The Last Mother’s Day

It’s been three months since my mother died. Three months since the axis of my world tilted, flinging me into a silence so total it swallowed every word I ever knew. I haven’t written a single thing since. Not a poem, not a prayer, not even a broken sentence in my notes app. It’s like my brain refused to connect to my hands, as if language itself broke when she did.  I didn’t just lose my mother, I lost my anchor, my witness, the last living thread that tied me to who I was before everything fell apart. The numbness isn’t numbness anymore. It’s something worse, something hollow and sharp, like grief carved out a room inside me and moved in. I don’t even know if I want to write this. But I’m terrified that if I don’t, the memory of that day will fade, and I’ll lose even more of her. I’ve already forgotten the sound of her laugh. I can’t picture the exact shade of her eyes when the sun hit them just right. I don’t want to forget. But I’m slipping.

It was Mother’s Day. We planned a day at my aunt’s… sunlight, swimming, laughter, food. Something light. Something easy. I met her at her car and instantly felt it… the shift, the silence hanging in the air just waiting for it’s chance. Something was off. Her steps were slower, her body heavy in a way I’d never seen before. I asked what was wrong as we walked toward the house, her voice barely brushing the air. “I’ve had heartburn all night,” she murmured, “since 2 a.m. on and off. I didn’t sleep much.”

But still… she smiled. That smile. That soft, exhausted, endlessly giving smile mothers seem to keep hidden somewhere in their marrow, pulling it out when the world demands more than they have left. The kids saw her and came bursting through the door like fireworks, shouting her name, gifts clutched in tiny hands like offerings to a queen. We had found the perfect Mother’s Day present, a custom coffee mug with pictures of her and the kids circling it, and they were itching for her to open it and their homemade cards. She chose Mountain Dew over coffee, but for some reason she still enjoyed receiving coffee cups, especially ones with her grand babies on it. The card was a joke, a ridiculous one, designed to blare a baby's cry on loop until the batteries gave out or you ripped it to shreds. We thought it was hilarious. She didn’t want to rip it. “I want to keep it,” she insisted, laughing, holding the screeching card like it was something sacred. We begged her to rip it, because that was the punchline, the absurd joy of it… but she hesitated, then finally tore it apart slowly, carefully, as if even destruction needed to be handled with tenderness. The kids squealed and glitter dropped. I recorded it. I didn’t know it would be the last video. The last gift. The last laugh.

I’ve watched it a thousand times. A million. I memorized each frame like scripture. The way she smiled. The way her eyes crinkled. The way her voice moved through the room like warmth. I watch it because I’m terrified of forgetting. Terrified that one day I won’t remember the sound of her joy or the way she looked when love lit her from within. I didn’t know I was capturing a goodbye. But I was.

Chris and his family showed up a little later, laughter and footsteps spilling in through the door like nothing was wrong. But something was. She was still wincing… small, subtle movements, her hand ghosting over her chest like she could rub the ache away without drawing attention. But we saw. Chris and I exchanged a look, the kind of look that only happens when your stomach drops before your mind catches up. The kind of moment where your body understands the truth before your brain has the courage to name it. I pulled out my phone, hands shaking, heart pounding like it already knew. “Signs of a heart attack in women over 50.” She had just turned 50 two weeks ago. And there it was, symptom after symptom, written like a prophecy we were too late to rewrite. Like the universe had sent us a warning in bold black letters, and all we could do was stare.

Chris handed her a cold glass of water, trying to help, trying to do something. Aunt Ginger gave her an aspirin and told her to chew it. She did. We told her we should call the paramedics. Begged her, really. Just to get checked out. Just to be safe. But she waved us off, that damn mother instinct kicking in, the need to not make a fuss, to not ruin the day, to protect us from worry, even if it meant sacrificing herself. She said she was fine. She smiled through the pain. And we let her. Because we wanted to believe her. Because we were afraid of what it would mean if she wasn’t.

