dancing while my mom died essay

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The Unimaginable Heartbreak of Losing Your Mom

• 5  Minute Read

To a girl, her mom is her first best friend. The person who teaches her what a woman should be. The first person to wipe her tears away when she is afraid or hurt. The first person to tell her how beautiful and special she is. To a girl, her mother is invincible.

One day, though, you learn your mom isn’t invincible after all. So, you stand there and tell her you love her and you will somehow be OK. You stand by her side while she takes her last breath, and then it hits you. You aren’t going to be OK.

In the days, weeks, and months that follow the death of your mother, you will feel a heartbreak like you cannot even imagine.

Think of your very worst break-up, multiply it by 100. That doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what you will feel.

You will be angry, so angry you find yourself shaking. You’ll cry until your head is pounding, your eyes are swollen shut, and your nose is so stuffy you can’t breathe. Then you’ll cry some more.

Food will lose its appeal, and the weight will fall off faster than you can buy new clothes. You might pick up old bad habits, anything to help numb the pain enough so you can sleep through the night.

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Sleep won’t come, though — you will toss and turn for hours looking at old videos and pictures just so you can hear her voice or see her smile. One day you will be walking through a store and see someone who resembles your mom and your heart is going to sink to the floor. For just a second, you’ll forget she is gone. It will hurt, bad.

There will be times you pick up your phone to call her but stop after the first ring because it sinks in —s he’s not going to answer. In an effort to feel “normal,” you will go to familiar places she went to, listen to her favorite gospel hymns, you’ll even spray her perfume all over your pillow. It won’t help. You’ll find yourself screaming in anger, crying until you’re sick, and begging God to bring her back.

People will try to comfort you with the “right” words, but those words don’t exist. You will learn that some people you trusted and thought were friends will do things and say things that will make you lose trust. They think they are doing what is best, and they are. They do what is best for themselves, and you get to pick up what pieces you have left. Be very careful who you let into your heart in the first few months — you are extremely vulnerable. Any sense of love or comfort sounds good, but it can be deceiving.

Nobody will ever replace your mother — it simply is not possible.

Please, do not let anyone break your heart so soon after the death of a parent. It is better to be guarded than to be shattered again when you haven’t even begun to heal from your loss.

RELATED: To Those Who Know the Bitter Hurt of Losing a Parent

There are stages to grief, or at least that’s what is rumored. Grief doesn’t know it is supposed to come in stages though. Instead, it tears down your facade, wrecks your world, walks out casually, then returns hours later to do it all over again.

I wish I could say one day it is easier, that you wake up and feel whole again, but I can’t . You will wish you were dead at times not because you hate life but because you want so badly to see your mama again. You will push people away even though you love them deeply.

The thought of loving someone so much, of being so captivated by someone, only to have them ripped from you will take its toll on your heart and mind. Realizing you would rather be alone than ever feel so much heartache again is normal. Take the time to be alone if needed but don’t disappear. Somebody cares about you and is worried.

There will be days you can’t get out of bed. There will be days you don’t want to smile. All that is OK. Nobody can tell you what to feel, how you should feel, or how to handle your grief. If anyone does try to tell you how to grieve, punch them in the nose.

Having to experience holidays and birthdays without your mom will be one of the toughest parts. You will experience “happy” occasions that are almost impossible to push through without crying because she should be there. Missing your mom is something you will feel every moment of every day, even when you’re happy. You will be having a good time and all of a sudden wish she was there. All the emotions will flood you with a vengeance. That’s OK, too.

If your mother was anything like mine, she deserves to be missed. It’s hard to try and move forward with your life when your confidant, friend, biggest fan, and defender is gone. Remember, you are half her — her DNA is coursing through your veins. You will always miss her and wish she was here, she was your mom. Take time to feel the emotions and take time to miss her. You aren’t alone.

You aren’t the only one who feels lost.

You aren’t crazy for feeling incomplete. Let yourself find peace. Remember that she loved you with a pure, unwavering, and endless love. Take that love she showed you and share it with others. Make her love your legacy.

RELATED: Did My Mom Know How Much I Loved Her?

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Dancing with My Mother’s Death

Three months after my husband’s stem cell transplant, he had wispy dark hair and terrific energy. I needed a break from cancer and care giving. He needed a few days alone. I signed up for a week-long Body/Soul Rhythms workshop in Canada with Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman . Marion had been my teacher for 20 years. She was in her late 70s in 2007 and weakened by ovarian cancer, but she still gave great workshops with Ann Skinner and Mary Hamilton .

“ Incubate a dream  about your intention for this workshop,” Marion suggested at our first session. That night, I had this dream:

…a hummingbird is in a cage with no bottom. It hasn’t figured out that it can drop down and escape. A young red-haired farmer tells me he’ll release the hummer in his garden where she’ll be safe. I know the bird will be OK.

“Your husband is on the phone,” a woman whispered in my ear. My heart pounded with fear as I followed her to the office.

“I’m OK,” Vic reassured me in a strong clear voice. “Your mom’s nursing home just called to say she stopped swallowing water and food yesterday. They think she’s dying.”

My 91-year-old mother had spent the last four years semi-comatose in a fetal position with closed eyes. I visited often and fed her tiny spoons of her favorite chocolate ice cream or oatmeal. She opened her mouth like a little bird and swallowed.

“Will you go to the nursing home to be with her, Vic?” I asked.

“I’m on my way.”

“If she dies before I get there, take the blankets I bought for her shroud.”

Then I called the head nurse.

“Your mom won’t eat or swallow fluids.”

“Wait until this afternoon,” the nurse suggested. “If she dies quickly, you won’t have time to get here, or she may linger for weeks. Call this afternoon. I’ll know more.”

During the morning workshop, I danced my hummingbird dream, releasing the tiny bird to the heavens with my hands while I imagined my mother’s flight to freedom. After the morning session, my phone message light blinked.

“Your mom just died.” Vic’s voice on the machine was gentle and calm.

“Her breathing was so quiet it was hard to tell when life ended and death began,” Vic said. “I held the crown of her head and enveloped her in love. I sat next to her and meditated.”

“Thank you, Vic,” I whispered, weeping from relief as well as sorrow. Twelve years of Alzheimer’s was an endurance test. It was over. She left her body when I couldn’t be at her side. Instead, I was in one of the few places I know where I could dance her to the end.

“Are you leaving?” the workshop leaders asked when I returned to the circle.

“No, I’ll stay. My mother is gone. This feels like the right place for me this week. My husband will handle what needs to happen there.”

That evening, the women gathered in a circle, held hands, and offered prayers for my mother Iva May. I asked if we could sing “ Swing Low, Sweet Chariot .” We sang it twice. When the song ended, all eyes looked expectantly at me.

I asked each woman to call her mother’s name into the circle, one at a time: “Iva May,” I began. Other voices called out: “June, Carol, Betty Lynn, Jeanette…” Living or dead, ill or well. No matter how good or difficult the relationship. We called our mother’s names. All forty of them.

Their names were our prayers.

Were you away for an important family death? What did you do when you couldn’t get there? For other stories about my mother’s last years, see My Mother’s Blessing .

I told a brief version of this story in my book  Leaning into Love . Fourteen months later and eight days after Vic’s death, I had a second dream of a man with red curls, identified in the dream as the Green Man , a pre-Christian Northern European nature god.

Thank you, Jacob Eisman of  Six Circle Farms ,  for being in my dream eight years ago and graciously letting me take your photo for this blog. While I was at the farm, I stocked up on organic squash, onions, carrots, greens, and the world’s best garlic sauce, Scape-a-moli,  a pesto made of garlic scapes. You can find Six Circle Farms at farmer’s markets in Ithaca and Trumansburg, NY or at the link above.

Elaine Mansfield

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30 Comments

December 28, 2020 at 11:20 am

Powerful and lovely. I was with both Mom and Dad when they passed away and the moment was a weird kind of bautiful.

December 29, 2020 at 2:59 pm

I agree the experience has been beautiful–for me in a time-stopping, mind-slowing way. The year after my mother died, my husband died and I was with him until the last breath. It was sacred, partly because of the spiritual harmony between us and the friends who were there to hold his passage with me. Ten years later, I accompanied his mother to her death. For my mother-in-law, I repeated the Hail Mary over and over again because this was her prayer.

May 14, 2019 at 4:40 am

Dennis dore.

It is always hard for me to read. Pain diverts my attention and I have to start over. Your writing is different. It speaks to the heart and speaks beautifully. I easily find it compelling as if you are with me and speaking truths that are simple and enchanting. I’m doing better by the way. I’ve cut my fentanyl patches 50% and getting away from the horrible dependency. Oddly, the pain level stays the same. I think you’d really enjoy my doctor. She’s supportive and encouraging. Spring is supposed to be here. I pray for us all that it is just around the corner. I’ve made it through another winter. Your sweet writings are like a June midnight devoid of clouds and nothing but stars

May 14, 2019 at 9:13 am

I’m glad to know you’ve cut your painkillers in half, Dennis. What a hard experience you’ve been given. Thanks for your supportive words about my writing. I’ve been consumed by learning to hear again with gratitude that I’m given the chance to hear birds and wind and words. About spring? We may have a drought next, but it’s soggy now. Meanwhile I send you the prayer of Julian of Norwich (the first Englishwoman and mystic whose writing was preserved, ~1400 BC). “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” I say it like a mantra as I walk or rest.

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November 22, 2015 at 7:51 pm

I’m really without words…. just sitting with tears rolling down my cheeks. Thank you, Elaine, for sharing such an important part of yourself and your life – not only with this piece, but with so many of your writings.

With love, Ann

November 23, 2015 at 7:58 am

There it was, Ann. I couldn’t be at my mom’s side, but Vic was. I guess I had other work to do. It was one of those magical unexplainable synchronicities that make life feel meaningful and purposeful. Sending you love.

By the way, I wear my #endalz 2015 t-shirt as a nightshirt and have it on right now.

October 30, 2015 at 6:19 am

Agree, thank you!

October 30, 2015 at 2:57 am

Ann marie ackermann.

I love the hummingbird, bottomless cage, and farmer symbolism. Your subconscious mind conjured them up for a reason. Perhaps our subconscious stands by, offering help in the healing process, if we can only be open enough to listen.

Thanks for this wonderful post.

October 30, 2015 at 10:48 am

I love all the images and symbols you named, Ann Marie. Since I became a student of Jung in the late 1960s, I’ve experienced these synchronicities and meaningful correspondences between dreams and my outer life. Sometimes dreams clarify. Sometimes they tell me something I don’t know. Sometimes they guide, reassure, or soothe. It likely helps that I keep a dream notebook and pen next to me bed, waiting for the next magical night story. And I imagine it helps most that I’m a “believer” in the soul truth that arises in this way and assume there is meaning. Sometimes I never discover what it is, but sometimes it’s obvious. Thank you for your encouraging words.

October 29, 2015 at 5:53 pm

Jenna ludwig.

Crying as I read this again, Elaine. What a perfect place to be to ‘dance’ your mother into her next adventure. Done with Alzheimer’s! Free at last. Beautiful…

October 30, 2015 at 10:41 am

Thank you, Jenna. I wouldn’t have been more present with my mother sitting by her bedside than I was moving spontaneously, imagining a tiny bird in my hands, and repeatedly lifting my arms up to the sky, opening my fingers, and imagining the bird’s flight. Her mind and body were tight cages. It was good to leave the earth. Love back to you.

October 29, 2015 at 4:57 pm

Robin botie.

So beautiful. I love the mothers calling circle. What a great way to bring the forty others to where you were. So far, I have been fortunate to witness the deaths of my loved ones, my father and my daughter. I don’t imagine this will always be the case. I feel for those who rush to a bedside or find they will not be able to “be there” for a beloved’s last living moments. It makes me appreciate my time with the ones I love, time together that may be the last. Cheers!

October 30, 2015 at 10:38 am

Thank you, Robin. The calling out of names was wonderful. On my mother’s birthday a month later, I had women friends over for a mother ritual and we again called out our mother’s names. This calling of the names has been an important part of community ritual for me since that time.

