When you become a mother, there are a multitude of milestones you prepare for in advance. From birthdays to baseball games and all the moments in between, you anticipate a steady stream of “firsts” as you enter your parental era. While most of these are happy occasions, one that you can never really prepare for is your first Mother’s Day after losing your own mom.
My mother died unexpectedly last summer, just a mere four days after my own birthday. Since then, there have obviously been many heavy moments of sadness and indescribable grief. Some anticipated, like the holiday season or first days of school, and others that punch you in the gut on a random Tuesday morning when you’re not expecting it. As we approach the month of May, and I know that my first Mother’s Day without her is on the horizon, I’m attempting to find my way in this new reality without having her earthside.
As a newer recruit to the Dead Parents’ Club (otherwise known as the DPC), here’s how I’m attempting to find my way on my first Mother’s Day without my mom.
Looking for ways to celebrate the moms in your life? Click here to visit our full guide to Mother’s Day!
Read More:
- 7 Ways to Take Care of Yourself When Mother’s Day Is Hard
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- Grief on Father’s Day: How to Support Someone Missing Their Dad
Spending time with my family (sparingly)
Even before losing my mom, Mother’s Day has always been a time when I enjoyed being alone. That’s not to say I don’t love my husband and children and appreciate that they are, in fact, the ones who made me a mom. That being said, as a full-time work-from-home parent, I already spend a lot of time with them.
In the past, we’ve started Mother’s Day with our standard Sunday pancake breakfast, often accented by a special upgrade like the “good” bacon or a decadent filling I’ve requested. Then I opt to leave the kids with my husband and spend the day how I want. One where I’m not beholden to a nap schedule or sticky hands. One year, I simply asked for an afternoon at the mall by myself, in which I went on the hunt for the perfect pair of white jeans and scarfed down a giant soft pretzel with gooey yellow cheese (it was glorious, I highly recommend it). I’m a firm believer that moms have the right to spend their day how they choose, and sometimes that frankly doesn’t include your family.
As an outgoing person who loves staying connected with my friends and family (and who also works in marketing), I spend a lot of time on my little social apps. My mother loved Facebook, and I truly believe she is one of the few people whose mental health actually benefited from embracing these forms of technology.
However, on this day, I already know that seeing everyone’s posts thanking their moms for “everything they’ve done” for them and throwback photos of moms and daughters is just going to be too much for me, especially this year. There have already been so many little moments just in the eight months since we lost her that have had me doubled over in grief unexpectedly. So, going into a day like this that you know is going to be the trigger warning of all trigger warnings feels like the right time to unplug.
“Going into a day that you know is going to be the trigger warning of all trigger warnings feels like the right time to unplug.”
Connecting with my fellow DPC members
I have often joked that while the Dead Parents Club is the absolute worst group to be a part of, it’s also full of the most welcoming, wonderful people that you could come to know. Part of me thought that losing my mom would push me to become closer to those who knew her best and try to squeeze out of them any last bit of her that I might have missed in the last 40 years. While I tried to maintain relationships with the people in her inner circle, sometimes it proved more painful. It reminds me that we were connected because of her, and now she’s not here to be that bridge.
In the months since she died, I’ve found myself mostly comforted by friends who have also lost parents, specifically their moms. The way a meme from them about finding dark humor in moments of grief or a text asking me how I’m doing hits in a way that’s so special. It’s like we’re connected by this common bummer of an invisible string. And as depressing as that sounds, there is something comforting about knowing that you’re not alone. I will certainly be reaching out to my fellow motherless children this Mother’s Day for a special check-in, knowing that we’re all in the same boat.
Trying a grief journal exercise
In addition to starting therapy a few months ago, I’ve begun taking an SSRI, trying out different meditation exercises for grief, as well as researching other resources online. Like so many other forms of self-improvement, there is literally a website and a content creator for pretty much anything you could search for. While it can be hard in this delicate frame of mind to suss out what is helpful and what’s an online marketing scheme (who knew that for a low monthly fee, one can even hire a grief coach to aid your existential woes?!) I started following a “grief doula” on Instagram, and while I’m still not ready to report on if they’re legit, she did offer free grief journaling prompts sitting unread in my inbox.
Many have recommended journaling to me, and after pouring my heart and soul into a very long eulogy for my mom a few months ago, I haven’t had the emotional bandwidth to tackle putting my feelings for her into words again. My therapist has encouraged me not to look at it as something that has to be perfect or concise, but more as an exercise in which you write down simply what you’re thinking at the moment, or things that you wish you could say.
I’m thinking that Mother’s Day weekend, when I’m feeling all the feels, might be the time to sit down and take a crack at it. After losing my mom, a friend sent me a journal she found on Etsy entitled “Things I Wish I Could Tell my Mom” (and she was kind enough to warn me that it was on its way in case I wasn’t ready to open it), and it seems like the right time to finally crack it open.
Baking one of her recipes
I am a self-proclaimed terrible cook. My mother literally created a business preparing comfort foods for local teachers in our town so that they could have a home-cooked meal for themselves and their families when they got home. She won awards for her treats, specifically her pies and blueberry muffins. She filled care packages with the most perfectly soft chocolate chip cookies, highly sought out by everyone in my college dorm. One of the recent unanticipated moments of grief was realizing I will never have a birthday cake made by her again.
