Getting past Mother's Day after the loss of a mother

Creating this website has had a lot of benefits for me. I started this blog, almost exactly, two years after my mother died. I did it, at the advice of my therapist, as a way of journaling and expressing my feelings.

It was good advice. I've been through a lot of therapists, but I have connected with this one. She knows me well. She knows I love to write and she has seen that I am good at it. She also knows that I have been struggling to find a purpose in life since my mother died.

When she suggested I start a website, or a blog, I scoffed. I thought it was too difficult. You have to be a computer geek to design and start a website, I thought.

Thanks to YouTube, I found it wasn't that hard at all. There are already sites, like this one, that do most of the work for you. These sites have the templates to create whatever design you want for your website. You just need to do the writing.

I found it a lot easier, and faster, to type my feelings on a computer than to write in a notebook. In a way, I find it a lot more satisfying to pound away on a keyboard rather than scribble on pieces of paper.

It's also easier to store what you write in "the cloud" as opposed to having pieces of paper and notebooks strewn about. It's also a lot easier to organize and find things when you want to.

Take for example, today. Today has been a struggle for me. I struggled to get out of bed and, reluctantly, forced myself to get up and take a shower. It must have been around 10:30 when I threw the covers off of me and dragged myself out of bed.

In the first months after I stopped working, that wouldn't have been too uncommon. For the first time in my life, I was taking medications for my depression and grief. Nothing worked.

I still couldn't get out of bed in the morning. When I did get out of bed – around the same time I did today – I would be laying on the sofa taking a nap by about two in the afternoon.

After three or four different medications did nothing to give me more energy, my therapist prescribed me dextroamphetamine. After being out of work – and, quite frankly, just out of it – for a year and a half, I, finally, found a medication that I felt had a positive impact on me. I felt a little more energized and didn't need afternoon naps as much as I did, if at all.

I didn't realize until months later after I started taking it that dextroamphetamine was, actually, the generic form of Adderall. I only found out when my pharmacy informed me they were out of my prescription and they had no idea when they would be getting anymore.

When I told my therapist, he said, "Oh, yeah. There is a national shortage on Adderall." I don't know how I felt about Adderall at the time – or now, for that matter. I had heard the term. I knew a lot of young people with ADHD take it to calm them down. I, also, knew that a lot of college students abused it.

That was about all I knew. I didn't know if I felt strongly, either way, about the drug, or how serious it is. I didn't know if it was like Tylenol or if it was like cocaine.

I just knew that it helped me. I, especially, knew how much I needed it when the shortage was at its worst, and I had to go days – or even a single day – without it. My energy and mood, instantaneously, nose dived.

Which brings me back to today. Like I mentioned earlier, today has been a struggle. I have found myself moping about, shuffling my feet, and either staring at the ground or gazing at the sky.

Usually when I am like this this late into the day, I glance at my pill box and notice I haven't taking my morning pills, aka my Adderall. Or maybe I haven't gone outside and gotten my morning coffee, which I view as just as important as my Adderall. Or maybe I haven't taken a shower, which oftentimes helps my mood.

But I had done all those things today.

It was only two in the afternoon, and I felt defeated. This was just one of those days which I chalked up as a wasted day and hope that tomorrow will be better. I was going to take a nap, but then I decided to start writing to see how I feel.

But what to write about? Yesterday was Mother's Day and last night and today I was thinking about writing about it.

The days leading up to Mother's Day were tough this year. Maybe I was watching more TV than usual, but every show and every commercial was mentioning mothers.

My partner, Erin, loves watching the popular morning show, LIVE with Kelly and Mark, with Kelly Ripa and her husband, Mark Consuelos. She DVRs it and watches it when she comes home at 4:30. Every day this week, at the end of the show, Kelly and Mark had a segment where they would read letters and show pictures of people's mothers sent in by viewers. It was a gut punch to me.

