My mother has been dead for a year.

I’m aware that my phrasing has a blunt edge, like cutting off your ponytail with a pair of childproof scissors.

It feels accurate to me though. Harsh, reflective of the truth. Much more so than the more polite “passing away” that is much more comfortable at a party. I suppose there is a bitter, angry part of me that feels justified ruining the party.

My mother has been dead for a year.

Recently, I was having lunch at a women’s retreat with a group of women I didn’t know. We were sharing about what was happening in our businesses and our personal lives and when it came around to me, I shared that my mother had died this year and the short version of the ripple effect of changes that occurred as a result of it. The woman sitting across from me, her face smileless and her gaze firm, asked me with directness, “What has it been like to not have a mother?”

When you’re not mourning a death, a question like this would be jarring. But when you are, a question like this is refreshing. When a death is fresh, there is nothing going on that is not about the death. And it’s exhausting to have to go on about the day as if it’s not.

“It’s terrible,” I said. “I know, I lost mine 5 years ago,” she said. “I figured,” I said.

These kinds of interactions have been an unexpected gift during this mourning year. Every time I’ve opened up about it, there’s always a woman in the room who cuts through the I’m-Sorry’s, touches me on the elbow as the crowd changes the subject and says, “Hey, I lost my mom too.” 

“When?” I ask. And she tells me the true story. It’s a little secret society of women, who all know what it feels like to become unmoored. To lose one of the only relationships in life that, for better or for worse, can never be replaced. There is a feeling of being alone in the world that I didn’t know was possible until she was gone.

So, what has it been like to not have a mother?

My first answer was true, it’s terrible. My mother was a bright, Mary Poppins kind of woman with ice blue eyes and a warm, toothy smile. Children loved her, animals loved her, and women around her envied her ability to be so playfully carefree.

But of course, that wasn’t the whole truth of her. She was much more complex than that and she wasn’t always as happy as she seemed. Our relationship was complex. My life being her daughter was too.

My mother was my playmate, my silliest friend. The person I would call to pass the time or to share something that only she would appreciate in a certain specific way. A flower, a funny bird, or some odd ball thing that had happened. She’s the person I called when I was the saddest. The person I could tell the truth to when I was feeling defeated and afraid. I called her as my marriage was ending, in sobs, saying, “I hate who I am. I hate who I am.” In those moments, it’s a mother’s arms you want to dive into. It’s a terrible thing to know those arms are gone.

I suspect this is true for a lot of women – so much of who I am is because of her and in spite of her. I’ve inherited so many of her good qualities. Animals love me, I have a warm toothy smile and I can also be playfully carefree. But I have also been in judgment of her. I have feared marriage and motherhood because of her and I’ve been driven to make my own place in the world outside of a man and a family. I’ve cut myself off from spirituality because I didn’t want to be part of hers. I have lived every choice with an undercurrent of “how will mom react to this?” and I have navigated the water of not upsetting her or knowing how to deal with it when I do with expert precision. I’m like a river guide in Colorado – I know every dip and bend and where the current is too dangerous to go.

What has it been like to not have a mother?

There is a loud echo in the space where all this once was. There is no reason to ask, “How will mom react?” There will be no reaction. It’s no longer a factor, not something to brace against or prepare for or figure out the right words to relay the news. Without an approval or blessing to seek, every choice is simply a yes or a no. I’m suddenly standing in a big open field, there is freedom and expansion and deep awareness that my life is my own. There’s no need for rebelion, a defiant “I’m doing it anyway!” or “If mom would just say [X] then I could feel [Y].” The jig is up, she’s gone.

But there’s another kind of freedom I didn’t expect. The freedom that comes with forgiveness. 

My mother wasn’t perfect. There were things that I wished she was that she wasn’t and because of those these, I blamed her for things I’m not. Now, on the other side of her death, there is no one left to blame. I’ve had to ask myself the deepest question: Are you really going to go after what you want or not? The answer, whole-heartedly, has been yes.

So what has it been like to not have a mother?

There are many moments where I’m standing in my yard and the light is pouring between the leaves a certain way and a male and female cardinal are at play in the arborvitaes and a hummingbird is taking a drink and I’m so aware that I still have a mother. And there is peace.

I believe that my mother exists on a plane that is different, that on the other side of the veil, everything is made of pure love. In these moments I can feel that my mother can see me clearly now, that she knows my motives were pure. That she understands my secret longings and that, in the light of full understanding, she’s behind me 100 percent.

On this side of the veil, without her, I am also able to see her more clearly. I can see more of her through seeing the entirety of her life, her identity beyond being my mother. I can remember the ways I felt received by her and cheered on by her that for some reason I could never hear when she was alive.

I feel her, and we are standing side by side. 

“I can see it now,” she says. “Me too,” I say, “I see it too.”