October 29, 2015 at 5:41 am

So happy your brother is visiting, you must be busy awaiting and preparing. Enjoy!!! I too think of hospice as the place that will help me avoid unnecessary suffering. Thanks for being there and sharing ♥

October 29, 2015 at 9:23 am

Your brother is a super-informed patient. His choices are the ones that matter. I hope he can get all the care he needs so you don’t have to worry about that aspect of his illness. Sending you love.

October 28, 2015 at 3:08 pm

This meant a lot to me, Elaine. I needed to hear it. Too busy at work this week to explain now, but you’ll understand after the next post.

October 29, 2015 at 9:20 am

Thanks for letting me know, Paula. I’ve been concerned you were in the midst of a family crisis–and I’ll find out what you’ve been up to next week. I fear it hasn’t been a joyful vacation.

October 28, 2015 at 6:52 am

Just beautiful post Elaine! And then your question “Were you away for an important family death?”. My dear 67 yr old brother is in the process of dying in San Antonio TX, i live in Puerto Rico. Last week i visited for a week. Terminal cancer. Can hardly hear him on the phone now. He had to hand in his wife to her brothers in Mexico to keep, she has advanced early onset Alzheimers. She’s confused and calls him daily. His two angel sons by a previous marriage are with him. He mentioned unnecessary suffering. He’s an old school doctor pneumologist and resists hospice, because it’s big business he says, but maybe… Hard but this too shall pass. Hope your brother is ok. Thank you ♥

October 28, 2015 at 7:58 am

Thank you, Nati. I’m sorry your brother is dying and you’re far away from him. The problem with modern families! I’m glad you could visit last week. It sounds like he has things in order. This must be very difficult and confusing for his wife. I wonder why he thinks of hospice as big business. Maybe it is potentially since we will all die. I think of hospice as the place that will help me avoid unnecessary suffering. I imagine how hard it will be to communicate with me as I grow older because I’m quite deaf and dependent on hearing aids.

My brother is hanging in there. He’s visiting me this coming weekend, something that hasn’t happened for many years since I usually go to his place. He’s coming with my niece, so she can help with driving. He was recently in Rome for 10 days. So, he still has a nice life as he grows weaker.

October 28, 2015 at 6:14 am

I wept throughout your beautiful, intimate post Elaine for there were many heart-breaking places for me to rest in before I gathered up the strength to read on. Thank you so much for writing and sharing your personal experiences with death. Sometimes words fail us miserably, for me this is one of those times. I ordered your book ‘Leaning into Love’ last weekend and am looking forward to the stork’s arrival with it later this week … in perfect time for Samhain, to help me light a fire against the winter’s dark. Love and blessings, Deborah.

October 28, 2015 at 8:10 am

Your feelings come through loud and clear, Deborah. No more words needed. Thank you for ordering my book. There is a less detailed telling of my mother’s death in Leaning into Love with more about what happened at the workshop and when I got home.

Yes, Samhain is upon us. Time to store the last of the harvest, save the seeds for the next cycle, build a fire, and incubate dreams. Love and blessings back to you.

October 28, 2015 at 4:12 am

Susan scott.

Thank you Elaine, a beautiful post. The hummingbird dream is lovely .. as is Jacob.

I remember the last time I saw my mother a few months before her death. It was extremely special – too detailed to go into here. But, on the day/time of her death, a plate crashed on the dresser in the diningroom; my elder son (only 12 at the time) had been hitting a tennis ball on the court and he couldn’t stop thinking about her … Both my brother and sister were with her when she died, my brother travelling a great distance to be with her and actually, only at my sister’s insistence.

October 28, 2015 at 7:39 am

Sounds like your family knew, Susan. I’m glad some of your siblings could be there. One of my sons made it to Vic’s bedside just 45 minutes before Vic’s death. The other was in Europe and couldn’t get home until the next day. Fortunately, the son who was away had visited four days before when Vic’s doctors assured us that Vic had more time and our son should go. Death is a surprise even when someone is very ill for a long time.

When I left home the week of Mom’s death, I had no idea anything would change with her. If there had been clues, I wouldn’t have left, but her death was “sudden” after more than five years of a comatose holding pattern. I’m glad Vic was with her and could witness a peaceful death. When he came home from the nursing home that day, he saw a white hawk swoop down in a field near the house, grab a little rabbit, and soar away. Another unmistakable image of the cycle of life and death. Thank you, Susan. As you can tell, I’m experimenting with mythological themes.

October 27, 2015 at 11:34 pm

Marian beaman.

How significant that Vic could be a surrogate of sorts during your mother’s passing while you were in a place that nourished your soul and body. (You looked so very tired in the photo by your mother’s bedside.)

Your posts always conjure up lovely images and call me to dig deep. As I read, I thought of the image of Elisha being caught up into heaven in a chariot without dying. The picture in my mind is of a swirling gold and blue rendering. I clicked on the audio file too and heard the lyrical tones of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, first sung by a soprano and then by Johnny Cash, more appropriate to my Dad who played this same song with rough hands on his guitar.

Yes, I was away when my mother’s death occurred last year. When I was alerted that she was very ill, I called the hospital and talked to Mother who sounded fine and upbeat. But I felt prompted to write down our conversations. We were told the doctor would do a procedure that could stem the tide of the roiling bacteria. We believed it would somehow do wonders, but she swiftly slid into unconsciousness, and my sister and I arrived two days later. (Another sister and my brother were by her bedside.) I have our conversations over a 2-day period on paper and I told her “I love you.”

Fortunately, I have wonderful memories of churning butter with her just a month earlier, which turned into a blog post. It will have to be enough . . . .

October 28, 2015 at 7:50 am

Yes it was significant for Vic, Marian. And I was tired in that photo. Vic was in cancer treatment and my mom was in such a sad state–neither here or there.

My dad (you likely remember he died when I was 14) sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” often. Was it daily? It feels like that in memory. It was a family favorite.

I’m so glad you could have those lucid phone calls with your mom. Isn’t it wonderful when we have notes from essential conversations? There is so much power in the actual words said. I gave a link to a blog called “My Mother’s Blessing” at the end of this piece. I wrote down our last real conversation in 1999 (yes, she lived 8 more years with only a few scattered words). But that surprising day, she spoke slowly and meaningfully with long pauses so I had time to write down every word. The conversation was a blessing and so were my notes.

October 27, 2015 at 8:40 pm

Oh, Elaine. So beautiful. Wow, were your instincts honed to celebrate the sacred in all things, the necessity for ritual, and the need to care for yourself when you could no longer care for your loved ones. I so admire your wisdom when it comes to passages and transitions. Once again, Hecate is coming through loud and clear!!

October 28, 2015 at 7:21 am

Thank you, Jeanie. I was fortunate to be at a workshop with Marion and a circle of women–and to know Vic would be there for my mom. It’s the last time I saw Marion. Vic got sick again five months later and Marion stopped teaching soon after Vic died. She and I corresponded for about four more years, until she couldn’t. Ritual was a big part of all her workshops, as you know. Marion wanted us to find and follow our own images. Mine was clear that week. I also made a much cherished mask after my mother’s death called “Our Lady of Grief and Praise.” There’s a photo of it in a blog about creating a new persona after Vic’s death ( https://elainemansfield.com/2015/persona-promoting-book-created-new-social-self/ ).

October 27, 2015 at 8:16 pm

I remember reading this in your book Elaine. Your dream seemed like a metaphor, ‘the bird dropped from the cage.’ Your courage through everything you’ve experience astounds me. I await your next book. <3

October 28, 2015 at 7:02 am

My mother weighed around 85 lbs by then. She had been like a tiny dying bird for years. Finally, she was released and could fly away. Her mind and her body had been a cage for too long. I’d like to see that next book myself, Debby. I’m working on it.

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What goes through my mind as I grieve the loss of my mom

There are a million things that change and take on new meanings and shapes. There are a million words that suddenly don't seem so nice anymore. There are a million faces that don't bring comfort like they used to.

By Katie Karambelas Updated June 15, 2022

It’s been a little over two months since I lost my mom to cancer. When I say the words “ I lost my mom ” out loud, they don’t seem right, because a lost sock can be found again. This isn’t just a missing sock. This is a huge hole in my gut , which will never, ever go away.

Losing a parent means you’ve joined a club with people who understand that just walking out the front door with your shoes on and your hair washed can be a challenge. It means that grocery shopping and picking up brussels sprouts, and remembering how much your mom loved to eat them once she realized she could cook them in the oven rather than boiling them, and they actually tasted good, makes your eyes start to burn.

Related: Mothers’ Day grief: What this day means when you’ve lost your own mom

It’s wanting to go for a run to create endorphins to stop the screaming of, “Your mom died!” that keeps running in your head over and over, but you can’t because you also want to curl up in a ball and cry while watching “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix because it was “your thing” growing up with her.

There are a million things that change and take on new meanings and shapes. There are a million words that suddenly don’t seem so nice anymore. There are a million faces that don’t bring comfort like they used to.

I know time will help. This isn’t my first loss, but it is the hardest.

So here are a few things that happen when your mom dies, in case you wanted to know where my head has been lately, or if you’re trying to figure out why your friend who lost her own mom smells like a garbage can half the time, or cries at a simple Pampers commercial.

10 things I experienced after my mom died

1. You cry a lot, and at random times.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen a cute commercial and started sobbing hysterically. Maybe the character’s mom was cheering them on at a soccer game, or maybe she was just giving them a hug. Literally anything that shows another mom in it will have you crying.

Don’t even get me started on walking around in public and seeing another mom with their child. I’m planning a wedding right now and almost started weeping when I was at a wedding show and they asked for mother /daughter duos to come on stage and win a prize. Sure, it wasn’t meant to hurt me, but it burned.

2. You may get closer to your dad.

This isn’t really a negative. When you lose your mom, you suddenly realize that you need your dad’s support and strength more than ever. While he’s grieving as well, there’s something special about sharing this together and being able to reminisce as a pair. You realize that you start telling your dad about your day in the same way you used to tell your mom, in hopes that maybe things will feel normal. It doesn’t, but it does help a little to know that someone still has your back, and you’re not going into every situation alone.

3. Life seems like you’re permanently wearing sunglasses, never the same brightness it was before.

I don’t know how to explain this to someone who hasn’t lost a parent. Just trust me, nothing will have the same brightness after you lose your mom. Those cute shoes at the store you were eyeing suddenly just seem like a stupid idea. That new casserole you wanted to make? Its ingredients are still at the back of the pantry collecting dust. You’ll get back in the routine someday, but it won’t be today.

4. You’ve joined a club with supportive people—one you never wanted to be in.

No one ever wants to join the “I lost a parent” club. Fortunately when you do, you’ll find that these are the people you needed in your life and they came at the perfect time. These are the people who will set their cell phone to a different ringer for you so they absolutely won’t miss your call at 2am. These are the people who let you cuss like a sailor every other word because life is just not fair anymore. These are the people who will let you still be upset a month, a year, even 10 years from now. That brings me to my next point…

5. People seem to expect you to be okay after about a week or two.

If they aren’t a part of the “I lost a parent” club, people expect you to be okay pretty fast. Once the shock of the funeral (if you had one—we didn’t) wears off, people will slowly start to forget about your pain and expect you to be normal again. It’s okay to avoid people for a little while. It’s okay to still be grieving. Remind those you love how hard this is. Sometimes people are so focused on themselves, they forget how to be a real friend .

6. You can never fully grieve because something new hits you every day.

When my mom passed away, I was on my second day of a three-week trip overseas. I had to push my grieving back because I wasn’t home and I had school and places to see. There was no funeral, so no reason to go home. My mom had wanted it this way.

Related: The hard lessons I’ve learned about grief

I tried to push through and be okay, I really did. But grief would slip out of me and I would find myself hysterically crying in the middle of a street in Dublin. When I got home, I still felt like I should be okay, at least for my son and my dad. I didn’t want them to think I was falling apart. So I held a lot of my sadness inside. It’s hard to fully grieve, especially when you’re a parent. When I’m trying to remember what ingredients my mom used in her special lasagna, I find myself grieving all over again. It never really stops, you just learn to accept it.

