Missing My Mom on Mother’s Day

I miss my Mom every day but it’s brutal missing my Mom on Mother’s Day.

I’ve been dreading this day: the first Mother’s Day without my beautiful Mom. It’s gut-wrenching, and even more so than I expected coming on the heels of losing my precious Luca just days ago. Honestly I don’t even want to get out of bed today. And I might not.

But I did want to honor my Mom with a blog post today. I’m still grieving her loss and it’s been nearly a year now. I’ve been working on a tribute post for her but I haven’t yet finished it. I’ve been really struggling with it actually and I’m not quite sure why. After my Dad passed I had his tribute up in two days.

I’ve run the gamut of emotions these past eleven months. At times I felt like a pinball being flung around aimlessly and other times I was just plain stalled out, incapable of moving. I was removed and withdrawn from friends, having no desire to engage with anyone at all; and then when I did engage, I often had outrageous reactions very uncharacteristic of the person I am. I was angry, I was depressed, I was sad, I was envious of people who still had their moms and the unfairness of it all was a burning sting.

I felt extremely guilty about not finishing the tribute post that I had started. I’m no stranger to procrastination, that’s for sure, but I’ve really felt enormous guilt for not completing Mom’s tribute, as if I were letting my Mom down by not posting it and I wasn’t honoring her in the way she deserved to be honored.

Self-imposed deadlines came and went (“I’ll post it at the one month anniversary of her passing,” “The three-month mark will be a perfect time to post it,” “The six month anniversary is coming up and I really need to get this done”…). The more time that passed the more guilt I felt. I talked to a grief counselor about it because I was truly baffled at how I just seemed absolutely unable to finish it, and at the same time how could I dare let her down like this and not honor my amazing Mom?

I’m glad I did talk to that grief counselor because I was able to at least quit beating myself up about it. He even said it wasn’t uncommon at all. How so? He said he often sees grieving people experience this same type of delay hurdle, like when one is not able to write the obituary or one can’t seem to order the headstone. He said it’s as if those things – and my tribute post – represent finality. An ending that can’t be reversed. Completing these things is like putting the period at the end of a sentence. Finality, like reaching that last word when you’re reading a great book that you don’t want to end.

I really got that. THAT hit home. So yeah, all this time has passed in these last eleven months and I haven’t been able to put the period at the end of the tribute sentence.

As today approached, I knew that Mother’s Day has forever changed for me. It will never ever be the same. Perhaps today, a day when people the world over honor their mothers, would be the perfect day to finally publish the tribute post for my Mom.

HOWEVER, yesterday I opened the Word document, started scrolling through it to see what else it needed to be complete and came to this realization: Holy Crap! This tribute is 11 pages long – and that’s without the photos! The word count at this point is showing to have 335 lines of text and nearly 6000 words! I can’t expect anyone to sit and read through all that!

So… I decided (this won’t surprise my blogging friends, I’m sure) to do a Mom Series. I’ll be able to share all that I want to share about my Mom, but just in smaller chunks. My Mom Series will be forthcoming.Today’s post is simply going to be a shout-out to my Mom and to all the amazing mothers out there.

I saw this on a Mother’s Day card and I really liked it:

When a mother says “I love you,”
she also means “I’d do anything for you.”
When she wishes you “Good night,” she’s saying “Your dreams are my dreams, too.”
And when she calls out “See you soon!” she’s promising
“I’ll be with you wherever you go.”

I miss my beautiful Mom so much! I talk to her all the time. And I sure hope the last line in that verse is true. I hope she is with me wherever I go. She is of course always with me in my heart, but I hope her spirit tags along with me too. There are so many times, several times a week, or a day even, when I find myself saying, “Mom, I wish you were here to see this!” or ”I wish you were here to do this with me.” or “I wish you could go with me today.”

Thankfully, my Mom is in my dreams often.

And those are the very best dreams.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom. I love you! 

 

And Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful mothers out there!