The grill hissed to life outside. The smell of food rising, the kids already cannonballing into the pool, their screams of joy slicing through the air like nothing in the world could ever go wrong. So we joined them because that’s what you do when everything seems okay. When you want so desperately to believe it is. Mom and I sat off to the side, just beyond the splash zone, talking about nothing and everything… weather, life, little updates that felt so ordinary. She looked tired, but still so her. Then, without warning, her face lost its color. That beautiful golden hue of hers turned a pale I’d never seen before. She turned to me, and her voice was different. Hollow. Small. “You know, I think I’ll go on to the ER. I’m not feeling any better.” I stood immediately, ready to go with her. But she held up her hand. That mother hand. That quiet command wrapped in love. “Stay with the kids. It’s Mother’s Day.” And then she did the thing that guts me every time I replay it… she walked the length of the pool, one by one, kissing each dripping child on their wet foreheads like it was some kind of private goodbye. And maybe it was. Maybe she knew. God, maybe she knew. She waved, and walked away. And I let her. I let her go alone. I tell myself I was honoring her wishes. I tell myself I didn’t want to scare the kids. But the truth is, I didn’t fight her hard enough. And that failure has carved itself into me. I don’t know how to forgive myself for it. I don’t even know if I want to.

The world just kept turning, cruel and oblivious. Chris was hurling kids into the pool like Godzilla tearing through skyscrapers, each splash punctuated by one of his thunderous roars, creating chaos and waves all at once. The backyard echoed with shrieks and belly laughs, like we were suspended in some untouched moment of joy. That sound… it used to be the soundtrack of our family. I haven’t heard it since. Not like that. Not with that wild, holy innocence. We ate. We passed plates. Time slipped by like it always does when you don’t realize it’s running out. But I hadn’t heard from her. The silence started to buzz. I sent a text, trying not to panic, trying to stay light: “Are you at the ER? What are they saying?” Nothing. No reply. Just silence. And the sound of everything beginning to unravel.

One of my babies, still dripping, wrapped in a towel that clung to her like a second skin, tugged at me gently. “I’m ready to change,” she said, all soft eyes and innocence. So we walked to the front, me digging through the chaos of the car for dry clothes, distracted, still floating somewhere between poolside joy and half-formed worry. Then she said it so simple, certain even, like it was the most obvious truth in the world: “Mawmaw is back.” I laughed. God, I laughed. I said, “no, baby, remember? Mawmaw went to the doctor. She’s not here anymore”. But she just stared up at me, calm and clear, with that eerie childlike certainty that slices right through adult logic. “No,” she insisted. “She’s still here.” And that was the moment everything cracked. The sound drained from the world like a plug had been pulled. No more splashing. No more laughter. No more birds or road noise or breath in my lungs. Just one sound: the low, ghostly hum of an engine left running too long. Her car. Still idling. Waiting. My pulse turned to static. My hands, my legs, everything turned to lead. My baby stood behind me, those tiny fingers in her mouth, eyes wide, trusting the world still made sense. I whispered, begged her to stay right there. And then I walked towards her car. Every step felt like a scream my body couldn’t make. A slow-motion sprint through molasses. I crept closer like I already knew what I’d see but couldn’t stop myself from needing it to be wrong. And then, I saw her. Slumped. Still. Folded over the console like she just gave up mid-breath. I ripped the door open. Grabbed her arm, cold. Tugged her limp, lifeless hand—blue. Her lips—blue. Not like cold weather blue. My soul tore. I screamed her name so loud I swear the earth should’ve split open. I screamed for Chris like it was a spell, like if I screamed hard enough he’d appear and we could reverse it all. And then everything happened too fast and too slow all at once. The family swarmed around me. My cousin pulling her out, her body, onto the grass like she wasn’t her anymore. Chris vaulting the fence, soaked and shaking, bare feet slapping the ground like thunder. He grabbed me, spun me around, wrapped his whole body around me like he could shield me from what I’d just seen. His wet hands held my face like I was the one dying now. His voice broke as he pleaded, “Stop. Just look at me. Look at me.” But I couldn’t. Because all I could see was her. 

