065 - It's complicated.

On Mother's Day, pandemics, honoring, and grief.

Mother’s Day in the US in 2024 is May 12.

This is the fourth time this celebration has been affected by the pandemic. In 2021, I wrote about how hard Mother’s Day might be, in addition to the usual challenges, in the middle of the extra deaths and the constraints on visits and funerals and everything else.

For this week, I decided to run that reflection again for us for a couple reasons.

1. All those people are still dead, and we miss them.

2. Most of you haven’t read that reflection.

3. Much of that disrupted grief is still affecting us. I often hear people referring to loss from that time.

4. In the last couple weeks I’ve talked with adults whose mothers have just died, mothers whose children died before birth, and people who have lost moms during the last three years. So every Mother’s Day is complicated.

Here’s that post, mostly as I wrote it then.

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The great Mother’s Day ache of 2021

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. I think it’s time to finish it.

I don’t hate Mother’s Day, though I am frustrated by what it has done. By elevating motherhood in some contexts, particularly some church contexts, many women have felt great pain.

And it comes with a lot of expectations for families and moms alike. We have made it the highest day for phone calls, the third highest holiday for flower purchases, the biggest day for restaurants (according to one article).

I don’t need to review the kinds of pain in the past. However, I am already anticipating an unusual wave of corporate grief this Mother’s Day. (Chaplains tend to anticipate grief.)

During the last year, it feels like a surprising number of people I know have lost their mom. That’s not just because I’m bad luck. During the period from March 1-December 31, 2020, for every 100 people we would expect to die, 123 people did die. According to that research, if you are a person of color, the rate is significantly higher. Some of these deaths are directly COVID-19 related, some are not. Some are moms, but some are sisters, some are daughters, some are babies, born and unborn.

Added to the loss of the person was the access to the person before and after death. Because of lockdowns and restrictions, people were unable to visit during the last days the way we usually would and then to provide honor in the ways that we usually would.

As a result, we have unspoken stories, unidentified frustration. We missed opportunities to say, “I’m sorry”, to hear a last blessing, to feel a last touch.

I’m pointing out this impending wave of grief. But I don’t know what to tell you, exactly, to do.

But I can make some suggestions and invite yours.

• Rather than focusing on the last visit we didn’t have, we can think about the best visit we had. Remembering the best moment—and retelling that story to others and our own hearts, can bring some healing.

• If we didn’t get to have the last moment of confession or reconciliation, we can write a letter that unpacks your mixed feelings, the things that you didn’t have a chance to say.

• If we’re not sure what to do on Mother’s Day, we can have the fun that she would have loved to have. Have the parade that she would have wanted to lead. Set off the fireworks that she would have loved to watch.

• If we never had a memorial service for telling stories, we can have a picnic for telling stories.

• If we are angry about all the restrictions that created physical separations, we can throw things.

• If we never had a chance to thank the staff who cared for our mom while we couldn’t, you can send a note to the healthcare facility, care of the floor where she was.

• If we lost a baby or a grandbaby, we can cry.

• If we have questions about the politics of the last year, we can set those questions aside for a day or a weekend and acknowledge that our family or the family next door or across the street is having one of the hardest weekends of their lives and could use some compassion and care.

There is no right answer, no best answer, that will apply to everyone.

But I wanted to invite you start thinking about it so you can find your answer.

Peace.

The view from 2024.

After reading what I wrote, I have some more thoughts.

• From time to time, I get emails from people I know that are talking about the experience of their loved one’s death. Not wanting me to do anything but wanting to tell someone. I still haven’t figured out how to respond, but what I know is that the very process of writing is often helpful.

• Sometimes the weight of loss is so heavy that talking to a therapist or counselor or other professional is appropriate.

• At the time I wrote that, I didn’t know about the Dual Process of Coping with Bereavement. Most of what I wrote is described in that model.

• I said earlier that disrupted grief is still affecting us. Perhaps even me. My mom died in December 2019, after many years of Alzheimer’s. We didn’t do a service at the time, planning to take her ashes to northern Wisconsin when the ground was not frozen. That service didn’t happen until June 2020 for many reasons, including the pandemic. And I’ve been walking through everyone’s grief since then.

• Mother’s Day in the United States started after a person’s mother died, and she wanted to do something. That’s often our response in grief. To do something, to create a memory or a memorial. In our grief, I give us permission to create our own ways of remembering or honoring.

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That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by. And thanks for sharing this.

See you next week.

Jon