some thoughts on Mother's Day

For me, Mother’s Day is a weird holiday. In the weeks leading up to the day, it seems as if every advertisement is a guilt trip reminding people not to forget their mother. Don’t forget to call her. Don’t forget to buy her a gift. Don’t forget to make her breakfast.

In 2005, my mother died. This is my nineteenth Mother’s Day without her. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. It does not take a commercial to remind me that she existed. 

I am thirty-two and not a mother. This is not really by choice, I would love to have kids. I need no prompting to remember that I am not a mother.

Why is it that the lack of a person, in my case a mother and a child, need no reminding, but we are so quick to forget those that are with us?

It is easy when someone is alive to forget about them, or at least it is for me. The alive people are so woven into everyday life that they can fade into the background. If I don’t call my sister back today, I will call tomorrow. She will still be here tomorrow. Until tomorrow folds into the next day, and then it’s been a week, and then a month, and aren’t we all just really busy? She’ll understand. (For the record, my sister is one of the three people I do actually call.)

A few years ago I noticed a lot of companies began to offer opt-outs for Mother’s Day promotional emails. Around the same time, a graphic started getting reposted on social media. “Thinking of those for whom this day is difficult,” etc. And while I appreciate the sentiment of these gestures, what I really want is a day to opt my brain out of being motherless and childless. 

I want a day where I can forget. 

I would love to forget to call my mother. I would love to be stressed (just for one day) about school pick-up and sleep schedules.

But instead, losing my mother at twelve has created a lifetime of remembering. Which, as much as I hate the Mother’s Day ads and fanfare, has reminded me of the gift I was given. 

I will never forget about my mother. I might not buy her gifts or take her to brunch, but I don’t need a Target ad to remind me that I should call her. 

I will never forget the years that I longed to be a mother. Someday in the future, when I am worried about school pick-ups and sleep schedules, I will remember the years that I tearfully prayed for this reality. 

Or, I won’t. 

Because that’s how life works. How quickly we forget, I forget, the prayers we prayed for what we have now. 

How quickly I forget what I have and long for what was lost.