7. Your child’s curious words will make your heart hurt.

My son is four so death is not something he’s used to. Trying to explain to a four-year-old the idea of someone being gone is pretty impossible. We tried the “Mom-Mom is in heaven and she’s an angel and always looking down on you” stuff. And for the most part it works, but then there are the days where he’s reminding me, “Mommy, you don’t have a mom anymore,” where my heart breaks all over again. He doesn’t know it’s mean, he just says it like a statement. Because it’s true, I don’t. But man do those words hurt.

8. You’ll experience a whole new kind of pain when you start to see how much it’s affected your children.

On the flip side to him being curious, he’s also very sad. When my mom began receiving Hospice care, my son regressed and started wetting the bed at night again. We’ve tried everything to make him stop.

When I’m tucking him in and his tiny voice says things like, “I miss Mom-Mom,” or, “Why does Mom-Mom have to die?” my heart aches. He constantly brings her up and while he might not always sound sad, I can tell that this is harder on him than he lets on. I just wish I could hold all his broken pieces together so he doesn’t have to experience this kind of pain.

9. You may try to scour their phone, Facebook account, Netflix account, etc. searching for one last message, and it’ll likely drive you bonkers.

My mom and I shared a Netflix account which I now feel so thankful for. It’s weird, but all I want to do is know my mom better. I searched through her phone looking for advice. I check Netflix to see what shows she was obsessed with. I went on her Facebook account looking for answers to questions I didn’t even know I had.

I try to find notebooks with her handwriting, hoping maybe she left a note for me somewhere. It will frustrate you to do this, but you can’t help it. You just need one more piece of her, however tiny it is.

10. You’ll be jealous of everyone else who still has a mom.

(Especially when they take her for granted.) From this point forward, you shall never complain about your parent in front of me again. Because darling, you have no idea how lucky you are and how much I want to be in your shoes. Cherish them. Love them. Be thankful you have one more day with them.

Hug your babies tight. Tell your mom you love her. Seek her advice and wisdom. Don’t take these moments for granted. You only have one mom , and when she’s gone you’ll wish you’d never said an ugly word to her your whole life.

A version of this post was published on March 6, 2019. It has been updated.

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I wrote an essay about my mom’s death — it made my professor cry.

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Ryan Harman lost her mom to cancer last year.

In an essay for her English class, she divulged the heart-wrenching journey from diagnosis to death — bringing the internet and her West Virginia University professor to tears.

Harman shared the lengthy text in a viral TikTok video this week, garnering more than 13 million views and 45,000 teary responses.

At a time when her life was “supposed to be at its peak,” everything fell apart, she wrote, explaining that her mom was diagnosed with sarcoma, which invades bones and soft tissue , in 2021.

Harman went on to write that her mom got to see her and her sister graduate from high school, but it wasn’t until the newly minted graduate was on a celebratory beach trip with friends that things went downhill.

Her mom stopped replying to texts and calls, and when Harman returned home, her mom was bedridden with a 75% collapsed spine due to tumor growth.

Dedicated to a life of no regrets, Harman spent as much time as possible with her mom, laying in bed with her, holding her hand.

“She told us, ‘When I take my last breath, I want you guys to dance, don’t cry, dance,'” Harman wrote, expressing shock that she would be losing her mother at just 18.

In the summer of 2022, Harman’s siblings attended a Jason Aldean concert while she opted to stay home — that ended up being the night their mom died. Harman and her father rang them “about 20 times” until someone picked up.

When they arrived home, Harman’s sister said: “We didn’t answer your calls because we were dancing. We were dancing when mom took her last breath, just like she wanted.”

That was the line that choked up viewers .

“The dancing part got me,” one viewer admitted. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

“‘We didn’t answer your calls because we were dancing,'” another quoted. “I lost it.”

“I can’t stop crying,” confessed someone else.

“This broke my heart in the most beautiful way,” a TikToker agreed.

Some invested readers even made their own videos in response, many showing themselves tearing up or fully crying .

“No bc that essay deserves an award,” one user wrote on a clip .

“Me sobbing in the middle of work bc I read the essay,” shared another person on their own video . “‘We didn’t answer bc we were dancing.'”

The Post has reached out to Harman for comment.

“There is nothing I wish more than to be able to pick up the phone and call my mom, but I feel peace that she is watching over me and sees my every move,” Harman wrote.

“I celebrate her existence everyday and am so incredibly grateful to have the best Angel looking over me,” she concluded the essay.

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Learning to Dance with the Limp

March 24 2022

by Julia K. Morin

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly — that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” – Anne Lamott

One of the books I vividly remember seeing on my dad’s bedside table and later in the living room bookcase was Letters from Motherless Daughters: Words of Courage, Grief, and Healing by Hope Edelman. In hindsight, it’s hard to comprehend the desperation he must have felt trying to relate to and support two young daughters through the most significant loss and grief they would ever experience in their lives…while somehow also navigating his own grief in losing his spouse without warning. These books must have felt like a lifeline; a rescue boat on the horizon as a violent storm raged on and our ship was going under. My father was tasked with playing music to calm us as our Titanic was sinking and icy water poured into our safe vessel. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t save us. All he could do was play, and hope that we all survived.

Anne Lamott — aside from the quote I opened with, which is one of my absolute favorites about loss – also describes the death of someone we love as “a lifelong nightmare of homesickness.” I think that is the truest and simplest way I can describe the pain of living so much of my life without my mom…and probably a very accurate description of death/loss/grief for just about all of us. It is an endless longing for someone who is gone forever; for something that can never be. It is a persistent feeling of wanting to go home. But you can’t ever again, really — because “home” died with that person the day they left.

Finding meaning in loss and grief doesn’t happen overnight. Not even close. But it can happen eventually if we open ourselves to it. For me, it has come in the form of writing (I’ve been a writer since childhood) and sharing my story with others, and last year, taking the leap to pursue a path of grief support. I completed two programs in 2021 to become both a Certified Grief Educator and a Grief Support Specialist, as well as launching my Instagram community — which has since grown far beyond I ever imagined, to over 1,600 followers. I have had essays published in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book, as well as online platforms The Mighty , The Manifest-Station and The Motherlove Project.

It has taken many years for me to begin shifting my own narrative around the loss and grief that have so deeply affected my life. I’ve discovered that there is a delicate balance between acknowledging the undeniable impact that early mother loss has had on me, and on who I’ve become…and not allowing it to define me — as big of a part of my identity as it is. I now view it as a very important chapter, but not the entire story. It is a piece of who I am, but it is not all of who I am.

It’s a monumental reality that has shaped me in more ways than I could ever fully understand or articulate. And yet, there is so much more to me than “motherless girl” — the identity I spent so many years self-consciously fixating on as I tried to navigate childhood and adolescence as the “other,” reconcile my new place in the world, and relate to my peers. Over the years, I’ve had to learn how to view that reality through a different, broader lens. Doing so doesn’t make it any less significant; it just allows it to exist along a spectrum of other things that I am.

She is gone; that is an indisputable and irreversible fact. But I have been able to keep her memory and legacy alive by sharing her, and my grief journey, with others — and walking beside them as they navigate their own unique paths of grieving.

Grief is love in another form. If love never ends, why would grief? We will never stop loving those we have lost, and we will never stop grieving their absence in our lives.

Love is forever. Grief is forever.

For more information about Julia, you can check out her website .

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My mother's death isn't something I survived. It's something I'm still living through.

For years, I’d assumed I would be completely incapable of functioning after my mom died. I had no idea what my life would or even could look like after that. I couldn’t imagine it, just like I couldn’t imagine, when I was a kid, what it would be like to drive a car or go to college or even just be a grown up; it felt like I would just have to cease to exist when she did.

And yet, here I am, two and a half years after my mom’s death on May 15, 2018. I don’t know if I’m thriving, or even “surthriving,” a term that makes me think of a preternaturally peppy Molly Shannon character on “Saturday Night Live.” But at least I’m no longer sleeping with the lights on while the Mel and Sue years of “The Great British Baking Show” drone on at the edges of my consciousness … most of the time, anyway.

Opinion I thought the grief of losing my husband was over. Coronavirus brought it back.

I didn’t do anything in particular to survive her death except continue to stay alive. I certainly haven’t processed the pain, and I doubt I ever fully will; it’s all simmering just beneath my skin, ready to escape at the next Instagram story from The Dodo about interspecies friendship.

Immediately after her death, there were things that had to be done — writing an obituary, canceling her credit cards and hiring an estate attorney. And I did them; they filled some time. I had help — a lawyer, friends, family, the health aide who became a second daughter to her and a sister to me. Plus Mom had been very organized; she’d even prepared a list of all of her logins for me. Logistically, it was as easy as a death could be.

The most important thing I learned about grief is that it isn’t linear, and it isn’t logical.

But at the end of the day, I was her only child. And she was my only mom. And she was gone. Just gone.

So I let her answering machine fill up with messages, because I couldn’t cope. No one sat shivah for her in Texas; I didn’t even know where to begin to organize that. I had a panic attack in the housewares section of Target.

In the months after that, I declined a lot of social invitations; I whiffed deadlines; I stayed up all night playing video games and listening to true crime podcasts by myself. In short, whatever remaining concerns I had about meeting most societal norms went out the window.

Opinion My dad died from coronavirus. I'm not just grieving — I'm angry.

It wasn’t all terrible; there were small mercies that I’ll never forget. Even when I was at my worst, my loved ones did what they could to soothe the unbearable. My friends came and sat shivah with me in New York City when I arrived home, filling my apartment with carbohydrates and flowers. They flew to me when I needed them but couldn’t say. They took me into their homes when I showed up; or they took me hiking along the Pacific Ocean or to karaoke.

Still, my grief cruelly took away my ability to concentrate on books, movies or even any TV shows that required more than the bare minimum of intellectual processing. I had nothing left to invest emotionally or intellectually in anything I normally loved — or even anything I was once pleasantly distracted by. I struggled to pitch my editors. I flubbed an interview with a celebrity so disastrously I still think about it late at night.

Eventually, I allowed myself the luxury of going to therapy twice a week instead of just once.

If this all sounds awfully familiar to you, it’s because we’re all grieving in some way.

The most important thing I learned about grief is that it isn’t linear, and it isn’t logical. You have to be very careful with yourself and with who you’re around, and you have to make sure they’re extra tender to you, too. Even the most big-hearted people will do or say the wrong thing; I still do it myself. Most of their missteps are forgivable, but you’ll decide which ones aren’t, and that’s important, too.

Special bonds were formed in the last two years between me and the friends who’ve also experienced the loss of their mothers; it’s a very particular, complicated sort of loss that can feel extra messy and ugly. And, let’s face it, not many people can tolerate hearing about the disgusting indignities of aging and death unless they get paid by the hour — nor should they. There is also a kind of relief that you feel after a death like that, and the relief feels shameful, but even the shame feels like a relief, sort of like popping a pimple.

Opinion Nearly 2 million are grieving Covid dead. That's a pandemic, too.

I’m no longer scared when the phone rings (mostly). When a famous person dies, I no longer calculate how much older or younger they were than my mom, as if that somehow affected her odds of survival. Dead parents, it turns out, are great ice breakers on first dates and at cocktail parties. I’m thankfully off the hook for airport travel over the winter holidays. When certain dates roll around — like the anniversary of my parents’ respective deaths — I’m not sad so much as simply disassociated.

If this all sounds awfully familiar to you, it’s because we’re all grieving in some way. We’ve collectively experienced wave after wave of loss in the past nine months, and it scares me to think of how shattering it will be once the constant flow of news and tragedy relents just a little.

I didn’t do anything in particular to survive her death except continue to stay alive.

This sounds horrible but, without the death of my mom — and specifically the experience of grieving her death — I wouldn’t have emotionally or mentally survived the pandemic. While I’m still no expert at tolerating discomfort, I’m better at it than I used to be; there’s not much else to do when you’re laying sideways across your bed at 4 a.m. staring at your cat and feeling desperately, bitterly lonely, except to feel desperately, bitterly lonely.

