My Second Mother’s Day Without You: A Sacred Grief

(I wrote this piece for Mother’s Day this year—pulling it from the archive today to honor the sacred ache that still lives on.)

My Second Mother’s Day Without You: A Sacred Grief

Grief has no clock.

It doesn’t soften with the turning of a calendar page or dim with the passage of another year.

This is my second Mother’s Day without you, and somehow, it hurts even more than the first. The sharpness of loss has dulled into something heavier now—like a stone I carry in the cradle of my ribs, pressing into my breath, always there.

Last year, I was still in shock. I kept expecting you to walk through the door, to call me with one of your strange little check-ins, to remind me how much you loved me in that quiet, understated way you had. I survived that first Mother’s Day in a haze, dazed and numb, moving through the rituals of remembrance like someone underwater.

But this year, there’s no shock to shield me. Just the raw ache of your absence.

This year, I know you’re gone.

I know I’ll never hear your voice again.

I know I’ll never feel your arms around me.

I know there won’t be another Mother’s Day with your laughter dancing in the kitchen or your voice humming some forgotten tune that somehow still lives in my bones.

Grief has become a second skin. It clings to me in moments both expected and strange. A certain scent. A phrase you used to say. The way light falls on the counter where you once stood.

It’s in the places you once were, and even more painfully, in the places you never will be.

No more future memories. No more chances to say “I love you” or “thank you” or “I get it now.”

Because I do. I get it now, in a way I couldn’t when you were alive.

I understand how you loved, how you carried your own burdens without complaint, how you kept showing up for everyone—especially me—even when you were running on empty.

I see you now not just as my mother, but as a woman. A whole human being.

And I wish I could reach back through time and sit with you as one grown woman to another. I wish I could tell you that I finally see the strength it took to raise me the way you did, the quiet grace it took to keep loving through all the storms.

There are so many things I wish I had asked you.

So many things I wish I had said.

But mostly, I just wish you were still here.

I would give anything to hear your advice again—even the parts I used to roll my eyes at.

I would give anything to feel your steady presence, the way you anchored me even when I didn’t realize I was drifting.

This second Mother’s Day is not softer. It’s not easier.

But it is deeper.

Because my love for you has only grown in your absence.

And the grief—this sacred grief—is proof that what we had was real, and strong, and eternal.

You are gone from this world, but never from my story.

You are written into every chapter.

Your fingerprints are still on my soul.

And I carry your legacy in everything I do, especially in the way I love others with the same fierce tenderness you gave me.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

You are missed beyond words,

But you are also with me—

Always.

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