This is the third Mother’s Day I can’t celebrate with my mom.
This is the third Mother’s Day I don’t get to call her, send her a card, cook her a meal, or do anything else that would honor her on this day.
This is the third Mother’s Day she’s been…gone.
I read once, I can’t remember where, that as we get older and have lost people we love, the holidays at first are hard. You don’t want to celebrate, or can’t, either because of physical, emotional, or psychological reasons. But as time passes, it reportedly gets easier, the pain of the loss lessens, and you can start to feel like commemorating the special days again.
I’m here to call bullshit on that theory. It’s been three years and I feel the physical, emotional, and psychological pain of my mother’s loss as hard now as I did that very first year.
Yes, there are days when I don’t think about her and how she suffered those last twelve hours of her life.
Yes, there are days where I don’t reach for the phone to tell her some good news, remembering she already knows because she heard about it in heaven.
Yes, there are days when I forget about all the times we fought and remember one incident that made us both laugh.
Yes, there are even days I don’t have a thought about her at all.
But those happen on typical days, not holidays. Not days of remembrance. Not days devoted to being a mom.
The last four years of my mother’s life, from the time Covid invaded our world, I cooked for my parents, paid their bills, bathed my mother because getting into the tub was a tragedy waiting to happen for her with her hips, and generally took care of them in their own home. They wanted their independence -as much as they could have – and there was no way I was going to take it away from them unless absolutely necessary. Which it became in the end.
On holidays, I would prepare a huge meal for them to celebrate over because my mother loved holidays. On Mother’s day, it was always the same meal: roast beef, mashed potatoes, pearl onions, and chocolate cake for dessert – her favorite meal.
I haven’t made a roast beef since she died. Seems silly, but I just…can’t. I can’t bring myself to cook something I know she loved and then not have her around to taste it.
The following quote has been attributed to the actor Jim Carrey, but the Internet “says” there is no proof he said it. I truthfully don’t care who said it. It explains my grief in a much better way than I can. My hope is that, as the quote says, I will find healing in time. On this third Mother’s Day without my mom, here, with me, in the physical world, I still haven’t been able to heal the wound of her loss…
“Grief is not just an emotion — it’s an unraveling, a space where something once lived but is now gone. It carves through you, leaving a hollow ache where love once resided.
In the beginning, it feels unbearable, like a wound that will never close. But over time, the raw edges begin to mend. The pain softens, but the imprint remains — a quiet reminder of what once was. The truth is, you never truly “move on.” You move with it. The love you had does not disappear; it transforms. It lingers in the echoes of laughter, in the warmth of old memories, in the silent moments where you still reach for what is no longer there. And that’s okay.
Grief is not a burden to be hidden. It is not a weakness to be ashamed of. It is the deepest proof that love existed, that something beautiful once touched your life. So let yourself feel it. Let yourself mourn. Let yourself remember.
There is no timeline, no “right” way to grieve. Some days will be heavy, and some will feel lighter. Some moments will bring unexpected waves of sadness, while others will fill you with gratitude for the love you were lucky enough to experience.
Honor your grief, for it is sacred. It is a testament to the depth of your heart. And in time, through the pain, you will find healing — not because you have forgotten, but because you have learned how to carry both love and loss together.”
If you have your mother still with you on this commemorative day to moms, be thankful. Hug her. Honor her. Kiss her silly like she once kissed you when you were a child. Do something that shows her what she means to you.And don’t let your kids ever forget their grandma is a mom, too.
I wish, with all my heart, I could do everyone of those things today.
~peg
Peggy Jaeger, Author 