My Experience of a Motherless Mother’s Day - Lucy’s story
On Mother’s Day last year, I was almost hit by a train. I was in Hanoi, Vietnam, with my boyfriend, enjoying an egg coffee at the side of the tracks on Train Street whilst the carriages zoomed past just inches from our faces. Of course, this was a controlled excursion that thousands of tourists experience every year and not quite the near death experience I initially alluded to. My point is that it was Mother’s Day and I wasn’t making new traditions or honouring my mum and that was fine.
My mum died in August 2022 and this year will be the 4th Mother’s Day without her. Before writing this, I Googled the dates of Mother’s Day 2023, 2024 and 2025 and looked in my calendar and on my camera roll to see what I’d gotten up to on those days. Other than my experience in Hanoi, these days were insignificant, or at least they left no trace of anything other than an ordinary day.
When my mum was alive, I would see her on Mother’s Day and buy her a card and a gift. I still have some of the cards that she’d kept as I came across them when clearing out her flat after she died. I haven’t read them but I know I have them if I ever want to. Sometimes, we might go for a coffee or something more “special” and one year we pushed the boat out and went for afternoon tea and moaned afterwards about the tiny portions and laughed about how we felt giddy after one glass of prosecco. Ultimately, we had an unspoken but mutual understanding that we didn’t need to celebrate our bond on the same day as everyone else just because society says so - our love was unconditional. Her death might’ve ended any physical contact but our bond transcends life and death, it is sempiternal. I have nothing to prove this Mother’s Day and neither do you.
Everyone tells me they’re thinking of me on Mother’s Day. It’s a nice gesture and whilst I’m in danger of sounding like the ungrateful, grieving friend, I can’t help but wish that people were thinking of me on the days where it’s not as easy for them to remember my loss. The days where Mother’s Day themed merchandise isn’t plastered in every shop and every marketing email doesn’t mention “treating your mum”, prompting them to think about how “Lucy doesn’t have a mum”. The days when I have a big project that I can’t tell her about, I’ve achieved something she can’t celebrate, or I have a life dilemma she can’t counsel me on. Seeing a mother and daughter enjoying lunch together causes me excruciating pain regardless of the date in the calendar - the reality is that every day is Mother’s Day when you just really miss your mum.
My advice to anyone who’s coming up to their first Mother’s Day without their mum is to mother themselves, if they can. If you want to mark the day with some significance then journaling or going for a walk can be good ways of doing this, but remember that what counts as “significant” is yours to define. Take the day off social media, it’s not real life and you don’t need to torture yourself with reminders of what you don’t have, save your doomscrolling for another day. You might receive supportive messages from friends and/or family and it’s ok if you don’t read or respond to them today, they don’t need anything from you.
If you wake up and feel great, don’tfeel guilty or treat the day differently because of what you think society expects of you. Look after yourself in a way that feels authentic and comfortable to you.