When Mother’s Day is Hard because You Lost Your Mom

This will be my eleventh Mother’s Day since my mother died.

When Mother’s Day is hard because you lost your mom

Every day has felt like Mother’s Day since my mother’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease in May, 17 years ago. Honoring and protecting her became my life’s work during her illness.

Now that she is no longer here needing care, I try to honor her each day in the way I live and in the words I write. I try to honor her in the way I love others and mother my children.

But Mother’s Day makes it painfully obvious that my mom’s not here.

She’s not here to give a pretty Hallmark card or take out for brunch or bring flowers. She’s not here to hug and thank for a job well done.

When Mother’s Day is hard, I find myself feeling jealous of other young moms who still have their moms.

How lucky I am

Yet, I wouldn’t trade this ache for the world, because it means I know love.

With every ounce of my being, I loved her. And with every ounce of her being, she loved me.

She was my everything, and there is no me without her.

Some women go their whole lives without having that kind of relationship with their mother, without knowing that kind of love.

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. – Winnie the Pooh

Now, my mother’s love and compassion and bravery lives on in me, and in my brother, and in my girls.

I’ve got sunshine.

Every night, for as long as I can remember, my oldest has requested this Temptations song at bedtime:

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.
When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May.
I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl, my girl, my girl
Talkin’ ’bout my girl, my girl.

I truly did not understand how much my mother loved me until I had my own daughters.

I was her sunshine. I was her month of May.

And now, my girls are mine.

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. – Dr. Seuss

So I won’t cry because it’s over. I will smile because it happened.

I’ve got the month of May.

A version of this post was originally published May 4, 2015.