“One of the recent unanticipated moments of grief was realizing I will never have a birthday cake made by her again.”
A few months ago, I attempted to make her infamous cookie recipe, and, to my devastation, they came out terribly. My husband said they were good, but I knew the truth—they just weren’t hers. Since then, I’ve avoided her binders full of recipes, many ripped from old issues of McCall’s and Family Circle, some transcribed by my grandmother with warnings like “caution—these are ADDICTIVE!” scrawled across the top.
The thought of these recipes dying with her is one I can’t bear, especially knowing that for my mom, this is how she expressed her love. I mean, this was a woman who drove around after my socially distant COVID-era baby shower, personally delivering bundles of cookies in people’s mailboxes as a thank you for their gifts. Since losing my mom, it’s been a goal of mine to try to tackle some of my favorite recipes of hers. I also need to be okay with the process of knowing that it’s not going to be perfect or resurrect her memory the first time I make it, on Mother’s Day—or any other day. That is a huge level of pressure, especially for a novice in the kitchen.
Watching her favorite movie
I grew up hearing the lore of my mother’s first experience at a movie theater. When she was eight years old, my grandmother (who, like some other 1950s housewives, never got her driver’s license) and my mother traveled by train from the suburbs into the bustling city of Boston just for this special outing. The film? Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke.
The movie became a staple of our childhood as well, and my mother often dreamed out loud of the day when she could show it to my children. While I’m devastated that she never got the chance to enjoy this classic Disney film with them, hosting a special family Mother’s Day movie night to honor my mom’s all-time favorite cinematic masterpiece feels like a way that I can continue to share her with them. It seems like the right time to pop some corn and snuggle on the couch together and tell them all about her childhood “happy place.”
Doing a solo wellness activity
My mom was the stereotypical matriarch who did everything for everyone else. Self-care was never high on her priority list, which I think was in part due to her upbringing (nothing like being raised by Depression-era parents to make you appreciate whatever comforts you have in life, big or small). She never spent much time on her appearance, as makeup and clothing weren’t top of mind for her day-to-day life as a mom of two and a chef with her own catering business. While my mother and I shared many personality traits (like a love of celeb gossip and the “gift of gab,” as she used to say), we differed in our approach to wellness. I’m all about trying new beauty treatments or skincare products, whereas my mom couldn’t have cared less.
One activity I’ve recently discovered is red light therapy via an infrared sauna, in which you sit for a period of time in what appears to be a tanning bed but is actually hundreds of little red lights that literally feel like you’re own personal cozy little oven (complimentary!). I did my first session a few months ago after one too many New England snow days that had me feeling cooped up in all the wrong ways, and whether or not it actually did anything, I felt rejuvenated. Was it the sweat or being trapped in a machine for half an hour with no one asking me for anything? I don’t know, but just the act of taking that time for myself felt like such a luxury compared to my day-to-day life.
Accepting the grief in whatever way it comes
One of the things my therapist and I have discussed after losing my mom is how necessary it is not simply to avoid feelings of sadness, as I have a tendency to do (either intentionally or not). Is it much easier to put on a silly episode of your favorite comfort show when you’re feeling down? Or listen to a podcast so you don’t have to hear the voices in your head that remind you she’s gone? Of course. But there’s also something to be said for sitting in that grief and letting it pass through you.
Our natural inclination as humans is to push away from things that are difficult. Ignoring those feelings is not the same thing as processing them. I’ve been told you have to allow yourself to experience all of the emotions. She also encouraged me to be flexible—have an intention of how you want to spend Mother’s Day without your mom, but also be prepared to go with the flow if something doesn’t feel right or if you want to reassess your game plan.
“Have an intention of how you want to spend Mother’s Day without your mom, but also be prepared to go with the flow if something doesn’t feel right or if you want to reassess your game plan.”
Final thoughts on the first Motherless Mother’s Day
There’s no denying that there is going to be a void in your heart on your first Mother’s Day without a mom. She was the first person to care for you, the one who demonstrated the kind of unconditional love that you want to give to your own family. I was lucky enough to have 40 years with my mother. Sometimes, the thing that kills me the most is not the time we lost out on. It’s the limited number of years my kids got to spend with her. Because of that, I wake up every day thinking about how I can be more like her, but also how I can take care of myself in ways that she didn’t get to.
So whether it’s a restorative yoga class or a good cry, there’s no right or wrong way to spend your first Mother’s Day after losing your own mom. After all, if she were here, she would be the first one to tell you to take care of yourself (and to stand up straight, of course).
Lindsay Scouras, Contributing Writer
Lindsay is a marketing and communications pro and freelance writer based in Rhode Island. As a full-time working mom of two sweet ginger kids, she spends her days answering questions about where her children’s red hair came from (spoiler alert: she has no idea). She is constantly trying to find balance between her day job, parenthood, creative aspirations, decorating her 100-year old colonial, and passion for all things Hollywood and celeb gossip. A New England native, she loves exploring all the charming destinations that the Northeast has to offer with her history-loving husband.
