Hey Mom

Words by Lauren Boswell

Hey Mom,

That’s still what I say out loud when I miss you most. Sometimes quietly, sometimes out loud with an urgency I can’t quite contain. Just those two words. Because most of the time, there’s so much I want to say but before I can add a third, my throat closes.

This year marks my twelfth Mother’s Day without you.

The reminders come earlier than they once did. Pastel cards lining the aisles, brunch reservations filling up, and emails urging me not to forget you—as if that were ever possible. My iPhone seems to know every detail about me, and yet, the algorithm doesn’t know you’re gone. You died before a world where we’d even call it that. Honestly, you probably wouldn’t have cared much for it anyway.

Sometimes I still catch myself pretending, just for a second, scrolling the gift guides ‘For every type of mom’ like I’m picking something out for you.

But the holiday itself isn’t the hardest part. I knew it wouldn’t be; it’s just one day among all the others.

Friends often ask when I miss you most. I think they assume I'll say the bigger moments, but it's the smaller ones that make me ache. Passing a hummingbird feeder and thinking of you without warning. Catching a woman slip off all her rings to rub lotion into her hands or stumbling across the perfect antique chair. 

Most of all, though, it’s the instinct to call you at the end of the day, to catch up like we used to—from our respective bathtubs. What I would give for one more of those simple, ordinary conversations.

I wonder what you know of the versions of me you haven’t been here for—my life that kept unfolding. The little floral business I ran out of my garage. The places I’ve travelled to that we used to talk about. Do you know Joel and I finally eloped? I’m even writing a memoir, all about you and me.

Sometimes it feels like you were almost a dream. Like I imagined you. It’s as if I lived inside a version of a life that doesn’t quite make sense anymore. Were you ever really here?

But I know you were. I can still see you clearly if I try. Your perfectly painted pink lips. The way your skin always looked sun kissed, even in the middle of a West Coast rainy winter. A different leather jacket to match every pair of boots and the way you smiled even bigger when you told a joke you found hysterical.

When missing you feels heavier than I can carry, I catch myself doing something strange. I try to find reasons I might be better off without you. I look for flaws, for moments you fell short, just something that would make it all make more sense. But the only things I ever come up with are small, teenage grievances from a lifetime ago. You didn’t let me pierce my belly button or go camping in the bush with my boyfriend and zero supplies. 

That’s it. My god, how lucky was I? I remind myself of that often—that I had you for 26 years, that I got all those Mother’s Days… and just days with you, that I knew what it felt like to be loved by you at all.

There’s still so much I want to tell you. But mostly, I want you to know I’m okay. Life is full in a way I didn’t always expect—good, steady, layered. But a beautiful life doesn’t undo anything, missing you exists right alongside all of it.

And there’s one more thing I haven’t yet said out loud to you. You have a grandson. Sometimes when he laughs, it catches me off guard—there’s something in it that feels like you. The same lightness, the same mischief. His eyes are his dad’s, but they’re yours too. He talks about you sometimes, completely unprompted. He tells me he was with you. It comes out of nowhere, and I don’t question it—I just let it be true.

I wish you could see him run into a room. I wish you could hear the things he says. I wish he could know you the way I did.

Mom, when you died, I lost my point of reference. I didn’t understand the weight of that until it was gone—the constant safety of knowing you were just a phone call away, something I now see was the greatest privilege of my life.

Missing you isn’t something that belongs to a holiday. It’s built into everything; Mother’s Day is just the day it gets named.

I still say those same two words when I need you most. Hey Mom. But today there’s more, Happy Mother’s Day, I love you beyond forever.

Lauren 

Lauren Boswell is working on a memoir about serving as her mother’s primary caregiver throughout her twenties and navigating adulthood—and becoming a mother herself—after her mother’s death. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Marie Claire, Spread the Jelly, and more. She lives in Vancouver, BC, with her husband and son.