Mourning My Mother

There is no guidebook for this—no map for how to mourn the woman who gave me life, who shaped me, who both built me and broke me in ways only a mother can.

My mom’s story is tangled in resilience and injustice. She lived for years in a fog of misdiagnosis, doctors brushing her off, systems failing her. I’ll never stop being furious at the surgeon in Maine who took out her gallbladder unnecessarily, or at the dismissals that cost us time she didn’t have.

By the time the truth emerged—stage 3C ovarian cancer—so much damage was already done. I carry that rage alongside my grief, a twin weight pressing on my chest.

She fought harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. Through surgeries, endless chemo, paracenteses that drained the fluid swelling her belly. Through pain so sharp I could see it steal her breath. And yet—she still found ways to laugh, to tell stories, to remind me that even in the ugliest moments, there could be beauty.

We had a complicated relationship, my mom and I. Our histories, our traumas, the scars of a childhood shaped by control and chaos—it all lingered. There were times I doubted her pain, times I thought she was exaggerating. That guilt lives in me now. I’ll never forgive myself for the moments I minimized her suffering, even if I know the medical system failed her more than I ever could.

Now she’s gone, and the silence is deafening. There are days when I want to scream at the world for carrying on so casually, as if nothing monumental just ended. My mother is dead, and yet the mail still arrives, the dishes still pile up, my son still asks what’s for dinner. Grief doesn’t pause life. It braids itself into every ordinary task.

But she’s still here, in pieces. In my son’s stubborn streak. In the desert sunsets that she loved. In the stories I find myself retelling, even when I thought I’d forgotten them. In the fight I feel rising in me whenever I see injustice, the fight I inherited from her.

Mourning my mother is not a single act. It’s a lifelong conversation—between me, her memory, my anger, my love, my regret. It’s waking up each day and choosing to keep moving forward, even when the weight of her absence tries to pin me to the floor.

What comforts me most is this: she’s free from pain. And in the ashes of all we lost, she has given me something unshakable. A purpose. A voice. A reminder that our stories matter, that women’s pain deserves to be heard, that love and fury can coexist.

I will carry her forward, always. Not just in grief, but in action. Not just in memory, but in the way I live.

Because my mother may have left this world, but she will never leave me.