Plus, now I don’t have to worry about her during the pandemic; she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and an increasingly knotty conflagration of disorders that would have made her an over-the-top risk for Covid-19, and she lived in Texas. She worried about me all the time anyway, even when there wasn’t an airborne virus ravaging us, and I’d have felt guilty for worrying her, and she’d want me to move back to Dallas, and, well, we’ve all seen “Grey Gardens,” right?

Opinion We want to hear what you THINK. Please submit a letter to the editor.

In the before-times, when I was on a subway stopped between stations, I’d try to sense the millisecond it began to lurch back into motion, until I could no longer tell the difference between standing still and moving. Grief is like that, but with fury and fear and sadness and a terrifying blankness that nothing can soothe. You can’t tell when the subway will start moving again; you can’t magic it into motion. You can only wait and see what happens, and make sure you’re holding on when it starts moving again.

You won’t believe the kinds of things you can survive. I didn’t. I still don’t.

More from our project on surviving 2020 and what comes next:

• THINKing about how we survived one of the worst years ever — and what happens next
• Trump's tyranny proved America isn't immune to authoritarianism. But we can survive it.
• My father's murder disrupted my schooling. But I survived and got back on track.
• Covid 'long-haul' symptoms leave survivors in emotional limbo. It's a familiar pain.
• I agreed to live alone on a desert island for a year. Here's how I stayed for eight.
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Jenni Miller is a freelance writer who covers movies, TV, sex, love, death, video games and assorted weirdness for a variety of publications online and in print.

Why the Death of Your Mother Is a Life-Changing Event

Shock, relief, loneliness, and gratitude, perhaps all at once..

Posted December 29, 2022 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

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Regardless of the quality of the relationship, losing your mother is a major life event. Many people fear the grieving process; grieving your mother’s death will turn that process on its head. The known becomes unknown, the predictable becomes uncertain, and warring emotions compete–starting immediately with the shock that someone so integral to your presence can suddenly just be gone.

Though our brains are astounding in their ability to adapt to changing circumstances, that skill can complicate the grieving process. The thread of a mother’s existence runs throughout your life, humming in the background from childhood through adulthood. It doesn’t matter if you struggled to get along or found her to be your best friend; even for those who never knew their biological mother, her death will be momentous.

Coping With Shock

If your mother was a significant part of your life, her death will somehow bring everything to a screeching halt while life continues to march forward. The world around you will change, seasons will pass, and holidays will fly by, but your world may seem to stop. Your brain will be forced to grasp how someone can be present in every way but also physically gone forever – a dissonance that creates significant stress and anxiety .

The first days after the death of your mother are filled with the mechanisms of survival mode: finding the will to shower, making the plans that accompany death, remembering to eat, and reminding yourself to keep breathing. Those days will pass in a blur, and later you may look back at them with little to no memory of what happened – a completely normal reaction to your body's shock.

As you progress through waves of shock and sadness, you may be in awe at the depth of your grief . It can come on gradually and suddenly. There will be triggers you are aware of and may even seek out, just to get a release on the emotions building up in your chest. There will also be triggers that come out of nowhere and stun you into instant sorrow. You will be surprised at how quickly tears form, with no warning.

Physiological Reactions

Physiological reactions like crying, rapid breathing, digestive issues, and more are the body’s natural way of coming to terms with enormous change. Without these reactions, there would be no outlet for emotions that are too intense to handle otherwise. The process of shock is intimately wrapped up in these reactions: Your body is a pro at connecting the logical dots and making things work, but when it’s trying to navigate the abstract nature of powerful grief, it becomes symptomatic.

Your body will do its best to protect you from the immediate, terrorizing pain of your mother’s loss. As part of its shock reaction, you may find yourself behaving normally and wondering why you don’t feel more sadness, anger , or really anything at all. You may be swimming in the depths of numbness and brain fog . You will likely find sleep to be suddenly unpredictable, and your thoughts may become strangers.

When the Numbness Wears Off

The initial numbness of your mother’s death will eventually wear off. It happens in pieces, one wave at a time, and the feelings that follow will be some of the most extreme you'll ever experience. Anger, guilt , resentment, relief, misery, despair — there are no limits to the emotions that will flood your body and mind. Many people wander in and out of shock for months (and sometimes years) as their minds try to work through these emotions while still going through the motions of living.

Once the loss sinks in, you may feel breathtaking loneliness . You may now be the first of the line, staring your own mortality in the face. You are not as removed from death as the presence of your mother led you to believe, and her absence will be glimmering behind every object, every action, and every thought.

You will feel suddenly and irrevocably responsible for the future. You may experience a crushing weight of “what if” that leaves you almost breathless. There is no longer a mother to bounce ideas off of, call when you’re upset, or get affirmation from. You’re on your own now. You have to be your own cheerleader, support, and shoulder to cry on — and you have to do it all while continuing to live your best life. The responsibility can be grueling.

While adjusting to your foundation crumbling, your emotions will often turn against you. You will suddenly remember every argument, every wasted moment, and every missed opportunity, and you may experience paralyzing regret.

Just as your mind recognizes there is no going back, your emotions may urge you to take up residence in the past. Despite their futility, guilt and condemnation often become a way to cope with the intense pain of your mother’s death.

Moments of Hope

Though it’s nearly impossible to believe, all will not be negative. You may feel relief, particularly if your mother struggled with chronic conditions that will no longer plague her. You may feel released from the conflict or pressure that came with a caregiving relationship. You may even feel a renewed sense of gratitude for your own life and a sharpened ambition to soak up every minute available to you and your remaining loved ones. Death can knit together as much as it can tear apart.

Your mother’s death will change you. That change is likely the only predictable part of the entire process – a process that will break, overwhelm, and rebuild you. The only way out is through, riding each wave as it comes and, through it all, remembering to breathe and keep moving forward.

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Jamie Cannon, MS, LPC, specializes in the treatment of trauma, anxiety, and grief with populations ranging from children and families to victims of domestic violence.

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5 moving, beautiful essays about death and dying

by Sarah Kliff

It is never easy to contemplate the end-of-life, whether its own our experience or that of a loved one.

This has made a recent swath of beautiful essays a surprise. In different publications over the past few weeks, I've stumbled upon writers who were contemplating final days. These are, no doubt, hard stories to read. I had to take breaks as I read about Paul Kalanithi's experience facing metastatic lung cancer while parenting a toddler, and was devastated as I followed Liz Lopatto's contemplations on how to give her ailing cat the best death possible. But I also learned so much from reading these essays, too, about what it means to have a good death versus a difficult endfrom those forced to grapple with the issue. These are four stories that have stood out to me recently, alongside one essay from a few years ago that sticks with me today.

My Own Life | Oliver Sacks

As recently as last month, popular author and neurologist Oliver Sacks was in great health, even swimming a mile every day. Then, everything changed: the 81-year-old was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. In a beautiful op-ed , published in late February in the New York Times, he describes his state of mind and how he'll face his final moments. What I liked about this essay is how Sacks describes how his world view shifts as he sees his time on earth getting shorter, and how he thinks about the value of his time.

Before I go | Paul Kalanithi

Kalanthi began noticing symptoms — "weight loss, fevers, night sweats, unremitting back pain, cough" — during his sixth year of residency as a neurologist at Stanford. A CT scan revealed metastatic lung cancer. Kalanthi writes about his daughter, Cady and how he "probably won't live long enough for her to have a memory of me." Much of his essay focuses on an interesting discussion of time, how it's become a double-edged sword. Each day, he sees his daughter grow older, a joy. But every day is also one that brings him closer to his likely death from cancer.

As I lay dying | Laurie Becklund

Becklund's essay was published posthumonously after her death on February 8 of this year. One of the unique issues she grapples with is how to discuss her terminal diagnosis with others and the challenge of not becoming defined by a disease. "Who would ever sign another book contract with a dying woman?" she writes. "Or remember Laurie Becklund, valedictorian, Fulbright scholar, former Times staff writer who exposed the Salvadoran death squads and helped The Times win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1992 L.A. riots? More important, and more honest, who would ever again look at me just as Laurie?"

Everything I know about a good death I learned from my cat | Liz Lopatto

Dorothy Parker was Lopatto's cat, a stray adopted from a local vet. And Dorothy Parker, known mostly as Dottie, died peacefullywhen she passed away earlier this month. Lopatto's essay is, in part, about what she learned about end-of-life care for humans from her cat. But perhaps more than that, it's also about the limitations of how much her experience caring for a pet can transfer to caring for another person.

Yes, Lopatto's essay is about a cat rather than a human being. No, it does not make it any easier to read. She describes in searing detail about the experience of caring for another being at the end of life. "Dottie used to weigh almost 20 pounds; she now weighs six," Lopatto writes. "My vet is right about Dottie being close to death, that it’s probably a matter of weeks rather than months."

Letting Go | Atul Gawande

"Letting Go" is a beautiful, difficult true story of death. You know from the very first sentence — "Sara Thomas Monopoli was pregnant with her first child when her doctors learned that she was going to die" — that it is going to be tragic. This story has long been one of my favorite pieces of health care journalism because it grapples so starkly with the difficult realities of end-of-life care.

In the story, Monopoli is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, a surprise for a non-smoking young woman. It's a devastating death sentence: doctors know that lung cancer that advanced is terminal. Gawande knew this too — Monpoli was his patient. But actually discussing this fact with a young patient with a newborn baby seemed impossible.

"Having any sort of discussion where you begin to say, 'look you probably only have a few months to live. How do we make the best of that time without giving up on the options that you have?' That was a conversation I wasn't ready to have," Gawande recounts of the case in a new Frontline documentary .

What's tragic about Monopoli's case was, of course, her death at an early age, in her 30s. But the tragedy that Gawande hones in on — the type of tragedy we talk about much less — is how terribly Monopoli's last days played out.

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“Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be.” ~Joan Didion

This spring marked ten years since I lost my mother . One ordinary Thursday, she didn’t show up to work, and my family spent a blur of days frantically hanging missing person fliers, driving all over New England, and hoping against reason for a happy outcome.

My mother was prone to frequent mood swings, but she also talked to my two older brothers and me multiple times a day, and going off the grid was completely out of character. How does someone just vanish? And why?

Forty days is a long time to brood over worst-case scenarios: murder, kidnap, dissociative fugue cycled through my addled mind. I gave in to despair but always managed to buoy myself up with hope . My mom was my best friend, and at twenty years old, I needed her too much to lose her. She simply had to come home.

Six weeks later, my brother called. Right up front he said he loved me—a sure sign bad news was coming. There was no way to say what he had to say next, so he just spat it out like sour milk: our mother’s body had been found.

A diver checking moorings in a cold New England harbor had spotted something white on the ocean floor. That white whale was our mom’s station wagon. She had driven off the end of a pier. We didn’t say the word suicide, but we both thought it, failed to comprehend it.

It’s been ten years since that terrible spring. Much of it still doesn’t make sense to me, but a decade has softened the rawness of my grief and allowed moments of lightness to find their way back into my life, the way sunrise creeps around the edges of a drawn window shade.

Losing someone to suicide makes you certain you’ll never see another sunrise, much less appreciate one. It isn’t true. I’m thirty years old now and my life is bigger, scarier, and more fulfilling than I ever could have imagined. Grief helped get me here.

Grief is not something you can hack. There is no listicle that can reassemble your busted heart. But I have found that grieving can make your life richer in unexpected ways. Here are ten truths the biggest loss of my life has taught me:

1. Dying is really about living.

At my mother’s memorial, I resented everyone who said some version of that old platitude, “Time heals all wounds.” Experience has taught me that time doesn’t offer a linear healing process so much as a slowly shifting perspective.

In the first raw months and years of grieving, I pushed away family and friends, afraid that they would leave too. With time, though, I’ve forged close relationships and learned to trust again. Grief wants you to go it alone, but we need others to light the way through that dark tunnel.

2. No one will fill that void.

I have a mom-shaped hole in my heart. Turns out it’s not a fatal condition, but it is a primal spot that no one will ever fill. For a long time, I worried that with the closest relationship in my life suddenly severed, I would never feel whole again. Who would ever understand me in all the ways my mother did?

