Mother's Day without a mother

Last year, waiting outside during a 15 minute visit with Mom. As sad as they were, I would love one of those right now.

Well, here we go. First mother’s day without mom alive.

The other day, my husband and the kids started talking about how they were planning “something epic” for Mother’s Day. They were all smiles and looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to show them excitement or appreciation for the kind thoughts. But instead of thinking about these sweet ideas, I immediately felt my face tighten. I got that quick stress headache that comes when I try to keep in a deep, terrible feeling that is socially unacceptable. How dare I not want their “epic” Mother’s Day celebration? Should I not be wearing a pastel, floral dress and a crown of flowers and receiving gifts with grace and poise? This happens to me sometimes, where my heart and gut is completely rejecting something but I can even articulate what it is in the moment. My heart sends an alert to the rest of me and I completely shut down. I roll up the burrito of sadness and just function at a surface level.

Mother’s Day is often epically sad for me. It’s been sad for the last few years, watching my mom die. I remember a few Mother’s Days ago we were at my mother-in-law’s house. My husband got us both flowers and we were about to have some cake. I said I needed to go outside and take a walk. And instead I went to the parking lot and just heaved sobs. I felt like I needed to turn my skin inside out. I didn’t want to have flowers and cake. I wanted to shove any recognition of me as a mother down. The feeling of loss was so intense that I couldn’t open myself up to receive the kind recognition. I didn’t want it. I wanted to make the day about someone else - not me. Because if I allowed myself to recognize all the mother that I was, it meant that I had to allow in the gutting loss of all of that my mom was too. My mom never really got to see me be a mother, but in doing so, I finally saw her.

Plus, I’m really busy on Mother’s Day. I spend most of the day thinking about Mom’s Alzheimer’s and feeling guilty for every decision I’ve ever made for her care ever. Then I spend about an hour feeling really angry that this disease took her from us. Last night I did an activity that is super fun. It’s where you lay in bed with your eyes scrunched up and try to force sleep to come. But instead of sleep, I rack my brain to pull up a memory of walking into Mom’s space and she recognizes me, or some part of her looks like HER and not “Alzheimer’s Mom”. So I have to budget in that time. And then I need a solid two hours to think about how different all of your mothers are from my mother so that I can prepare myself to reject any kind of love and support from friends or family sent my way. In the afternoon, I like to look around my neighborhood at all of the women receiving spending time with their mothers. Then I can scroll through pictures of all of this and make sure I feel completely alone in not having parents. Sometimes, if I have time, I look at the ultrasound pictures of my first child, the one we lost, to remember what could have been “if only” a million cells didn’t do what they did to cause that loss. So yeah, not a ton of time for pastel-wearing brunches.

This is more my style for a dinner. Also, if you aren’t cooking your broccoli with the pasta, what are you doing?

This year (thanks therapy), I had to really think about what I wanted. I don’t want to have an “epic Mother’s Day.” I’m patting myself on the back right now for my insanely good choice of a husband that really understood this and asked me what I DID want. I want to set aside some time to remember my Mom. I want to celebrate the other mothers in my life. A few months ago, I told my five year old that I wanted to have cake in the tub sometime and he thought this was the funniest thing so I’m pretty sure this is part of Mother’s Day this year. I hope this also comes with a bigger tub so this 5’9” grown up can keep both her knee caps and feet in the warm water at the same time.

So since you asked, I think you need to do the same. Pick 1 thing YOU want to do. Ask for it. You are epically deserving.