Missing Mom: Grieving Her Loss on Mother's Day

Hi Friends,

So Mother's Day is coming up. This holiday is super hard for me. It's a little less hard for me now that I've become a mom myself, but most of the rest of my life, it's been such a loaded day where I juggle feelings of somberness, longing, appreciation, guilt, joy, and sadness.

You see, when I was about 5, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Being young and naive, I just thought life was normal. I didn't know what the word cancer meant, even though we said it all the time. I thought my life was the same as everyone else's and that my normal was everyone's normal.

Mom holding me as a baby. My sisters, Jessi and Sunni. And Dad. 

My normal was practically living in hospitals since we were in and out of them so often.

My normal was staring at the picture of my mom's melon-sized tumor and thinking it looked like the top of the pizza after my gross older sister, Jessi--who incidentally died later that year in a 4-wheeling accident, but that's a whole separate blog post--insisted on eating off all the toppings first. (To this day, I'm still super grossed out when people eat the toppings first. Let's not behave like barbarians, shall we?)

My normal was showing off and playing with my mom's uber-fun, squishy, fake boob they gave to her after the mastectomy.

My normal was practicing rolling around the house in my mom's wheelchair while she slept. (I learned later that the mastectomy missed some and the cancer had spread to her spine.)

My normal was being terrified whenever I was at a friend's house and I heard an ambulance nearby because that sound often meant my mom had had another episode.

My normal was staying in hospices watching Alanis Morissette music videos while my sisters did homework so we could be near my mom while she rested.

These things were all normal and even dull to me. I didn't know why people were always telling me and my family that we were so brave or strong. I just thought we were a normal, average, boring family.

Then one morning, when I was 9 (she was 41), something very NOT normal for me happened. I had fallen asleep at the hospice the night before, but I woke up back at home. My sisters had already left for school, and my dad sat me on his bed and was telling me that last night my mom "passed away." (I still hate that phrase, by the way. It upsets me because it feels fake and disrespectful to use a euphemism at such a serious moment. "Passing away" makes it sound peaceful, and it may have been that way for my mother, but for me, I was feeling anything but peace at that moment.)

Here's the thing, I had NO IDEA that cancer often resulted in death. Like none. I feel kind of stupid looking back now, because it was so very obvious, but it was not obvious to me as a young child. I knew my mom was sick, but honestly, I don't think I ever really thought about the future during those years. I mean, I was just a kid. I was kind of self-absorbed and just pre-occupied with other things like making up cool new dance moves to Shania Twain and did I like Chris or Jamal from class better (Chris, btw). I have since forgiven Young Me for the crime of simply developing at an age-appropriate rate, but I still can't help but to look back and wish I might have done a few things differently.

Maybe I should have been more scared of what was to come.

I should have been cherishing my time with my mom more intensely.

I should have been interviewing her daily for her life story, her love story with my dad (because he is not gushy, so his version is super unromantic), her conversion story to our faith. I should have been finding out more about her childhood and her cancer journey and her advice on what matters in life.

I should have been taking a million pictures to remember her by.

I should have been asking her to write down advice for when I became a teenager. And a wife. And a mom.

If I could have glimpsed the future, maybe I would have known to do these things. But I couldn't. That's not real life.

In real life, I was in complete shock. The news felt abrupt to me. However, as the days and weeks passed, it started to hit me that I would not have a mother figure for so very many important milestones in my life.

One of those milestones is Mother's Day. The day where we express gratitude and appreciation towards the women who gave us life. The one day when I'm reminded of how much I cannot do that.

How do you express how much you miss someone if they're never there? How do you express your appreciation for all the ways they did shape you in those 9 years, even if there's also anger at them having left you so much earlier than you anticipated? How do you thank them for their example of bravery and selflessness during a time when they could have been justified in being selfish? How do you honor their sacrifice while also appreciating not having had to make the same sacrifice in your own family so far? How do you help your children love a grandmother they never knew?

I'll tell you how: you write a blog post. And a journal entry (or a million). And go to lots of therapy. And visit their grave. And write letters to them. And send balloons into the sky. And look at pictures. And talk about them to loved ones. And make art. And a million other things (here are a few more ideas to honor a loved one, in case this applies to you) so as to ensure that she is not forgotten and that maybe she can feel that love from beyond the veil.

So here it is. I love you, Mom. I miss you every single day. I wish I had gotten to know you better but thank you for bringing me into this world and marrying a wonderful man who, along with various other family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, and church leaders, raised me. I hope you and Jessi are doing well as angels and I'm glad you have each other. I'll be thinking of you this year on Mother's Day and I hope you are thinking of me too.

Happy Mother's Day.

Printable available in my shop, SmilecrushArtPrints, on Etsy

Until then, I'm going to go snuggle my kids extra right now.