These days I have strong female role models in my life, but I harbor no illusions that any of them will take my mom’s place. I’ve slowly been able to let go of the guilt that I was replacing or dishonoring her by making room for others. Healing is not an act of substituting, but of expanding, despite the holes we carry.

3. Be easy on yourself.  

In the months after losing my mother, I was clumsy, forgetful and foggy. I can’t recall any of the college classes I took during that time. Part of my grieving process entailed beating myself up for what I could not control, and my brain fog felt like yet another failure.

In time, the fog lifted and my memories returned. I’ve come to see this as my mind going into survival mode with its own coping mechanisms.

Being kind to myself has never been my strong suit, and grief likes to make guilt its sidekick. Meditation, yoga , and journaling are three practices that help remind me that kindness is more powerful than listening to my inner saboteur.

4. Use whatever works.  

I’m not a Buddhist, but I find the concept of letting go and not clinging to anything too tightly to be powerful.

I don’t read self-help, but I found solace in Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking .

I’m not religious, but I found my voice in a campus support group run by a chaplain.

I hadn’t played soccer since I was a kid, but I joined an adult recreational league and found that I could live completely in the moment while chasing a ball around a field.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all grieving method. Much of it comes down to flailing around until you find what works. Death is always unexpected; so too are the ways we heal.

5. Gratitude wins.

We always feel that we lost a loved one too soon. My mom gave me twenty good years. Of course I would’ve liked more time, but self-pity and gratitude are flipsides of the same coin; choosing the latter will serve you in positive ways, while the former gives you absolutely nothing.

6. Choose to thrive.

My mom and I share similar temperaments. After her death, I worried I was also destined for an unhappy outcome. This is one of the many tricks that grief plays: it makes you think you don’t deserve happiness.

It’s easier to self-destruct than it is to practice self-care . I initially coped through alcohol and other destructive methods, but I knew this was only clouding my grieving process. I had to face the pain directly, and write my way through it. So I wrote a book.

Everyone has their own constructive coping mechanisms, and choosing those, even when it’s hard, is worth it in the long run. My mother may not have been able to find happiness in her own life, but I know she would want that for me. No one is going to water you like a plant—you have to choose to thrive.

7. Time heals, but on its own timeline.

“Time heals all wounds” is something I heard a lot at my mother’s memorial service. Here’s what I wish I had known: grief time does not operate like normal time. In the first year, the present was obscured entirely by the past. Grieving demanded that I revisit every detail leading up to losing my mom.

As I slowly started to find effective coping mechanisms, I began to feel more rooted in the present. My mood did not have to be determined by the hurts of the past.

There will always be good days and bad. This is the bargain we sign on for as humans. Once we make it through the worst days, we gain a heightened sense of appreciation for the small moments of joy to be found in normal days. Healing comes over time, but only if we’re willing to do the work of grieving.

8. Let your loss highlight your gains.

I’ve lived in New York City for eight years now, but it still shocks me that I’ve built a life that I love here. It’s a gift I attribute to my mom. She was always supportive of my stubborn desire to pursue a career as a writer. After she died, the only thing that made sense to me was to write about the experience.

This led me to grad school in New York, a place I had never even considered living before. It feels like home now. I wish I could share it with my mom, but it was her belief in me that got me here. I lost my mom, but I found a home, good friends, a career I love and the perspective to appreciate it all.

9. Heartbreak is a sign of progress.

In the first years after the big loss, I assumed romance was dead to me. Why would I allow someone else to break my heart? Luckily I got past this fear to the point where I was able to experience a long and loving relationship .

That relationship eventually imploded, but I did not, which strikes me as a sign of progress. Grief makes us better equipped to weather the other life losses that are sure to come. This is not pessimism. This is optimism that the rewards of love always trump its risks.

10. Grief makes us beginners.

Death is the only universal, and grieving makes beginners out of all of us. Yet grief affects us all in different ways. There is no instruction manual on how best to cope.

There is only time, day by day and sometimes minute by minute, to feel what works, and to cast aside what does not. In the ten years I’ve learned to live without my mother, I’ve tried to see my grieving process as an evolutionary one. Loss has enriched my life in challenging, unexpected, and maybe even beautiful ways.

About Lindsay Harrison

Lindsay Harrison is a New York based writer and editor. Her first book, Missing , was published by Simon & Schuster. When she's not writing, she's most likely playing soccer or walking her dog, who looks like a fox.

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HEARTWRENCHING

Read This Teen's Essay About Her Mom That Has Everyone Ugly Crying On TikTok

A teenager's heartbreaking essay has gone viral, leaving TikTok users sobbing.

At age 18 Ryan Harmann wrote a gut-wrenching piece after losing her mother to cancer. Harmann shared the beautiful piece on her TikTok this week, saying it "made her English professor cry." Well, now we're all crying.

The TikTok video has been viewed almost seven million times and racked up more than one million likes, despite just being screenshots of the essay. We've transcribed them all here for easier reading.

It was May of 2022, when my life was supposed to be at its peak, until one day it wasn't. I had high school graduation and senior week at the beach with my graduating class. I was starting my adulthood and my college career and I couldn't have been happier. In January of 2021, my mom got diagnosed with Sarcoma Cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments. From the day she was diagnosed, she lost a different part of her life everyday. She was strong, resilient, loving, caring and most of all the best mom anyone could ask for. She never asked the doctors for a time expectancy, she wanted to live the best she could with her three children and her husband. My mom had a goal from the start, to watch me go to my senior prom and to see me and my sister, Madeleine, walk across the stage at graduation. She achieved both of those goals.

May 26, 2022, I walked across that stage at graduation, with my mom in a wheelchair watching proudly. The first step I took on that stage, I felt her overwhelming amount of love and knew she was she proud and that was all that mattered in that moment. After I graduated, I received a text, "I love you so so much and am so proud of you." Those words felt like I just won the Super Bowl. She didn't get out of the house much so her being able to attend graduation was a big accomplishment and it took a lot out of her. We had a celebratory dinner at home and she was too exhausted to stay awake for dinner. Although it was upsetting that she wasn't at dinner, I was just thankful she was able to be there and meet her goal.

I was looking forward to going on my week-long beach trip with all of my best friends that night. All week long while I was away, I was texting my mom, telling her all of the drama going on with all of my friends and FaceTiming her. Until Friday came along and my mom stopped answering my texts and my FaceTime calls. I was a little worried and debated texting my dad to see if she was okay, but I let it go and continued on with my last night at the beach.

I was excited to get back home and tell my family all about the week I had. Instead, I came home to my mom in bed and my dad sat me and my two older siblings down and told us that our mom wasn't doing well and he was very worried. At the time, I was thinking my dad was freaking out and exaggerating and that she was going to be OK. After a lot of thinking, my dad decided to take her to the hospital. She walked from her room, downstairs and into the car. At the hospital, they told her that her spine is 75 percent collapsed because of the tumors growing rapidly. I thought to myself that my mom was a superstar, she just walked on a spine that almost was completely collapsed. From that point on, my mom entered hospice care and did not get back up from her bed.

We called all of our family and friends and let them know that her life was coming to an end. The first couple days following her entering hospice care, I was in shock, I didn't believe that my mom was going to die when I was only 18 years old. I remember sending a text to my sister, Madeleine, and asking "Is Mom going to die?" Her response was, "In a few weeks, yeah." My heart shattered into a million pieces. I knew from that point on, I was going to take advantage of the time left with my mom and not have any regrets. I did not want to look back at the last few weeks I had left with my mom and think "I wish I spent more time with her" so I did everything in my power to protect my future self from regret. As friends and family members were coming by, I was laying in bed right next to my mom, holding her hand. I couldn't imagine what my life was going to become. My mom reminded as daily that she loved us and that when she passes, she wants us to move forward. She told us, "When I take my last breath, I want you guys to dance, don't cry, dance."

Days started to blur together as my mom went in and out of consciousness for the next couple weeks. I remember sitting in bed, with my door open and my parents bedroom door open too, scared that I would hear her take her last breath. She started talking in her sleep and talking to her deceased mother telling her that she would see her soon.

The stress that my family endured is not something I would not wish on anyone. We were on lockdown, spending time with my mom and watching her slowly go through the different stages of death. I was in a mental block, I wasn't eating as much as I should've, my main focus was spending as much time as I could with her. On July 7th, my mom said to my dad "I'm so tired I need to go, I will see you later," as she closed her eyes. My dad came down the stairs and told us we all need to go say our final goodbyes. My older siblings went up first. I started pacing back and forth, I did not want to say bye to my best friend. I started my journey up the stairs, with tears rolling down my cheeks, and I stopped, I couldn't do it. I walked into my parents bathroom until I built the courage to go and say goodbye. I walked to my mom, kissed her on the forehead and told her I would see her later and that I loved her.

When the news spread that it might be the day she passed, family members were coming to say their goodbyes, until my mom randomly woke up. At this point, she has been in hospice for 4.5 weeks. When she opened her eyes, I was upset. I was upset my mom was alive. I felt like such a horrible human. I walked outside with my heart in my stomach as I saw my dad leaned over crying talking on the phone. I couldn't imagine going through the process of saying goodbye again. My mom was up and talking for about 5 more days until she went back into a state of total unconsciousness. My dad decided to kick me and my siblings out, and send us to our aunt's house at the beach because he didn't want us to see her in that state anymore.

The beach was my moms favorite place. She would sit on the beach from 9 AM-5 PM every chance she would get. She would take any chance she got to go to the beach, especially since it meant spending more time with her kids. She always had a Grapefruit Crush in her hand and soaked up the sun. She looked so beautiful on the beach and she was in her element. I was sitting on the beach, and had a thought that I needed to tell my mom, but realized I couldn't. My mom was still alive, but I couldn't talk to her. I felt weak. I didn't want this to be the end. I had tears in my eyes as my sister said "Ryan, me and Tommy (my brother) are going to go to Jason Aldean on Sunday, do you want to go? I wanted to go, but for some reason the word "no" came out of my mouth. From that moment forward, all I could think about was my mom. I told my siblings I wanted to go back home that night, I couldn't be away from mom anymore.

When we got back home, there was no change in my moms status. We were told, by hospice, to leave her be and she will go on her own. A few days after returning home from the beach, I woke up and my siblings got ready to go to the concert as me and my dad stayed home with my mom. Around 3 PM, I took a nap and woke up to my dad coming out of their room and said "can you go check her breathing?" I went in and she had the death rattle, I knew today was the day. From then on, my dad and I alternated going in and checking on her until about 7:30. We layed in bed with her and realized her skin was ice cold. I layed there until I couldn't anymore, and I went downstairs. Around 9 PM, my worst nightmare came true. I heard my dads footsteps, and turned the corner and said "I think so, I think she's gone." I had never felt a true heart break and such emptiness ever.

We then had to call my siblings at the concert. We called each of them about 20 times. My brother finally picked up and we had to tell them over the phone. I heard my sister scream and sob, that was the moment where I realized this is real life. Friends and family members started trickling in, I met my siblings outside and hugged them in the driveway as they came home from the concert. My sister looked up at me and said, "we didn't answer your calls because we were dancing. We were dancing when mom took her last breath, just like she wanted." I felt relief in this moment, my mom passed away just the way she wanted to and I knew she wasn't in pain anymore.

As I continue living life without my mom, I realize every single thing I do is to make her proud. I have matured and grown as an individual. As I am constantly paralyzed by the pain that is caused by her death, I remind myself that I am lucky enough to feel this great amount of pain because my mother was such a phenomenal person. There is nothing I wish more than to be able to pick up the phone and call my mom, but I feel peace that she is watching over me and sees my every move. She fought her hardest fight for a month and half to give us the time we desperately needed to say goodbye to her, and for that, I will forever be grateful. I celebrate her existence everyday and am so incredibly grateful to have the best Angel looking over me.

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Dear author, your poignant article about the loss of your mother touched my soul. The depth of your emotions and the vulnerability in your words brought tears to my eyes. I am truly sorry for your loss and can only imagine the pain you must be feeling. May your mother's soul rest in eternal peace, and may you find solace and strength in the cherished memories you shared. Sending prayers and healing thoughts your way.

