Mother's Day in 10 Steps

How to make it through Mother's Day without you - 10 Easy Steps

Step 1) Look at photos of you on my phone. Remember what it was like to feel you, make you smile, make you laugh. Remind myself just how beautiful you were. Feel gratitude that I had you. Feel sadness that I don't anymore.

Step 2) Read kind messages that come in wishing me a Mother's Day. Feel kind of better; the reassurance that I am not alone today helps. Try to stuff the imagined scenarios of us celebrating this day together down deep. Stop looking at photos as the mix of emptiness and anxiety becomes too intense. Feel immediate guilt for not looking at photos.

Step 3) Meet mom for shopping at a store we used to shop at together. Actively avoid the racks of baby clothes we would have looked through.

Step 4) Have lunch with mom. Light candles for you and Nanny Terry. Feel thankful for having a supportive mother who understands the need to escape commercial Mother's Day activities. Imagine that Nanny has found you where ever you are and is taking you swimming. Believe that she would recognize your big eyes, and teach you how to hold the edge and practice your kicks like she did with me and your Aunty Lauren. 

Step 5) BREAK Go see a funny movie, have a much needed break from thinking.

Step 6) Take a walk after movie, find robin's egg on sidewalk. Look around for the tree that they might have been from, but there are no trees around. Find another robin's egg down the street. A few blocks further, another egg. No trees or nests nearby. Feel you. Feel a brief sense of peace as I know they are from you. They have to be, right? Start thinking of possible explanations of how the eggs could have gotten there. Tell my logical brain to stop, and go back to enjoy the feeling of lightness again.

Step 7) Stop at a winery to taste favorite bubbles. Fight back tears as happy couple enters wine shop with baby boy. Try to ignore the sound of his little voice, the sound of his mom giving him loud kisses, the sound of his proud dad boasting about how happy his son is. Ignore stranger who happily wishes us a Happy Mother's Day!!! as we leave.

Step 8) Start to feel the heaviness moving upwards. Push it down. Fight the sad, the pain, the sore, the broken, the missing. Talk about safe things. Talk about the things we go to when we want to avoid the big hurt that is sitting right there between us. When someone used to sit in front of the TV, Nanny Terry used to say, "you make a better door than a window". Right now the hurt has become the door. I could ignore the faint, thin glass-like barrier earlier but now I am so tired that the thoughts have become thick and heavy. They are so much harder to overlook, they take so much more effort to push away.

Step 9) Cry on the drive home. Feel the rush of everything that has been pushed aside all day come up quickly like a fierce tidal wave. The pain that has been tightly crumpled into a ball like a piece of paper that is ready to be throw out slowly starts to unfurl. The hurt pulses through my body. From the tips of my toes to the top of my head, the familiar feeling of heaviness returns to all the nooks and crannies within me and settles in comfortably. So comfortable it's irritating. You're supposed to be here with me, I say out loud to nobody. You're supposed to be here in the backseat right now. You're supposed to be here. And then finally, I miss you so much Caius.

Step 10) Take sleeping pill that is now necessary to have a decent sleep. Wake up ten hours later, exhausted. Take a deep breath. Repeat*

*modify activities as necessary.

Warning: feelings will repeat despite modification of activities. Feelings may intensify.