They’ve started. They’re everywhere.
Mother’s Day ads.
Visual reminders of the loss of my mother. Visual reminders that I have no need for cards, and flowers, and personalized gifts.
I live with the reality of my mother’s death every single day, but these ads make the loss raw. They expose the grief of special occasions clouded by a permanent absence.
Mother’s Day is now spent at the cemetery. A place that holds my mother’s body, and a mix of emptiness and sadness.
Every year I try to prepare myself for the commercials, the sentimental store displays, and the emails that always make their way to my inbox. They still knock the wind out of me. It still aches.
I’m not motherless, for a piece of her will always live on in me. But on this day, it always feels like I am.
There is an ache of jealousy and pain in the celebrations around me. The pictures, the posts, the stories, they make me miss my mother with an intensity that is different than most days.
It’s Mother’s Day and I don’t have my mother. Her absence is permanent. It is a painful reality that feels so incredibly unique on occasions like today.
Motherless on Mother’s Day is empty. It’s lonely. It’s a day to celebrate her greatness. A day that was so much sweeter when she was here to be celebrated.
Mother’s Day, a celebratory day that comes each year. A day that is now different because of the death of my mother.
A day that is felt differently for those of us with mothers in heaven.
It’s celebrating the greatness of a mother gone too soon.
A mother with a legacy instead of a future.