In my prayers.

I have been there. I'm really excited that you got that experience, some people go through life and never know This makes us all more understanding of life and death. Yeah it's hard but,I would not have missed it for anything. Praying for you and your family

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Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
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• As a template for you assignment

Terminal Illness

End of life issue.

While dying is part of human life that surrounds each person, some encounters with death are more influential than others. My mother’s passing was an experience that impacted my view of life and end of life care the most. She died before her 60th birthday – her terminal illness was discovered very late, and she passed away less than a year after receiving the diagnosis. Such a rapid change in my life left a mark on my memory and reshaped my view of life and death.

It was difficult for me to come to terms with her death – the period between the diagnosis and her passing was too short. I was in denial for a long time and had trouble accepting what had happened. Looking back at this time, I see how the end of life is not always expected, and why the children of terminally ill loved ones require the attention of medical professionals as well.

End of life care for my mother took a toll on me, and I had to reevaluate my aspirations to see whether I treated life as an endless path. Now, I reflect on the feelings I had in order to remind myself that the end of life cannot be fully preplanned and that each case is unique in its own way. Moreover, I try to remember that one’s existence is finite. In some cases, the best solution is to provide as much comfort to someone and make sure they are making choices to the best of their ability and knowledge to have a happy and dignified time.

I also considered how my mother might have felt at the moment of diagnosis and during her last year. It is incredibly challenging for one to understand what knowing that you will die soon means. Such clarity is not always desired, but I believe that it is vital for people to know about their current condition because it affects their decision-making in healthcare and life, in general. Death is a part of each human’s life, but every step toward it does not feel final because it can come at any moment.

Knowing one’s diagnosis changes the way people and their loved ones think. Although I can only imagine what my mother felt, I understand what the families of terminally ill persons are going through.

If I were diagnosed with a terminal illness and were given a prognosis of six months or less to live, I would try to accept it in good faith before making decisions. Death is inevitable, but it is impossible to be fully prepared for it, even when you think that you are. So, I would look into myself to search for peace with this news in order to take advantage of the time that I have left.

I would feel sad because I would not see my loved ones and miss them dearly. Thus, my priorities for what should be done would change. I would try to see my family and friends as much as I could and spend time with them, making memories for them and myself. I would like to leave some mementoes behind and focus on the good times that we would have together. Planning for several months ahead is difficult when the exact date of death is unknown, so I would do my best to make the most of each day.

However, it is also vital to think about one’s inner comfort and peace. Coming to terms with my passing would be critical to me – it provides some type of closure and allows me to let go of worries related to everyday life. People may cover their fear of dying with activities and concentration on planning and socialization. In doing so, they may overlook their own satisfaction with life, denying themselves a chance to reflect. As such, I would spend some time searching for some last unanswered questions and unachieved goals that could be completed in the short span of time that I would have.

Finally, I would concentrate on my present and my loved ones’ future. I always strive to remember that life is endless in a way that it continues for other people. Although I will eventually die, some of my friends and my family members will continue living long after I am gone, facing problems and challenges that are inherent to humanity.

Thus, I would try to make plans to alleviate some of these issues. Most importantly, I would organize the provision for my child to finance the education – one of the most necessary, but expensive, parts of one’s coming to adulthood. If possible, I would review our housing options, savings, family and friends support network, and address other household and healthcare concerns.

Doctors and nurses in end-of-life care carry a significant burden in working with patients and families dealing with ethical and moral dilemmas. Some of these issues are also regulated legally, although the lines of what is legal or not are much less clear than in other cases. For me, one of the moral dilemmas that I had struggled with was the patients’ and relatives’ differing views on treatment planning. In some situations, the client’s family members may not pursue the same goals as the person under care. These aims can be guided by religious or personal views on health and death. Others can be motivated by financial problems, strained relationships, emotional health, and a multitude of other reasons.

For example, in a hospital, a family may not want the patient to know the diagnosis as it could scare or sadden them. In this scenario, I turn to the some of the medical principles as the basis for my value system. I would highlight the importance of fidelity – people have the right to known about their prognosis and diagnosis (Karnik & Kanekar, 2016). I think that truthfulness is a necessary part of end-of-life care and support, even though telling someone their diagnosis is difficult.

In some situations, children want to keep their parent alive as long as possible and request all possible procedures, while the client denies care and seeks comfort to spend the last days with dignity. Here, the principle of autonomy would guide my practice – people reserve the right to make decisions to the extent of their capacity (De Panfilis et al., 2019).

Moreover, it is vital to remember that rigorous treatment does not equal beneficence in all scenarios. I try to approach each case individually and acknowledge that every person has the right to control a part of their destiny through healthcare or outreach for support, and the duty of caring professionals is to inform our clients of all the choices they can make and what outcomes they can expect. In the end, medical science advances continuously, but death remains an unchanging aspect that requires person-centered thinking.

De Panfilis, L., Di Leo, S., Peruselli, C., Ghirotto, L., & Tanzi, S. (2019). “I go into crisis when…”: Ethics of care and moral dilemmas in palliative care. BMC Palliative Care , 18 (70), 1-8. Web.

Karnik, S., & Kanekar, A. (2016). Ethical issues surrounding end-of-life care: A narrative review . Healthcare, 4 (24), 1-6. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, September 19). Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/

"Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." IvyPanda , 19 Sept. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection'. 19 September.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." September 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

1. IvyPanda . "Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." September 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection." September 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-dying-and-bereavement-reflection/.

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A dying mom dedicated her last song to her son. TikTok made it go viral

A singer with cancer wrote a final tune for her 7-year-old son — and people on TikTok made it go viral as her dying wish.

"I’m just honestly so blown away by everyone’s love and how they’ve supported me through this and shared this story," Cat Janice, 31, says of her new song "Dance You Outta My Head" in an interview with TODAY.com . "I really wasn’t expecting to be here. I really do believe it’s a miracle to be able to witness this. I'm just very happy to be here."

In November 2021, Janice, who lives in Virginia with her 7-year-old son Loren, felt a lump in her neck.

"I had just gotten over COVID so my lymph nodes were really swollen so ... I didn't think anything of it," she said in a 2022 TikTok video titled "My hypochondria saved me."

Janice explained, "Fast-forward to March of 2022 ... I was studying for an exam and when I'm anxious I kind of rub my neck ... and I noticed the lump was still there."

The lump, Janice said, was bigger and very hard.

"It did not move and it did not hurt," she said, adding that she had no other symptoms and had normal bloodwork, having struggled with long-haul COVID. Otherwise, Janice had "constant" tight knots on her back, under her shoulder blades.

"It turns out later that the tumor was actually in my scalene muscle," she said, adding, "Long story short, I ended up with this really random, weird rare tumor ... I never would have noticed if I hadn't have been anxiously rubbing my neck."

Janice was diagnosed with sarcoma, which according to Cleveland Clinic is a type of cancerous tumor that develops in the bones or soft tissue, such as cartilage, tendons and nerves.

"(Doctors said) it was not a very good prognosis but (they) would do the best that they can," Janice tells TODAY.com .

"(My son) was so young when I was first diagnosed so we didn't really talk about it," she says. "He's a little bit older now and can understand more but it's always been, 'Mommy is sick but she's fighting and working to beat it.' Now, he understands ... that Mommy is very ill and very much potentially not going to make it."

The mom went through radiation and chemotherapy and removed the lump in her neck, however in May 2023, the cancer returned in her lungs.

The next month, Janice told her followers.

"Just found out a couple weeks ago and I've been processing it," she said on TikTok . "But it's back and it's on my lungs."

Janice's latest song is "Dance You Outta My Head" which, she tells TODAY.com, is about "Feeling yourself, you're at the top of your mood. You're out on the town and maybe there's ... somebody you got a crush on, but you're not thinking about it tonight because tonight is about you."

On Jan. 10, Janice told TikTok that she was in hospice.

"Don't know my timeline," she captioned the video . "Tumors tripled basically overnight."

Janice explained in another TikTok video this month, "I changed all the rights of my songs to my son so I can leave him behind something ... I might not be here but my baby boy will be."

Her song took off on TikTok.

"Cancer sucks. I lost my mom to it when I was pregnant with my son ... and this kind of thing would have lifted our spirits," one woman captioned her video.

"I was once a 7-year-old who lost their mom to cancer," wrote someone else. "Dancing to spread this song."

"As a mama who was diagnosed with cancer and now in remission, my heart broke when I heard that the mama who wrote this song is dying because of cancer and has left the rights to her 7-year-old son," wrote a mom.

Last week, Janice shared how people’s efforts boosted her song to success.

She captioned a TikTok video. “I woke up in the middle of the night to finding out the song is CHARTING Apple ITUNES as now #5 in the WORLD and #1 in multiple countries ... THANK YOU WORLD FOR LOVING MY SON AND I SO MUCH!!!!”

As Janice tells TODAY.com, “It’s so beautiful and wonderful and amazing.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

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How to Write an Obituary For Your Mother

Jenny qi on the limits of language in the face of tragedy.

I did not know how to write an obituary when my mother died. I was all of nineteen, and the only deaths I’d reckoned with up to that point were those of her parents—whom I’d met only once as an infant—and those of my pet guinea pigs. But my father tasked me with writing my mother’s obituary because I was born and raised in America, and what were my English skills for if not to be my parents’ voice when they needed it. Besides, now that she was gone, it was time for me to be a proper adult. Though I seem to have erased all but the most traumatic memories surrounding her death, I think I Googled obituaries, and I probably followed a simple template. I did not understand that I could do anything else.

Now, years later, I am haunted by the impersonal nature and sheer brevity of my mother’s obituary in the Las Vegas Review Journal. Every time I read an obituary online or a news story about a tragic death or even the inscription of a memorial bench, all of which I do more often than is perhaps normal, I pause to wonder about the deceased and who is left to remember them. Then I feel guilt for the paucity of ways I’ve offered the world to wonder about my mother. In the intervening years, I have looked up guides on writing obituaries and guides on Chinese funeral traditions and read countless books and essays about other people’s losses. I have written a hundred elegies and now a whole book about my mother, my grief, and it doesn’t feel like enough. I have fantasized during late-night anxiety-spiral ruminations about hacking into the Review Journal and replacing that terrible stilted obituary with anything else because I can’t bear the thought of people looking up or stumbling upon Lisa Yu and learning only that she was a casino dealer and writer who passed away on February 23, 2011.

What I want people to read is that on February 23, 2011, Lisa Zhihong Yu, beloved wife and mother to one daughter and two books, passed away at the age of 54. Lisa was born in Nantong in the Jiangsu Province of China—officially her birthday was listed as December 10, 1956, but we are unsure of the exact date because it was recorded using the lunar calendar. She was adopted by a school teacher and a housewife with bound feet; the couple had one biological son but loved her as their own. The Chinese Cultural Revolution interrupted her childhood, and she was sent to a reeducation camp to work in the fields. After returning from the countryside, she finished school and became a history teacher. She married Hansheng Qi, they immigrated to the United States, and they had one daughter, Jenny. In the U.S. Lisa had many different kinds of jobs, including lab technician, real estate receptionist, restaurant manager, and casino dealer. She was a member of the Las Vegas Chinese Writers Association and wrote two books at the end of her life, a memoir honoring her adopted parents published in China and an unpublished semi-autobiographical novel about immigrating to the U.S.

Lisa chose her English name because Americans couldn’t pronounce her Chinese name Zhihong 志红, which translates roughly to “red determination,” an apt description of how she lived her life. She was ambitious and determined above all, and when she chose to do something, regardless of how much she liked it, she did it well. When she returned from the country, she sped through her schooling in half the time allotted, eager to reclaim the life that had been taken from her. Sometimes, this ambition translated into impatience and a sharp tongue. She did not suffer fools. She loved to read from a young age, hiding under the covers with a light to finish novels late into the night. Her favorite book was Dream of the Red Chamber . When she was learning English, she read all the classics, and her favorites included Jane Eyre , Little Women , Les Miserables , Gone with the Wind , and Tess of the d’Ubervilles . Not surprisingly, she loved stories of women who persevered. People were drawn to Lisa’s liveliness and humor, and she picked up lifelong friends everywhere she went. She also had a strong sense of compassion and responsibility for one’s family and community. She saved the best of everything for everyone else, especially her daughter. She liked giving little gifts and never visited someone empty-handed. She’d offer the food off her own plate if she didn’t have anything else to give. She had a soft spot for elderly people.