The paramedics arrived and chaos cracked wide open. Screams tore through the air, feet pounded the pavement, people moved like shadows chasing something already lost. But Chris never let go of me. His arms stayed locked around my body, anchoring me to a world that had just split in half. The earth beneath me had opened and swallowed my heart whole, and all I could do was lean into the weight of his grip. They tried.  Electrodes, wires, commands barked like they could will her back. I watched them slap the defibrillator pads to her chest. I watched them shock her. I watched them try to summon life into the body that had held mine so many times before. But it was too late. Her soul had already slipped through the seams. One of them said it, flat and final, like it wasn’t the sentence that would end everything I knew: “There’s nothing more we can do. I’m calling it.”

And just like that, she was gone. Not slipping or fading or floating upward like people like to imagine. Just gone. Like a light switched off in the middle of a sentence. Chris and I collapsed. There was no grace in it, no control. Just bodies folding under the weight of something we didn’t know how to carry. Our cousin wrapped himself around us, holding us like that could make the edges of the moment soften, whispering “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over, as if those words could stitch something back together. But nothing could. Not then. Not now.

Later that day, Chris told me I’d said the same thing on repeat, like a mantra carved out of panic and pain: “We’re orphans now.” Over and over, like I needed the world to know what we’d lost. He laughed through his grief, that broken, cracked kind of laugh that only happens when your heart is shredded and your brain is trying to find something to cling to. “We’re adults,” he said gently. “We still have Dad.” But it didn’t feel that way. It still doesn’t. Because in that moment, I wasn’t a grown woman. I was a little girl again, wrecked, shoved into a life without the one person who made the world make sense. I felt abandoned by the universe. Lost in a way that still hasn’t let go of me. And I don’t know if it ever will.

The funeral process was its own brand of hell… a slow, suffocating kind. My siblings and I clung to each other like survivors crawling from wreckage, barely upright, barely breathing. Our aunts held us, trying to patch the cracks with steady hands and whispered strength, but nothing could hold us together. We were shattering with every step. The funeral director told me I was the beneficiary. That she’d left everything in my hands. It wasn’t a comfort. It wasn’t an honor. It felt like a cruel mountain shoved in my path, one I didn’t have the strength to climb. My brain fogged over as we picked songs, as we discussed flowers, like we were planning a wedding for the dead. Then he opened the door to the casket room and something in me broke. My body gave out. Just collapsed. Instinctively, Chris ran forward and caught me before I hit the floor, like he always did. Like he always would. I couldn’t choose. I couldn’t even look. The word “Mom” stitched across a soft pink casket made my chest cave in. I nodded when they pointed to it, but I never really saw it. I still haven’t.

Then came the question that tore me open. “When do you want the service?” My mind spiraled. The thought of her alone, in some cold, sterile room without us made me physically sick. I started sobbing, shaking, full panic overtaking me like a tidal wave. I begged him to do it the next day. I begged to be allowed to stay with her. I told him I didn’t want her to be alone. He said no. Of course he said no. But he let my aunt go. She went back and stood in for me. She helped dress her. Others fixed her hair, did her makeup, held her hand like it still meant something. They filled that sacred space I couldn’t. And to this day, I will never stop being grateful for that, for the women who loved her enough to carry what I couldn’t. For the hands that held her when mine were trembling too hard to try.

The day of the funeral, the director offered us a private moment… a courtesy, a mercy, more like a torment. My brothers, my sister, and I locked arms like we were walking into battle, like we were marching toward something sacred and unbearable. The moment I saw her, everything in me collapsed. She looked still. Too still. Her off-white dress, the one we chose through a blur of agony, was draped perfectly around her body. Her hair was flawless. It felt wrong, how beautiful she looked. My knees buckled again, but my brothers caught me before the ground could. We surrounded her like a fortress, trembling hands brushing hers, touching her cheek, searching for warmth that wasn’t there. We whispered our goodbyes into the silence, trying to speak to something that was already too far gone. And then the door opened. The world came rushing in, all noise and sobs and arms. Person after person poured into that room like a flood, hugging us, crying, saying how proud she was of us. As if we didn’t already know. As if she hadn’t tattooed it onto our hearts every day of our lives. She never let us forget it.

