Mother’s Day for Those Without Hallmark Cards

Words are difficult today; …

not just because of John’s cancer, our loss of Corrie, journey together or miscarriage,

but because there are mothers for whom Hallmark doesn’t make cards.

This post isn’t hopeless nor 100 percent hopeful. It is honest. Through the almost three years since Corrie’s death, I’ve written truth from wherever we stood in the grief journey. I’ve written truth from heartbreak, experience, and the hope to help others.

This is a post for the mothers who’ve lost a child or children.

This is a post for the mothers wishing for a positive pregnancy test or undergoing pregnancy treatments.

This is for the mothers who’ve tried and tried, but perhaps an answer never came.

This is for the mothers, who avoid the store’s card section in early May, who must look away from children’s birthday parties, or who avoid public spaces on days like today.

This is also for the mothers whose children stopped speaking with them.

This is not a slight against any mother with a heart full of joy and pink cards today. I wish you every happiness for you are blessed. My greatest wish for you is that it always remains so.

This is also for the mothers who perhaps remember their own mothers and grandmothers. Maybe they’ve danced away from Earth. Perhaps their health isn’t doing well.

I don’t know where anyone is in their individual journey of life’s struggles and challenges. I do know and understand you’re not alone. It’s easy to say than to truly explain.

After we lost Corrie, I wanted to push everyone away. Keep a good distance. (Sometimes I’m still this way; cautious about to whom I expose any part of my truest self.)

I didn’t want anyone to see the most vulnerable, mess of a storm I’d become because I could not predict my breakdowns nor anger over why my child was gone. I couldn’t predict a trigger in the first two years which would release a storm where the world’s worst depression and anger collided.

This is not to say that I don’t still put up walls when I feel a person pulling away or disinterested. I do.

But, I didn’t think anyone could ever understand such a storm, and I wrote about this, too, often describing those feelings as hurricanes.

Through this unexpected journey, I learned to let go of many things.

I hadn’t had time to process everything because a miscarriage and then John’s colon cancer diagnosis followed in the immediate months and years after Corrie graduated to heaven.

This third year after loss transitioned into a journey towards forgiveness to those I needed to forgive, the release of anger, and the realization that there are people who will endure with you.

We are not forever cast to the darkness, nor would our children here, in heaven, wished for, wondered about, or mothers we miss or worry for want us to exist there.

Today, I’ve received thoughtful messages from friends, during a day which I usually stay-at-home in the quiet. Being both my birthday and Mother’s Day this year, it’s easier to avoid crowds and bright pink cards. We celebrated the day before by going to different plant nurseries and eating dinner at 4 p.m. to avoid crowds.

The woman, who does my hair knew Corrie, and was the only one of two women I ever permitted to trim split ends from Corrie’s hair–since I’d learned to trim Corrie’s hair myself–talked about her. It meant the world to me. To hear her name, that she touched someone, and that my child meant something to someone means the world to me. It means that she had some impact on Earth in her five-and-a-half years.

We’ll call the woman who does my hair Sandy. She said, “Whenever I see a pair of blue eyes, or someone says something to me about my blue eyes, ‘I say, ‘Let me tell you about this little girl with the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen. I mean, that baby had the most beautiful blue eyes.'”

Sandy said to me, “You would’ve had to watch out for all them boys. Her eyes, and she, was beautiful; almost ethereal and too beautiful for this world. God most’ve needed a pair of pretty blue eyes because no man could’ve handled that baby.”

I can’t tell you, especially if you’ve started or your in the middle of a journey like this one, any answer or even message of today’s post. I won’t tell you it gets better. It doesn’t because there will be times when grief or heartbreak–no matter what it is–will overwhelm you.

I won’t even say, “I wish you joy” because after what you’ve experienced perhaps this idea seems non-existent. I will say, “I hope you find purpose” because purpose is what has helped me make it from one birthday and Mother’s Day without Corrie to another.

I’ve found purpose in creating a garden from scratch, creating Christmas trees during the holidays, Yoga (as long as I stick with it), my students, friends, family, and most importantly–our son.

I can tell you, on this Mother’s Day, that you matter so much. No one has the power to dictate your grief, nor say, “Today is not for you.”

Today, and each day, is for you because you continue to strive.

So, I’ll leave you with the calla lilies because I didn’t know last year if they’d return as perennials, since I live in zone 7. They did. They have an almost ethereal nature to me; as if they’re not of this world. They remind of a purpose, of her, and of you.

All photos and words by R.A. Bridges