Motherless Day, Every Day.

In 1908, Anna Jarvis founded Mother’s Day in honor of her mother who had died three years prior. When I heard this for the first time last year, as someone who has lost her mother, I spit out my morning coffee in joy. “Yes!” I thought. “Dead moms! Mother’s Day is for the unmothered, too!”

On May 10th, 1908, Jarvis held a memorial service for her mother, marking the first official Mother’s Days. She campaigned to make it an official holiday and succeeded in 1914, but in years to follow, became embittered with the Hallmark commercialization of the holiday. “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world,” she said. “And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.”

So, there we have it. Mother’s Day was founded in memorial of a dead mother, and here is why this is so important to me:

This upcoming Mother’s Day will be the eighth year that I’ve had to endure the holiday without my mother. It will happen the day before my 30th birthday and it will happen no matter what. Sometimes I think of all the fucking cool things I would do with my mother if she were still alive. None of it would involve a card or candy. It’s been a lot of years trying to forget, of making plans to distract, of having to hear my friends and relatives gush over their living mothers while I silently want to set a big old fire to their happy existence.

Now, I recognize my pyrotechnic fantasy as just a part of my grief, and the flames have subsided over time for sure, but I will always feel wounded and lonely this time of year. Anyone who has lost a parent will feel very alone and outside of their circles of friends, of course, but motherless daughters are a breed of our own. We are expected to be vulnerable and damaged, and maybe we sometimes feel this way, but strength prevails all. When something really crappy happens in my life, I often think, “I made it through losing my mother, I will make it through this.” This doesn’t mean I am completely healed. I never will be, but as the years go by everyone around me will forget while I will always remember.

So.

Here is something for all of you with living mothers: please don’t forget about us. As our friends, check in with us to see what we need and how we feel. We will not break if you ask us. In fact, most of us will be grateful that you remembered. Just because we aren’t talking about it doesn’t mean we don’t want to. Also, feel us out before you start rattling off your Mother’s Day plans, or at least be sure to ask about our day when you’re done. Of course we, perhaps begrudgingly, want to hear about your awesome day with your cool mom, but please be mindful of how we may be feeling. Don’t walk on eggshells, but also don’t crack the egg over our head.

And maybe, just maybe, knowing how this holiday was founded will help you to be more supportive. And maybe it will help us not want to light that match and instead take a new meaning to this day.

The Grief Wreath

I never asked to be the woman that constantly writes about grief (e.g. Motherless Day Every Day), but I am. I’ve accepted it. It’s a huge part of my identity no matter how many years go by. This identity never goes away, but I learn to grow with it. However, the hole created when the people you love cease to be often pulsates harder during the holidays.

For some of us, we are missing a plethora of people: a mother who passed from lung cancer, a father with Alzheimer’s, a grandparent who died of old age, an unarmed black son who was wrongfully killed. There are a lot of people we grieve for, and the “mas” in Christmas sounds too much like “miss” to us. There’s a palpable void, and so the holidays are not always all joy and light. They can be difficult, triggering, and sometimes awful in all kinds of specific and different ways.

My specific way is this: I put the smallest amount of food on my plate and my stomach drops into a miserable pang of nausea because I miss my mother so much. She was the cook—the master of stuffing, mashed potatoes, and the most amazing apple pie that no one can find the recipe for—and now I am eating this food that is not hers. I feel so lonely. I take one bite and the hole in my chest opens wider and the pain reverberates. I put my fork down and I never want to eat again. At the crux of it, this feeling has little to do with the food I am eating and everything to do with all that’s missing. 

My mother’s would-be birthday is November 24 and it shrouds my holidays in a deep cloak of anxiety. Will I cry this year? Oh my god, where will I cry if I need to cry? Will everyone resent me for being upset? Will I not eat? Will I overeat? Will I feel better than last year? Will we talk about her? Please let someone talk about her. 

This is the fucked up sleigh ride I take almost every year in which the sleigh has been hijacked by the Grim Reaper and I am forced to deal with my grief. 

And so, I would like to create a figurative grief wreath of things to help overcome these feelings. Something to remember my mother, and something to remind myself that I am not alone, and something that may help you in your grief too. I’d also like to weave in some metaphorical holly because us mourners are not unlike these plants. Our berries may be poisonous to others and our leaves may burst painful thorns, but there is more to us than that. Holly lives through death. It is verdant against the stark white cold of winter. It is life in a time of darkness, during the lunar months when night pervades. It survives.

__

Don’t ever feel guilty for not being in the spirit. You are not trying to bring anyone down. You are experiencing grief. You can’t control where and when it hits. You are not a Grinch, and anyone who approaches you without compassion is the real and true downer. 

Just because you felt the holiday cheer last year doesn’t mean you will this year, and that’s okay. Grief doesn’t follow a specific trajectory. It moves wildly and unexpected, and presents itself differently year-to-year. Each Christmas I find something unexpectedly new that makes me miss my mother terribly: a song, a poorly done apple pie, a memory. Just remember that you are not backtracking and you are allowed to grieve. 

If you feel up to it, talk about the person you miss. For years I got internally angry with my family because no one was talking about my mother during the holidays and keeping her memory alive. I thought I was the only one feeling lonely and miserable. Chances are, your family and friends are feeling the void too. Don’t be scared to be the first to speak up, because others may be wanting to do the same. 

You are alive. This sounds trite, but it’s important to remember. Sometimes grief, in its darkest forms, can overshadow the good and breathing things. We should let ourselves grieve, but we should also live. There are people who love us, and whom we love in return. There are people who care about us always, even in our more primal moments. Seek those people out. (Remember: it’s okay to pick chosen family over biological family if you are not receiving the support you need from your relatives.)

Do something to keep them near. Bake the pie they were known famously for. Wear their sweater. Suck your thumb. (What? You mean your mother didn’t suck her thumb when she was upset?) Put a picture of them in a spot where everyone can see it. Or in a spot where only you can see it. Keep them near in your own way.

I’ve found these things to be the most important for me to remember during this time and to repeat to myself over and over. I truly believe that my mother instilled these things in me long before she left this earth.

While my grief often makes me feel like a child—vulnerable and lost during the “most wonderful time” of the year—maybe, in that respect, the people we mourn are not unlike the holiday characters we are told about as children. We learn to accept the truth: these people no longer physically exist, but we keep them alive in all kinds of ways, and despite their absence they still bring us the gifts we need to move forward in our own lives.