This is where I get stuck. I never did find a good guide to Chinese obituaries to offer a second opinion, but according to Funeral Basics’ guide to writing an obituary, after writing the biographical information and a few optional personalized lines, this is where I would mention the family members who preceded her in death, as well as the loved ones who survived. But how can this be all? How can I pour her entire life into a few short paragraphs? Where do I include her love of steamed buns and how her father snuck her an extra from his school each day when she was growing so quickly her bones ached? Or her love of sesame mochi balls and pizza crusts later in life? Or how she dreaded the task of washing her mother’s feet, shaped into painful hooves from childhood to be more attractively helpless. Or the older brother who was so good natured and trusting that everyone thought he was simple, blamed his simpleness when he drowned in the river in his twenties, and how that shaped the rest of her life imperceptibly. How charmed she was when she first moved to America by the Amish, who were so trusting that they left their shop unattended, with only a jar for customers to pay for their wares. How do I fit them in the same sentence as the gentle scholarly father-in-law she admired and the fierce mother-in-law who clashed with her because they were so alike?

Let’s try again. People were drawn to Lisa’s liveliness, humor, and tenacity, and she picked up lifelong friends everywhere she went. In Pittsburgh, determined to return to a role in education like the one she’d left in China, she knocked on every door of the university until she was hired as a technician in a diabetes lab. When the professor said she didn’t have any experience, she protested that she would never have experience if no one ever gave her a chance. As in the rest of her life, when one door closed, she tried another. When all doors closed, she knocked down a wall to make one. One of her first American friends was her Polish American landlady Stella, who would give her baby clothes and write long letters to her in elegant script for over a decade after she moved across the country. Out west, in Las Vegas, she started her life over with the same resolve that marked everything she did. While working as a restaurant manager, she befriended Jim, an older gentleman and scholar who sometimes ate lunch there. When she learned that he was teaching himself Chinese, she was so delighted that she offered to give him lessons. Her daughter called him Grandpa and his wife Grandma, and even did a school report on how the Great Depression shaped his life. Their families remained close through all her subsequent life transitions, even living in the same neighborhood for a time.

There’s still so much I haven’t told you, so much I don’t even know about her life before she was my mother, the proud tender-hearted human she continued to be in addition to being my mother. Perhaps this is why, instead of writing two paragraphs a decade ago, I left it at only a sentence, unable to fathom the finality of her obituary and her death. I think what I really want is for people to miss her as much as I do. I want her life and her death to matter to everyone, or at the very least to matter this much to someone living besides me, because I’m not enough to hold all this mattering.

According to the earlier guide, the last step to writing a “great” obituary is to review it for mistakes. Like a poem, I’ve rewritten this in my head what feels like a thousand times, and it’s always missing so much. So perhaps also like a poem, I’ll revise periodically until language leaves me. I keep returning to Victoria Chang’s poetry collection Obit , in which she meditates on the many small deaths of memory and language that occur when a mother dies. In “The Head,” she writes, “Somewhere, in the morning, my mother had become the sketch. And I would spend the rest of my life trying to shade her back in.”

______________________________________________________________

Jenny Qi’s Focal Point is available now via Steel Toe Books. 

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My Mother Died By Suicide, But She Wasn't Selfish

Yes, my mom died by suicide. no, she wasn’t being selfish.

"I never felt ashamed of the way my mom passed, but I knew there were so many assumptions and stigmas surrounding suicide."

"My biggest fear was that people would think my mom did not love me — that she was an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a bad parent. In reality, my mom was none of those things."

"Suicide is not a pathology of the individual mind. It’s an accumulative tragedy brought on by the lack of resources and the stress of acculturation into an oppressive system — in addition to the emotional pain our families carry from generations of trauma passed on by the harmful legacies of colonialism."

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Guest Essay

First, I Cried. Then, I Rode My Bike.

By Jennifer Weiner

Ms. Weiner is the author, most recently, of the novel “That Summer.” She lives and rides her bicycle in Philadelphia.

When I was about 5 or 6 years old, my mother set me down on a purple banana-seat bike. She gripped the back of the seat while I found my balance. Then she gave me a push and let me go, calling, “Pedal, pedal, pedal, glide!” as I rode across the lawn.

I pedaled and glided just fine, but forgot to steer, and my inaugural ride concluded with a face-first crash into our neighbors’ mailbox.

When I was older, my bike gave me freedom. My mom was happy to sign off on me joining a travel soccer team, as long as I understood that she would not be driving me to practices. “You can ride your bike.”

So I did, with a soccer ball bulging in my backpack. Sometimes I envied my teammates as they climbed into minivans and station wagons after a grueling practice. Mostly, I felt lucky. On my bike, my time was my own. I could pluck an apple from a tree in the orchard near the soccer field and eat it while I pedaled home, or ride to the mall, spend an hour browsing in Waldenbooks and go home with a few new paperbacks and a quarter-pound of dark-chocolate-covered pretzels.

When I moved to Philadelphia, knowing no one, my bike helped me find my place, and my people. I joined a cycling club and learned the city, its parks and paths and neighborhoods. I did a camping trip that took me through the Finger Lakes region and, once, rode my bike 70 miles from Philadelphia to my boyfriend’s parents’ place at the Jersey Shore. Glowing with pride, I waited for their praise.

My boyfriend’s father looked me over, then said: “You know, they invented this thing. It’s called a car.”

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Crying in H Mart

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart. For those of you who don’t know, H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The “H” stands for han ah reum , a Korean phrase that roughly translates to “one arm full of groceries.” H Mart is where parachute kids go to get the exact brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It’s where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, a beef soup that brings in the new year. It’s the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it’s the only place that truly understands how much garlic you’ll need for the kind of food your people eat. H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle “ethnic” section in regular grocery stores. They don’t prop Goya beans next to bottles of sriracha here. Instead, you’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup. Or in the freezer section, holding a stack of dumpling skins, thinking of all the hours that Mom and I spent at the kitchen table folding minced pork and chives into the thin dough. Sobbing near the dry goods, asking myself, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?”

When I was growing up, with a Caucasian father and a Korean mother, my mom was my access point for our Korean heritage. While she never actually taught me how to cook (Korean people tend to disavow measurements and supply only cryptic instructions along the lines of “add sesame oil until it tastes like Mom’s”), she did raise me with a distinctly Korean appetite. This meant an over-the-top appreciation of good food and emotional eating. We were particular about everything: kimchi had to be perfectly sour, samgyupsal perfectly crisped; hot food had to be served piping hot or it might as well be inedible. The concept of prepping meals for the week was a ludicrous affront to our life style. We chased our cravings daily. If we wanted the same kimchi stew for three weeks straight, we relished it until a new craving emerged. We ate in accordance with the seasons and holidays. On my birthday, she’d make seaweed soup: a traditional dish for celebrating one’s mother that is also what women typically eat after giving birth. When spring arrived and the weather turned, we’d bring our camp stove outdoors and fry up strips of fresh pork belly on the deck. In many ways, food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she seemed—constantly pushing me to be what she felt was the best version of myself—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.

I can hardly speak Korean, but in H Mart I feel like I’m fluent. I fondle the produce and say the words aloud— chamoe melon, danmuji . I fill my shopping cart with every snack that has glossy packaging decorated with a familiar cartoon. I think about the time Mom showed me how to fold the little plastic card that came inside bags of Jolly Pong, how to use it as a spoon to shovel caramel puff rice into my mouth, and how it inevitably fell down my shirt and spread all over the car. I remember the snacks Mom told me she ate when she was a kid and how I tried to imagine her at my age. I wanted to like all the things she did, to embody her completely.

My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary. I can tell you with a straight face what it was like watching my mom’s hair fall out in the bathtub, or about the five weeks I spent sleeping in hospitals, but catch me at H Mart when some kid runs up double-fisting plastic sleeves of ppeong-twigi and I’ll just lose it. Those little rice-cake Frisbees were my childhood: a happier time, when Mom was there and we’d crunch away on the Styrofoam-like disks after school. Eating them was like splitting a packing peanut that dissolved like sugar on your tongue.

I’ll cry when I see a Korean grandmother eating seafood noodles in the food court, discarding shrimp heads and mussel shells onto the lid of her daughter’s tin rice bowl. Her gray hair frizzy, cheekbones protruding like the tops of two peaches, tattooed eyebrows rusting as the ink fades out. I’ll wonder what my Mom would have looked like in her seventies—if she would have the same perm that every Korean grandma gets as though it were a part of our race’s evolution. I’ll imagine our arms linked, her tiny frame leaning against mine as we take the escalator up to the food court. The two of us in all black, “New York style,” she’d say, her image of New York still rooted in the era of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She would carry the quilted-leather Chanel purse that she’d wanted her whole life, instead of the fake ones that she bought on the back streets of Itaewon. Her hands and face would be slightly sticky from QVC anti-aging creams. She’d wear some strange, ultra-high-top sneaker wedges that I’d disagree with. “Michelle, in Korea, every celebrity wears this one.” She’d pluck the lint off my coat and pick on me—how my shoulders slumped, how I needed new shoes, how I should really start using that argan-oil treatment she bought me—but we’d be together.

If I’m being honest, there’s a lot of anger. I’m angry at this old Korean woman I don’t know, that she gets to live and my mother does not, like somehow this stranger’s survival is at all related to my loss. Why is she here slurping up spicy jjamppong noodles and my mom isn’t? Other people must feel this way. Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it.

Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding into a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard wall that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.

H Marts are usually situated far from a city’s center. When I lived in Brooklyn, it was an hour-long drive in traffic to Flushing. In Philly, it’s about the same to Upper Darby or Elkins Park. H Marts often serve as the center of larger complexes of Asian storefronts, and are surrounded by Asian restaurants that are always better than the ones found closer to town. We’re talking Korean restaurants that pack the table so full of banchan side dishes that you’re forced to play a never-ending game of horizontal Jenga with twenty-plus plates of tiny anchovies, stuffed cucumbers, and pickled everything. This isn’t like the sad Asian-fusion joint by your work, where they serve bell peppers in their bibimbap and give you the stink eye when you ask for another round of wilted bean sprouts; this is the real deal.

You’ll know that you’re headed the right way because there will be signs to mark your path. As you go farther into your pilgrimage, the lettering on the awnings slowly begins to turn into symbols that you may or may not be able to read. This is when my elementary-grade Korean skills are put to the test—how fast can I sound out the vowels while in traffic? I spent more than ten years going to hangul hakkyo every Friday, and this is all I have to show for it: I can read the signs for churches in different Asian texts, for an optometrist’s office, a bank. A couple more blocks in, and we’re in the heart of it. Suddenly, it’s like another country. Everyone is Asian, a swarm of different dialects crisscross like invisible telephone wires, the only English words are “HOT POT” and “LIQUORS,” and they’re all buried beneath a handful of different characters, with an anime tiger or hot dog dancing next to them.

Inside an H Mart complex, there will be some kind of food court, an appliance shop, and a pharmacy. Usually, there’s a beauty counter where you can buy Korean makeup and skin-care products with snail mucin or caviar oil, or a face mask that proudly and vaguely advertises “PLACENTA.” (Whose placenta? Who knows?) There will usually be a pseudo-French bakery with weak coffee, bubble tea, and an array of glowing pastries that always look much better than they taste.

