“I have loved you for so long.”
Those were her words — my mother’s — spoken just days before she passed. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, as she reached up with a trembling hand to brush my unruly hair away from my face.
“I know, Mom,” I told her, kissing the bruises on her hand, left behind by too many IVs.
“Oh yeah?” she asked with that familiar glint.
“How do you know?”
I smiled through tears. “Because I have loved you for just as long.”
And in that quiet moment, all the illness, all the pain, all the roles we’d been forced into — patient and caregiver, memory keeper and memory lost — faded away. There was no Alzheimer’s, no cancer. No ticking clock.
Just us.
Me and Mom.
Just a mother trying to fix her daughter’s hair.
Just a daughter holding her mother’s hand.
Now, as my first Mother’s Day without her approaches, I find myself reflecting. Not only on her passing — but on her living.
I remember her smile, the way it lit up a room.
I remember her laugh — the kind that made us wheeze and giggle until one of us accidentally let out a fart and we laughed even harder.
I remember her storming down the hallway, looking for the scarf or lipstick I’d “borrowed” at 13, thinking it made me look grown up. I must have driven her crazy. But she always let me do it anyway.
I remember the years when we weren’t just mother and daughter — we were friends. We’d meet for wine after work, shop for things we didn’t need, and talk every day about anything and everything.
She was there the day my son took his first breath.
And she was there when I called her crying over the fact that one day he’d grow up and leave.
“He’s only two,” she’d say. Or ten. Or thirteen. “Don’t worry yet.”
She was right, of course.
I remember the day we got her Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
The drive to the neurologist. The disbelief. The anger in her eyes when it became official. The way she’d lash out — accusing me of thinking she was “crazy.” The fog that crept in, slowly, until even the anger dulled into silence.
Then came the cancer.
Six weeks. That’s all we had. I stayed with her. We colored, danced to King George, and fell asleep holding hands. When the pain grew worse, I had to fight for her — to be heard, to demand she not be dismissed just because she couldn’t speak clearly.
But we had one last day at the beach. Jimmy Buffett, The Beach Boys, and the salty air she loved so much. I’ll forever be grateful that she made it there.
And grateful, too, that something other than Alzheimer’s took her first.
Because I didn’t have to watch her fade all the way. Her mind was still hers — at least, part of the time. And in that time, she told me she loved me. She reached for my hair.
She was still my mom.
And I was still her girl.
On this Mother’s Day, I know I am not alone. There are millions who wake up wishing they could hear their mother’s voice one more time.
But I hope they know what I now believe to be true:
We are not motherless.
Our mothers have simply gone ahead to do something else for now.
They are still ours. And we are still theirs.
Someday, I believe I’ll see her again. I imagine it already — messy bun, sweaty ponytail, me arriving at the gates of heaven. She’ll spot me from a distance and reach up, once again, to fix my hair.
“I have missed you for so long,” she’ll say.
“I know, Mom,” I’ll whisper, kissing her hand.
“Oh yeah? How do you know?”
And I’ll smile — “Because I have missed you for just as long.”
And once again, for just a moment, it will be us.
Me and Mom.
Her memory restored. Her pain gone.
Just a mother loving her daughter.
And a daughter letting her fix her hair.
Because that’s what daughters do.
