Mother's Day Without Mom

My Mom's 1st Mother's Day
(May 1955)

I knew this day would come.
My Mother passed away in January of this year.
This will be our first Mother’s Day without her.

What do I miss most about my Mom?
The emotions are almost too complex to put into words.
I imagine the list will expand as the passing months and years go by.

My brother and sister have been sifting through some of Mom’s things—a normal process following the death of a loved-one. Mom marked some items that she thought we’d like to have with a note inside, or a simple hand-printed name on the back.

A Tiffany pen I gave her as a Mother’s Day gift one year turned up with a note on the inside of the box, “Brent gave me this pen from Tiffany's. He should have it when I 'croak.'"
Yes, my prim and proper school-marm Mom often so referred to her demise…and now we have it in writing.

In her later years, Mom was an avid crossword puzzle worker. She would dutifully work the daily puzzle in the Temple Telegram newspaper, but skipped the Sunday edition because, “it was too hard,” as she would say. Her spot at the kitchen table was frequently cluttered with the past week’s puzzles, clipped from the paper by my Dad, and worked in pen by my Mom. She was confident! 

A metal cart still stands sentinel next to her place at the table, laden with a giant crossword puzzle dictionary, extra pens, note pads, and crossword puzzle books.  There is also an assortment of greeting cards and her hand-written address book in that cart.

Mom was an avid card-sender.
In her desk I discovered many blank card envelopes with postage stamps already affixed. They’re the “forever” stamps issued by the post office, and knowing Mom, she probably bought them back in 2007 when the stamps were first introduced at 41-cents. She knew they’d be more expensive later.

Everyone says, “be sure to hug your loved-ones because you never know when it will be the last time you see them.” On this first Mother’s Day without my Mom, I take solace in the fact that we always did, and we always told her we loved her, too. She knew that she was loved.
And now, she is missed.