Lately, my local H Mart is in Cheltenham, a town northeast of Philadelphia. My routine is to drive in for lunch on the weekends, stock up on groceries for the week, and cook something for dinner with whatever fresh bounty inspired me. The H Mart in Cheltenham has two stories; the grocery is on the first floor and the food court is above it. Upstairs, there is an array of stalls for different kinds of food. One is dedicated to sushi, one is strictly Chinese, and another is for traditional Korean jjigaes , bubbling soups served in traditional stone pots called dolsots , which act as mini cauldrons to insure that your soup is still bubbling a good ten minutes past arrival. There’s a stall for Korean street food, which serves up Korean ramen (which basically just means Shin Cup Noodles with an egg cracked in them); giant steamed dumplings full of pork and glass noodles, housed in a thick, cake-like dough; and tteokbokki , chewy, bite-sized cylindrical rice cakes boiled in a stock with fishcakes, red pepper, and gochujang , a sweet-and-spicy paste that’s one of the three mother sauces used in pretty much all Korean dishes. Last, there’s my personal favorite: Korean-Chinese fusion, which serves tangsuyuk —a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork—seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and jajangmyeon .

The food court is the perfect place to people-watch while sucking down salty, fatty, black-bean noodles. I think about my family who lived in Korea, before most of them died, and how Korean-Chinese food was always the first thing we’d eat when my mom and I arrived in Seoul after a fourteen-hour flight from America. Twenty minutes after my aunt would phone in our order, the apartment ringer would buzz “Für Elise” in MIDI , and up would come a helmeted man, fresh off his motorcycle, with a giant steel box. He’d slide open the metal door and deliver heaping bowls of noodles and deep-fried battered pork with its rich sauce on the side. The Saran wrap on top would be concave and sweating. We’d peel it off and dribble black, chunky goodness all over the noodles and pour the shiny, sticky, translucent orange sauce over the pork. We’d sit cross-legged on the cool marble floor, slurping and reaching over one another. My aunts and mom and grandmother would jabber on in Korean, and I would eat and listen, unable to comprehend, bothering my mom every so often to translate.

I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families. How many are thinking of them as they bring their trays back from the different stalls. Whether they’re eating to feel connected, to celebrate these people through food. Which ones weren’t able to fly back home this year, or for the past ten years? Which ones are like me, missing the people who are gone from their lives forever?

At one table is a group of young Chinese students, alone without family at schools in America. They have banded together to take the bus forty-five minutes outside the city, into the suburbs of a foreign country, for soup dumplings. At another table, there are three generations of Korean women eating three types of stews: daughter, mom, and grandmother dipping their spoons into each other’s dolsots , reaching over one another’s trays, arms in one another’s faces, pinching at their different banchan with chopsticks. None of them pay any notice or give second thought to the concept of personal space.

There is a young white man and his family. They giggle together as they butcher the pronunciation of the menu. The son explains to his parents the different dishes they’ve ordered. Maybe he was stationed in Seoul for military service or taught English abroad. Maybe he’s the only one in his family with a passport. Maybe this will be the moment his family decides it’s time to travel and discover these things themselves.

There is an Asian guy blowing his girlfriend’s mind, introducing her to a whole new world of flavors and textures. He shows her how to eat mul naengmyeon , a cold noodle soup that tastes better if you add vinegar and hot mustard first. He tells her about how his parents came to this country, how he’d watch his mom make this dish. When she made it, she didn’t add zucchini; she subbed radishes instead. An old man hobbles over to a neighboring table to order the chicken-and-ginseng porridge that he probably eats here every day. Bells go off for people to collect their orders. Women in visors work behind the counters without stopping.

It’s a beautiful, holy place. A cafeteria full of people from all over the world who have been displaced in a foreign country, each with a different history. Where did they come from and how far did they travel? Why are they all here? To find the galangal no American supermarket stocks to make the Indonesian curry that their father loves? To buy the rice cakes to celebrate Jesa and honor the anniversary of their loved one’s passing? To satisfy a craving for tteokbokki on a rainy day? Were they moved by a memory of some drunken, late-night snack under a pojangmacha tent in Incheon?

We don’t talk about it. There’s never so much as a knowing look. We sit here in silence, eating our lunch. But I know we are all here for the same reason. We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy. Then we separate. We bring the haul back to our dorm rooms or suburban kitchens, and we re-create a dish that couldn’t be made without that journey, because what we’re looking for isn’t accessible at a Trader Joe ’s. H Mart is where you can find your people under one odorous roof, where you can have faith that you’ll find something you can’t find anywhere else.

In the H Mart food court, I find myself again, searching for the first chapter of the story that I want to tell about my mother. I am sitting next to a Korean mother and her son, who have unknowingly taken the table next to ol’ waterworks over here. The kid dutifully gets their silverware from the counter and places it on paper napkins for the both of them. He’s eating fried rice and his mom has seolleongtang , ox-bone soup. He must be in his early twenties, but his mother is still instructing him on how to eat, just like my mom used to. “Dip the onion in the paste.” “Don’t add too much gochujang or it’ll be too salty.” “Why aren’t you eating the mung beans?” Some days, the constant nagging would annoy me. Woman, let me eat in peace! But, most days, I knew it was the ultimate display of a Korean woman’s tenderness, and I cherished that love.

The boy’s mom places pieces of beef from her spoon onto his spoon. He is quiet and looks tired and doesn’t talk to her much. I want to tell him how much I miss my mother. How he should be kind to his mom, remember that life is fragile and she could be gone at any moment. Tell her to go to the doctor and make sure there isn’t a small tumor growing inside her.

Within the past five years, I lost both my aunt and mother to cancer. So, when I go to H Mart, I’m not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions for a buck; I’m searching for their memory. I’m collecting the evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn’t die when they did. In moments like this, H Mart is the bridge that guides me away from the memories that haunt me, of chemo head and skeletal bodies and logging milligrams of hydrocodone. It reminds me of who they were before: beautiful and full of life, wiggling Chang Gu honey-cracker rings on all ten of their fingers, showing me how to suck a Korean grape from its skin and spit out the seeds.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Passion — A Role Of Dancing In My Life

A Role of Dancing in My Life

• Categories: Dance Passion

About this sample

Words: 585 |

Published: Jul 30, 2019

Words: 585 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Alpert, E. J., & Aquino, J. M. (2014). Dance/movement therapy: A resource guide for students, clinicians, and researchers. Routledge.
• Batson, G., & Weiss, M. R. (2011). Building mental toughness in sport: An introduction into sports psychology for athletes. Routledge.
• Bonbright, J. C. (2015). The power of dance: Health and healing. Human Kinetics.
• Bryant, A. (2018). Dance matters: Performing India on global stages. Routledge.
• Chappell, K. (2013). Dancing girls of Lahore: Selling love and saving dreams in Pakistan's ancient pleasure district. Harper Perennial.
• Hamera, J. (2012). Dancing communities: Performance, difference, and connection in the global city. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Legg, C. (2018). Dance studies: The basics. Routledge.
• Martin, J. L. (2015). Dance psychology for artistic and performance excellence. Routledge.
• Shah, S. (2017). Dance like nobody's watching: A holistic approach to positive living. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
• Thomas, H. (2017). The body, dance, and cultural theory. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Whether you're a die hard fan or it's just your guilty pleasure, this is the unofficial subreddit for the TV show Dance Moms. Just remember, "Everyone's replaceable!"

An essay about how Dance Moms was an important part of my childhood, despite me not even watching it very much

Recently, I've been watching the show to understand a game from my childhood. I'm on season 5 now. When it comes to the show Dance Moms, I didn't know much about it when I was younger. I remember being on the playground of my old Catholic school with my so called 'friends' at the time. I was still an innocent kid at the time so I didn't know what it was about. It was ALL the rage back then. I think it was around when season 4 or 5 was airing. I remember going home from school thinking that I had to see this amazing thing that everyone was talking about for myself.   I remember thinking that it was strange that my mom watched the show in disgust, wondering 'why this overweight middle aged woman berating these little girls?' After I caught up on the show, (and by that I mean I watched like 3 episodes), I was finally ready to join the other girls in raving over these cool new thing. 

    Then, we began to 'play' dance moms. By that, I mean that the most popular girl said "I'll be Maddie!" and then so on. None of us knew the first thing about dancing other than the little musicals they would make us do at school, so picture a group of clueless 8-10 year old girls trying to dance like they did on the show. As everyone else "claimed" what girl they would be as we played pretend, I wanted to be included too, even though I didn't really care about the show. The response I got was: "Well.. I guess you could be Nia." I was happy just to be included, but I always wondered why I didn't get to chose what "character" I was. When I asked the self proclaimed leader of our group why I couldn't pick for myself, she told me that I looked the most like Nia, so I had to be her. 

Now, I am not black. I am hispanic. Being in a dominantly white school, I was one of the only people of color in the entire school, and visually looked different from the other kids. It was normal for me to be walking down the big hallways of the school while the "big kids" pointed and laughed, calling me 'Dora' and being asked to speak spanish for them. I didn't understand why comments like that made me feel so upset. After all, there's absolutley nothing wrong with Dora or speaking spanish or anything of the sort, but it made me feel bad about myself. Why would they laugh at me for looking different than others?

As time went by, I grew to hate our little game. I would dread recess and wouldn't want to do our little dances from the show. I would take notice about how I was never "allowed" to be in the front of our pretend dance competitions by the other girls, or how I didn't get to really be included much with them. For a while, Dance Moms seemed to be the only thing any of them would talk about. Even though I didn't really watch it much. From the conversations I overheard, I gathered this information:

Maddie was the best of the best. After all, the queen bee of all of the girls got to be Maddie in our game, so naturally she was the main girl and was worshipped by the rest of us.

Mackenzie was Maddie's little sister, a singer. (I remember wishing I could be Mackenzie in the game, because I thought the fact she was a singer was so cool, I love to sing)

Kalani was another amazing dancer who had it all. My friends would sometimes talk about how pretty she was.

Chloe was a balllerina who always looked amazing on the dance floor

Kendall was a fan-favorite who was kicking off her own singing career

Brooke and Paige = irrelevant. (This is NOT my opinion of them! Now that I'm watching the show, I really liked the Hylands. The girls from my childhood just never talked about them and kinda wrote them off as 'side characters')

Cathy was evil of course

Abby was amazing and deserved to be worshipped as well as Maddie

Jojo was so obnoxious (Again, not my opnion. Just what I overheard)

Nia was... well, she was just there. Nothing special. She never really had solos like Maddie, so of course that meant she was irrelevant, and so was I in this group. Just a kid who had a large friend group, but felt so alone. (last time, I love Nia, this is not my opinion)

I spent my recesses laying in the grass, trying to entertain myself by picking weeds and throwing pebbles at the grocery store right next to the playground. Eventually, I had an idea. Even though Nia was never the lead, she was still included, right? So that meant that if she was gone the dance would be incomplete. I thought that if I was gone, my group of 'friends' would be incomplete as well. So, I hid behind a tree for an entire recess waiting for those girls to notice I was gone, and that they were incomplete without me... except that never happened. I waited and waited behind that tree, but nobody came. I realized my place in this group, and I started to feel hopeless.

This next part is very stupid on my part, but I had just turned 9 or 10 and didn't know how to express my feelings. I began to dislike Nia a lot. I hated how she wasn't really included. I hated how she never got solos or anything cool like that. I hated how she was always overlooked and forgotten. I hated all of those things. I hated them because I expirienced them, and wished it could be different.

It went on and on, playing this stupid game and learning these dances and being excluded. Being called names in the hallway and even made fun of for "developing girl parts" before any of my other classmates. I thought that I would be nothing more than an extra in my own life story. Then, something different happened.

I remember going to school and everyone was talking about how Nia had just released music, and now she was a singer too. I thought it was amazing that this girl who people tended to look past had finally made something of her own. Then, it hit me. Who says that I was bound to this group? Why couldn't I choose my own seat at lunch? Why did I have to be told where to sit and what to do? Why did I have to sit there and take being racially profiled by kids much older than me?

I moved schools soon after realizing this. I grew, and gained a new friend group, only for them to break apart and leave me in the dust let again. However, I just slapped a band-aid on it and persevered. Now, Im making friends again and not afraid to be myself. During this whole pandemic thing, I've been watching Dance Moms for the first time. I relate to Nia at the beginning, but now as I watch the show, I see that Nia is so much more than just a background girl, and so am I.