Mother’s Day Without Mother … What Now?

It was a mistake to go into Sav-On pharmacy with Kristin two days after Easter. Right next to the half-price bins of jelly beans, we spotted racks of Mother’s Day cards. Kristin, whose mother died two months ago, took a deep breath.

Her reaction brought back the memory of that stab in the heart I felt fifteen years ago when the holiday snuck up on me after my mother had passed away from cancer. I remember thinking, how can Hallmark be so cruel, pushing those swirly “REMEMBER!” signs in our faces? The least they could do is post a warning on the pharmacy door: those who enter here and have recently experienced their mother’s death may suffer a ground-opening-up-under-their-feet sensation prompting unsettling questions—what do we do now? How do we celebrate Mother’s Day when our mothers have died?

I pulled Kristin aside, “Whatever you do, don’t go to brunch the second Sunday in May. You’ll be hit with a sea of corsaged mommies and there aren’t enough mimosas in the world that can make them disappear.”

“So what do we do?” Kristin asked me. I wish I had a guidebook for her or any of us gals out there who go through this, but I know it’s different for everybody. For some, lighting candles or bringing flowers to the graveyard seems right. The only thing I know for sure is that the feelings and rituals change with time, just as mother-daughter relationships change in life.

My mother died when I was thirty-five, and our relationship ran the gamut—to put it simply—from adoration to intolerance and everything in between. I was with her when she died, right next to her bed, which had been moved to the downstairs dining room where she’d served her Italian feasts. She simply stopped breathing and I feel like the last of the very many things she taught me was that death was not so scary.

So what did I do for Mother’s Day after she died? At first, to keep being a good daughter, I made up my own secret Mother’s Day memorial ritual: I called home. It’s what I always did from here in California to New Jersey every year since I moved away. There was something grounding about going through the obligatory motions, even though the response was a recorded “ding-ding” followed by, “The number you have called has been disconnected. There is no further information.”

And then two years ago, I dialed and heard something different: the telephone rang. For a moment, I imagined my mother in the harvest gold kitchen, the Today Show blaring in the background as she, in her Vanity Fair green zip-up robe, picked up. But a man’s voice came on:

“HSBC.”

“Is this … New Jersey?”

“No, this is HSBC Bank in Manhattan.”

“Is this …” I rattled off the numbers I’ve known since I’ve known numbers.

“That is the number you dialed.”

In a spin, I hung up. Area codes had been switched and that number (my number!) was reincarnated—moved from a house in a Jersey suburb to a cubicle in a Manhattan bank. I’d felt for years that I’d had control over this Mother’s Day situation. And now external powers that be had rearranged things. Clearly, it was time for me to move on.