The first two years, when Mother’s Day came around, it used to feel as if the world at large was conspiring to be cruel. The messages were everywhere: TV, newspapers, magazines, greeting cards at the grocery store. All shouting their cheerful reminder — “Don’t forget Mom!” It was as if American culture was a toddler given a knife to play with and told, “Go stab anyone who just lost their mother.”
“I don’t need a reminder, thanks,” I would think or say.
I’d become part of the silent club. Its members turn their collars up to their ears and slink away from this loud, ignorant child of a culture until its attention becomes fixated on the next made-up holiday.
The people in my club look forward to the day after Mother’s Day.
What used to feel unbearable now starts as a low-level irritation that arises a couple of weeks before the events. The holidays. The birthdays. The death date. They anchor me to a reality I want to wriggle away from. Because somehow, the narrative the world might tell, that my person is no longer here, is not quite true.
The fact that my mother is no longer physically here is both completely understood and…
