Difficult day. Missing Mom this Mother's Day

Hi @lizny, I'm calling in the troops to journey along side you on this difficult day. @hopeful33250 @lilypaws @karukgirl and @soberhoumom all know what it's like to miss mom on this day. Some, like you, lost their mother recently; others it's been a while.

I think the question "Did I do the right things as a caregiver?" are all too common. I'm confident that you made the right choices with the information that you had at the time. Rather than dwelling on the last days, will you share a fond memory with me? What is your favorite Mother's Day memory? Did you find the perfect gift one year, plan a girls' day, make her laugh?

I try to think of my favorite Mother's Day memory and I end up crying. I spent the day avoiding the subject, out of sight, out of mind; hopefully next year the memories will be easier to remember.

@lizny I couldn't figure out why I was depressed yesterday. It's been awhile since my mom took her life and I miss my mother-in-law. It finally hit me with your post. Thank you. My mother-in-law and I use to get together every Sunday and played Canasta. I miss that. She got pretty mean at the end, but I only think of the good person she was to me and how much she did for me.

Hello @lizny,

Thank you for starting this discussion on Mother's Day and thanks to @colleenyoung for inviting me to join you. Like you, this was my first Mother's Day since my mom's passing on Thanksgiving Day last year (at age 93). It was last year, on Mother's Day, that I think of as the "beginning of the end" for my mom. On Mother's Day last year, that she had a severe nosebleed. We took her to the ER and she was there for about 5 hours. Ten days later there was another nosebleed and then for the months after that there were other bleeding episodes. The diagnosis was low platelets and more bleeding episodes. She died in November of last year. So Mother's Day brings back a lot of memories as will Thanksgiving this year.

I hope that you have a grief journal started. Another good resource for dealing with grief is a small book written by one of Connect's Members, Harriet Hodgson,(@harriethodgson1) called 100 Affirmations to Ease Your Grief Journey: Words of Comfort, Words of Hope. I'm sure you would find this book of short affirmations to help you deal with these feelings of loss.

Mother's Day can bring a terrible burden of raw emotions that many women think are better kept tucked away under lock and key the rest of the year.
Many had wonderful mothers who are now gone and they find themselves missing them terribly.
Others may have estranged or difficult relationships with their mothers. They may have suffered silently for years through various kinds of abuse or neglect, so for them to celebrate or feel forced to celebrate someone who treated them cruelly, it is a heavy burden.
Some may just not like their mothers for whatever reason. Their mothers may be hovering, nosy and mean-spirited, friendless and lonely, clinging to their children for everything because they were unable to forge lives of their own, make and keep their own friends, manage their finances responsibly and have literally driven away everyone else except their child who feels some sense of obligation.
Then, there's all the bereaved mothers, desperately missing their child(ren) who are gone too soon, whether they had their children physically present for 4 hours, 4 months, 4 years or 4 decades, longing to be reunited with their child(ren). Our arms and houses are painfully empty, our hearts filled with an ache to be able to mother our child(ren) in the way so many other women take for granted. For us, scrolling through social media, seeing all the pictures of happy families celebrating love for mom is too much to bear. It amplifies grief for what we no longer have and can never again have.
Many women suffer in silence on the 2nd Sunday in May, feeling embarrassment or shame that their bodies have betrayed them, that they were unable to physically give birth to a child of their own, some have had to abandon the dream of motherhood, some become obsessive trying to bring forth life every month, seeking the newest fertility treatments and exhausting themselves and their savings. Some search endlessly for alternatives to fill the ache, considering adoption, rescuing animals or trying to be a wonderful stepmother or aunt.
Mother's Day brings a heavy burden for so many. I read once that the woman who first developed the holiday grew bitter and saddened over the holiday morphing into some bizarre, gross over-commercialization (not sure that's a word?).
For those who have the perfect relationships with mom and living children surrounding them, I'm happy for you. I'd just ask you consider sending some gentle thoughts of love, compassion and kindness for those of us not so blessed.

@team4travis
Allison,
You did a beautiful job covering the bases, so to speak, for memories of mothers. You are right, not all of our mommy-memories are good. Some are downright unbearable, some are very sad. Many moms simply don't live up to that perfect image contained on most Mother's Day cards. It can be hard sometimes to find a Mother's Day card that is simple without exaggerating the truth.

You've done a wonderful service to suggest that we send, "some gentle thoughts of love, compassion and kindness for those of us not so blessed."