Editor's Notebook: Missing Mom

Every year, around this time of May, I make it a point to stay away from card shops.

With my mother and grandmother gone, the sea of Happy Mother's Day cards are just too painful -- even now, after my mother has been gone for 18 years, and my grandmother, a little less than that.

I lost my mother when she was only 53, and my baby boy was just a year old. I had just turned 30, and as a young mother, wanted so badly to have my mother to call in the middle of the night, when my son had a fever and I didn't know what to do. I wanted her beside me, like all the other proud grandmothers, at the school concerts and plays and Little League games. I wanted to jump up and down in excitement with her when my own son got accepted into college. 

But never do I miss my mother and grandmother more, than on Mother's Day. I lost my mother when she was so young, and vibrant, to cancer that took her so quickly, those who loved her felt as though we'd been blindsided. One day, she was a laughing, happy woman who loved Chinese auctions, dancing, and Chris de Burgh music. And the next, it seemed, she was gone.

Every year on Mother's Day, I try to avoid restaurants -- to stay away from the celebrations where other mothers and daughters and grandchildren are opening presents and cards and making memories. I try to imagine what my mother would be like now -- she'd be turning 72 in September -- but it's impossible. My mother lives on, in my memories, forever young and smiling.

I'm so blessed to have my son -- my amazing young man, who makes me proud every day. Sometimes, when he smiles, I see a flash of my mother's mischievous grin in his eyes. All the love she poured into me, and into her only grandson, during the one year she got to spend with him, lives on, in my own child.

During my mother's last days, she went Christmas shopping, even though it was the middle of one of the hottest Augusts we could remember and she needed to be pushed in a wheelchair. She bought my son a tiny pair of Barney sneakers -- and wrapped them up in holiday paper, because she knew she wouldn't live long enough to see his eyes light up on Christmas morning. I remember thinking the sneakers were huge, and, like any new mother consumed with worry, asked my mom if she thought maybe he wasn't growing fast enough or reaching his milestones on schedule. She just smiled. "He'll grow, honey," she said. "Don't you worry. He'll be fine."

That advice -- a mother's advice -- quelled my fears and calmed me, like nothing else has ever been able to. So many times over the years, I've longed to hear her soothng voice, or feel the love in my grandmother's hug.

This Mother's Day, I remember them, and am forever thankful to have been so lucky to have them both in my life. And while there is a piece of my heart that will ache, always, with missing them -- there is also the love we shared. Love so big and powerful, I know that it will live forever.