Saturday Night Live had actor, Walton Goggins, on as the guest host. Goggins is one of the stars of season three of the popular Netflix show, White Lotus. During his monologue at the beginning of SNL, he acknowledges his mother who is in the front row of the audience. He then calls her up on stage and dances with her.

Then Sunday, of course, I had to go out with Erin to meet her parents and some other family members at a restaurant packed with other families celebrating their mothers.

We then drove to her aunt's house for some coffee and dessert. On the drive over, we pass a house whose driveway is lined with balloons and flowers and a huge, colorful banner draped across the garage door that reads "Happy Mother's Day to the Best Mom Ever."

So maybe it is no surprise that I have been in the dumps today. Maybe it has been a delayed reaction to all the subliminal, and not so subliminal, messages my mind has been recording this past week.

I mentioned in the beginning that journaling and creating this website has had many benefits for me. One of those benefits is I can go back and see how I was feeling at similar times in the past.

If I had only been keeping a written journal, I'd have to rummage through notebooks to find some crinkled paper with smudged, hard-to-read handwriting from about the time period I was looking for. It might take me forever, and stress me out in the process.

Within my online blog here, I can just type "Mother's Day" in the search to find what I am looking for, or scroll down to a certain date.

So that's what I did. I searched to see if I had written anything about the effect Mother's Day had on me because, quite frankly, I would have been shocked if I hadn't written about it. However, I wasn't 100% sure I had. Sure enough, I did write about it in 2023.

Rereading the article was eye-opening to me, as well as therapeutic. It was comforting to read that I experienced the same post-Mother's Day doldrums back then, just like I was experiencing today.

In 2023, I wrote that the week leading up to Mother's Day wasn't too bad – not as bad as I experienced this year. Celebrating with her family, not once but twice, on the weekend of Mother's Day that year wasn't too bad, either. This year, Erin's brother and his husband were on a cruise so they weren't able to visit, otherwise we would have had a more intimate get-together for the immediate family and then the larger one for the extended family.

I wrote back then that I appreciated the distraction of being around a lot of people. It was like white noise to me, but then when the white noise stopped the following Monday, and everyone was gone, the sadness hit me like a ton of bricks.

I took the opportunity two years ago to write about the concept of grounding and how it saved me. Maybe "saved me" was too dramatic of a turn of words, but, hey, maybe it was true. I do remember that it took me laying on the grass above where she is buried to feel some comfort and serenity when I really needed it.

It reminded me that I haven't gone to see her these last few days. I haven't been to the cemetery as much as I did in those early days. It wouldn't be possible to go as much as I did in those early days because I went every single day for hours at a time.

My dad is ninety-years-old and I can see his physical and mental faculties deteriorating. Even if I wanted – or had to – get a job at this point (I am still awaiting a ruling on my appeal for Social Security Disability benefits), it would be impossible for me to be away from him for hours at a time. He is requiring more and more attention.

I had to take his car keys away from him a few months ago after he was at fault for a minor car accident. He now relies on me to take him to appointments, do groceries, and visit his lone surviving sister. He still insists on trying to do work around the yard, which is worrisome.

Every day, he tells me about something that is wrong with the TV, or his remote, or the phones, or his prescriptions. Every day, he tells me he has misplaced some important documents. I can never get away with a simple "Hello" when I try to walk past him.

So all that has been weighing on me, but I need to go see mother tomorrow.

Re-reading that article from two years ago has reassured me that what I am feeling today is what I felt two years ago, and, likely, the other two Mother's Days that I've now endured without her. It has also warned me that my sorrow may get worse over these coming days.

Re-reading that article has also taught me how to get through this week, though. Maybe I won't have to lay on the grass on top of her gravesite like I did two years ago, but I know I need to ground myself near her essence. I will need to make a connection with her being, either real or imagined. I will need to feel her.

And maybe, if I look around and see no one is looking, I will lay, face down, and speak to her softly through the dirt. Then I will, very possibly, place my ear to the ground and see if I hear anything.