I still mother them….

When I Forget…

Every once in a while, for the briefest second, I forget.

I’ll hear someone call out, “Mom,” in a store. My phone will buzz. I’ll see something funny and instinctively think, I need to send this to Gab. I’ll hear a song Vincent loved and, for just a split second, my heart hasn’t caught up with reality.

Then it does.

And it’s like losing them all over again.

People often think grief is about remembering. For me, sometimes it’s about forgetting. Forgetting, for one tiny moment, that I can’t pick up the phone. That I won’t hear, “Hi, Mom.” That I won’t get another random text, another laugh, another story about their day. Those little moments of forgetting are followed by the silence. And that silence can be deafening.

The strange thing is, I wouldn’t trade those moments. As painful as they are, they’re also proof that my love for them is still so woven into my everyday life that my mind still expects them to be here. Twenty-three years of hearing Vincent call me Mom. Thirty-five years of hearing Gab. Love doesn’t just disappear because someone dies. It keeps reaching for them, even when they’re gone.

So if you catch me smiling one minute and crying the next, that’s grief. It isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just a split second when I forget… and then remember. And in that moment, my heart breaks all over again. But I’d rather have a heart that still reaches for my children than one that forgets they were ever here. 💜