I Don’t Want to Remember the Day My Momma Died
There is a date on the calendar that I hate.
I know exactly when it is coming. I don’t have to circle it, and I don’t need Facebook Memories to remind me. Nobody has to gently ask whether I’m “doing okay with the anniversary coming up,” because my body already knows that it’s THE grief Anniversary.
It has been fourteen years since my Momma died, and somehow that number feels both enormous and completely impossible. There are days when it feels like she has been gone forever, and there are other days when I can almost pick up the phone to call her before my brain catches up with my heart.
Then there is this week.
This week, I am sad in my bones, and I hate it.
My Momma Wasn’t Sad
Maybe that is part of what makes this particular kind of grief so frustrating for me. My Momma wasn’t a sad person. She was light. She was laughter and warmth and the kind of presence that took up space in the best possible way.
When I think about her, I don’t want the first thing that comes to mind to be the day she died. I don’t want to reduce this vibrant human being, this woman who helped shape nearly every piece of me, to the worst day of my life.
Yet every year, the calendar marches right up and hands me that date again. Here you go. Remember this?
Yes, actually. I fucking remember. Every single moment of it.
I don’t need a grief anniversary.
Why Do We Memorialize the Worst Day?
I’ve thought about this a lot. Why do we put so much emphasis on the anniversary of someone’s death?
I understand remembering them. Of course I do. I understand honoring them, gathering together, telling stories, cooking their favorite food, looking through photographs, laughing about the ridiculous things they did, and wishing desperately that they could walk through the door one more time.
What I don’t understand is why that particular day gets so much power.
Of all the days of my Momma’s life, why should the day she left this world be the one we elevate above all the others?
She had birthdays and Christmas mornings. She had ordinary Tuesdays, family dinners, inside jokes, afternoons when she laughed until she couldn’t breathe, and days when she comforted me. She had days when she probably wanted to strangle me. She had thousands and thousands of perfectly ordinary moments that belonged to her.
Her death was one of those days.
One.
And frankly, I don’t want to give it the starring role.
Grief Doesn’t Care What I Think About Any of This
Of course, here’s the annoying part. I can intellectually reject the whole concept of death & grief anniversaries all I want, but my nervous system apparently did not attend that meeting.
Every year, it happens anyway. I get heavier and quieter. Things that would normally roll off my shoulders suddenly sit there like concrete blocks. Memories come more easily. My patience gets thinner. There is an ache underneath everything that I cannot garden away, yoga away, work away, clean away, or distract myself out of.
My body remembers even when I’d really rather it didn’t.
Maybe grief is just rude like that. It doesn’t wait to be invited, and it doesn’t ask whether you’ve decided that fourteen years is plenty of time. It doesn’t check your Google Calendar. It simply shows up.
Mother’s Day Can Take a Seat Too
Then there is Mother’s Day.
Good goddess.
Mother’s Day is another one of those occasions when the entire world seems to become one enormous reminder of what you don’t have. Flowers, brunches, cards, mother-daughter photos, commercials telling you to “celebrate Mom,” and social media filled with beautiful tributes.
I understand all of it. I genuinely do.
If your mother is still here, celebrate the hell out of her. Call her. Take her to lunch. Listen to the story you’ve already heard twenty-seven times. Ask questions. Take pictures. Let her annoy you. Love her while she is standing in front of you.
But for those of us whose mothers are gone, Mother’s Day can feel like being asked to attend a party for something we desperately miss.
I don’t begrudge anyone their celebration. I just wish there were a little more room in the day for those of us whose hearts hurt.
Because mine does.
She was my world, and every Mother’s Day carries the reminder that I don’t get to call my Momma anymore. Fourteen years later, that still sucks.
There really isn’t a prettier word for it.
There Are So Many Expectations Around Grief
Maybe that is the part I struggle with most. We have created all these strange cultural expectations around grieving.
We are supposed to commemorate certain dates, be sad in certain ways, and somehow find the right balance between talking about the person we lost and not talking about them too much. We are told to “move forward,” find closure, treasure the memories, celebrate their life, and eventually be okay.
Nobody ever seems able to explain what eventually means.
Six months? A year? Five years? Fourteen?
Here’s what I’ve learned: grief does not give a damn about our timelines, and love doesn’t either. The American Psychological Association also notes that there is no single “normal” timeline for grief and that anniversaries can bring intense feelings back, even years later.
There isn’t a finish line where someone hands you a little medal and announces that you have successfully completed bereavement. There are simply days when the absence feels farther away and days when it sits beside you at the kitchen table.
Some years, an anniversary passes gently. Other years, it hits like a semi.
Apparently, this is one of the semi years.
I Don’t Want Her Death to Be the Biggest Thing About Her
This year, I keep coming back to one thought: I don’t want the day my Momma died to become more important than the way she lived.
That feels wrong somehow.
So maybe I am changing the rules.
Maybe I don’t have to memorialize the anniversary. Maybe I don’t have to create some solemn ritual around the saddest date on my calendar. Maybe I can acknowledge that the day hurts without making it holy.
Maybe I can simply say, this was a terrible day, and then turn my attention toward her.
Not the cancer. Not the goodbye. Not the loss.
Her.
Her laughter. Her personality. The things she loved. The stories she told. The woman she was before grief ever became part of my story.
Because that is what I want to carry.
I’d Rather Remember the Light
I think there is a difference between remembering someone’s death and remembering someone’s life, and I have spent fourteen years slowly learning that.
The loss matters because the love mattered first. That is the part worth keeping.
So when this anniversary comes around, maybe I don’t need to ask myself how I should properly honor the day she died. Maybe I should ask a different set of questions.
What made her light up? What made her laugh? What would she think was completely ridiculous? What would she tell me to quit worrying about? What parts of her somehow ended up living inside me? What stories would I want my children and grandchildren to know?
Those questions feel much more like her.
And maybe that’s how I want to remember my Momma. Not through the date on a headstone that I still have yet to be brave enough to see….but through the pieces of her that still show up in my life.
Fourteen Years Later, I Still Miss My Momma
I wish I had some wonderfully enlightened conclusion for this, but I don’t.
I miss her.
Sometimes terribly.
This week, especially.
I would love one more conversation, one more hug, one more completely ordinary afternoon when neither of us understood that ordinary afternoons were actually priceless.
But I cannot have those things.
What I can have is the life she helped create. The family she loved. The stories. The laughter. The ridiculous memories. The parts of myself that came from her.
The light.
And maybe this is where grief and glimmers live together.
Not because one cancels the other out. It doesn’t.
A glimmer isn’t pretending the darkness isn’t there. Sometimes it is simply the small spark that reminds us the darkness isn’t everything.
My Momma died fourteen years ago. That is true.
But she also lived. She loved. She laughed. She mattered enormously, and she left light behind.
That is the anniversary I want to keep.
Not the day she disappeared from my life.
The thousands of days she was here.
Something to Ponder
If you have lost someone you love, are there dates you feel pressured to observe even though they hurt more than they comfort?
Maybe we are allowed to rewrite the rules.
Maybe instead of asking ourselves to remember the worst day, we can choose a better one. A birthday. A favorite season. A song. A recipe. A ridiculous family story. A random Tuesday when the memory arrives unexpectedly and makes us smile.
Love was never contained by a calendar.
I don’t think grief should have to be either.