I don’t remember much else. My brain pressed fast forward on the rest of the day, leaving only fragments, ghosts of moments that never settled fully into memory. I sat in silence while the world moved on without me. My aunt gave the eulogy, I couldn’t tell you a single word of it. But I remember the way her voice didn’t shake. I remember the fire in her chest. I remember the way she stood in the rubble and honored my mother with everything she had. My mom’s best friend, my sweet uncle in all but blood, brought his guitar to the gravesite. He sang her favorite song, and for a moment, the wind stopped moving. It was the kind of send-off that splits the sky. The kind that makes the angels weep.

But grief like this doesn’t just break you. It burrows in. It rewires you. It wraps itself around your spine and settles into the hollows of your bones, changing the rhythm of your breath, the way you exist in your body. It doesn’t loosen. It doesn’t fade. Some days, I was convinced it was killing me, too, that I wouldn’t make it out. That something in me had died the moment her heart stopped. My mother was my axis, my soft place to land, the voice I reached for in the dark. We talked every single day. And then… she was just gone. Like a curtain drawn across the light. Like the world ended, and nobody noticed but me.

Now the world keeps turning, and I am stuck in the middle of it, like I’m drowning in time. Trapped between the suffocating weight of denial and the scorching fire of rage. I keep myself busy, burying myself in the motions, hoping that if I move fast enough, the ache won’t catch up. But it always finds me. It slips through the cracks in the silence, in the quiet moments when I can’t outrun it. It hits me in the smell of an old sweater, in the rhythm of a song that used to be hers, in the ping of a doorbell that sounds just like her text tone. And then I’m on the floor of a public restroom crumpled or just sitting, motionless, aching at the weight of a silence that feels too heavy to carry.

They keep telling me time will help. Time will heal. But time is just another thief, stealing pieces of her, stealing pieces of me. Every single day is another day I haven’t heard her voice. Another day I’m farther away from the heartbeat that kept me grounded. That doesn’t get easier. It never will.

But I keep going. I have to. Because even in the brokenness, there’s still love left to give. I’ll hold my family tighter… my brothers, my sister - tighter. I will laugh louder, louder than the grief that tries to swallow me whole. I will be present. I will love with everything I have left in me, because time is short. We are only ever borrowing it, after all. And I’m still here. Still breathing. Still fighting for what remains of her love.

Author’s Note
Originally written: August 14, 2025 – “The day grief taught me how to write again.”

Now, 8 years later, I’m reading this with a lump in my throat and a thousand quiet questions still unanswered. I wrote this on the three-month mark - finally able to put the trauma into words, to exhale just enough to tell the story before I shut any more of it out. But even now, even with time stretched between me and that moment, there are pieces I still can’t remember. Whole gaps in the day that feel stolen. Faces I know were there, but I can’t quite see. Even 8 years later, someone will comment, “I haven’t seen you since the funeral”, and I can’t even remember seeing them then. People and words I should remember but don’t. That loss in my memory aches in a weird way I wasn’t prepared for. It frustrates me, honestly. That something so huge, so defining, can blur at the edges like a dream. Trauma literally changes the way your brain functions, though. It can damage the parts of the brain that help regulate emotions, process memories, and even make decisions. That’s why people don’t just bounce back. Healing takes time, intention, and often support - because the injury is real, even if it’s invisible. That’s what grief does. It doesn’t just break your heart; it erodes your mind, too… softens the details to keep you from shattering all over again. Still, I wish I remembered more. Every piece of her. Every second before goodbye. I carry what I can, though. And I write so I don’t forget what’s left.