame.
I was at a dinner party the other night, and my hostess had tried out one of her mother’s chicken recipes for the first time. She joked about how she’d called her mom four times asking for advice as she cooked. I commented that it was nice her mom hadn’t minded the constant phone calls. Another friend laughed and said moms never mind constant phone calls.
And oh, this innocent comment gutted me. Because I realized this was a completely foreign experience to me. It sounds so nice, having somebody who doesn’t mind if you call over and over. Having a mom. It sounds really nice. And I don’t have that. I haven’t had that, and I’ll probably never have that.
I don’t have a mom to turn to when I need advice. I don’t have a mom who will fly out to take care of me if I need surgery or get really sick. I don’t have a mom who has been there for all of my major life events. I don’t have automatic plans for holidays. I don’t have a mom’s unconditional love to lean on when times are hard, or, you know, even when they’re pretty good.
And so this week before Mother’s Day, I’m feeling really, really sad. I can’t figure out what I want to do this weekend. What I really want to do this weekend is spend time with my mom. And I can’t. She’s not here.
This is what Nala looks like when she is comforting me.
Grief is such a funny thing. So many Mother’s Days have gone by, during which I’ve barely batted an eyelash. And now suddenly, the grief is here, and I don’t really know what to do with it. I keep trying to shove it away; “It happened such a long time ago,” I tell myself. But grief doesn’t have a schedule. And I think maybe grief never goes away. Not entirely. It grows more manageable, but it doesn’t disappear.
So here it is. I really miss my mom. I miss her voice. I miss her hugs. I want to give her everything I’ve ever written and have her read it all. I want to sing for her. I want to take her to Disneyland, and I want to sit on a bench with her in New Orleans Square and watch the people go by. I want to introduce her to Nala, who I know she’d completely adore. I want to tell her that every year I hang up the Christmas stocking she made for me, and every year I read the note she left with it for me to find the first Christmas after she died.
I want her to know the Amy I’ve become.
I’m not going to get what I want. Instead I will wipe away my tears, and I will work on my novel that is about a girl traveling through the Underworld to bring her dead mom back home. Of course that’s what it’s about. And I will think about her. And I will miss her. And life will go forward, the way it always does.
And I will write about it here on the blog, because grief is nothing to be ashamed of. It is simply another reflection of love.
The Practical Free Spirit 
I truly loved this post. I feel your pain as well. My mom is also gone and she took her shortbread recipe with her 🙂
Hugs
i also wrote about the pain of losing mom, maybe it will bring you some comfort knowing that you’re certainly not alone.
https://skinnyandsingle.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/mother-she-will-never-again/
Thank you, Amy. I agree, grief is a funny thing, or at least a confounding one. My mother died during Christmas of 2013, but she’d spent 14 years drifting away from us on the slow, ragged boat of dementia. Grief came in bits and bites, one of the worst for my brother and me being the first time she forgot our birthdays. But she lives on in the lives she touched as a mother, a teacher, a neighbor and a friend.
Here’s my processing of our loss, at least my first processing. Because it *is* a process. http://www.hungrypassport.com/2014/06/a-fistful-of-spaghetti/
xo Carol
Carol, that was a moving and lovely post. And I thought your final line was haunting and powerful: “Suspended in those golden moments, we were all immortal.”
Thanks, howardjones777. Here’s to spending this weekend suspended in golden moments with good folks.
Please call me any time, Amy. I will listen.
Thank you for sharing that, Amy. That was a powerful and moving essay.
My mom’s still here physically, but she’s in the long Alzheimer’s fade. The hugs are real, and I’m thankful for them. But not much of her is left inside, and I grieve a little before and after every interaction. Every one of them is like another little death, a reminder that the person I used to share stories and music and books and, yes, recipes, isn’t there anymore.
You’ll be in my thoughts.
I appreciate this, as a mother myself. This is a loving message.to your mom. Your mother would be very proud of you. She would want you to take care of yourself and thrive with life. I appreciate this also a daughter and think of my mom. I miss her.