Every year as the leaves begin to grow, and flowers burst through the ground, I realize Mother’s Day and my mother’s birthday are creeping closer. I feel this familiar heaviness settle into my chest. It lingers there, not just because of the date on the calendar, but because my mom’s birthday follows not long after. And this year, it all feels heavier. Maybe it’s because two of my kids are getting married, starting the next chapter of their lives, and all I can think is she should be here for this.

It’s been years—since 2009—but time doesn’t change the ache. If anything, milestones like this just remind me of how much I miss her. How much I needed her then and still need her now. I was 44 when she died. Forty-four years old, a grown woman with kids of my own, but somehow still that little girl who just wanted her mom to make it all okay.

I think back to the day everything changed. She had pneumonia and I thoughtshe’d get through it. She’d already survived a stroke that left her body weaker, her words tangled, but her spirit? Still fighting. Until it wasn’t. I remember sitting in that hospital room when they told us her oxygen levels were low. I remember hearing the word cancer like it was shouted through a tunnel. Lung cancer. Stage four. The worst kind of news, delivered as if it were just another update on a chart.

And still, even as my world cracked open, I tried to be brave. I told her she didn’t have to fight. Not because I didn’t want her to live—I wanted that more than anything—but because I knew. I knew what that fight would take, and there just wasn’t much of her left to give. Years of smoking, surviving a stroke, living with a body that had betrayed her long before cancer showed up—she was tired. And I got it.

I still remember her little joke, the dry humor that never left her, even at the end. She told me at least she’d spend eternity skinny. Those last four months were some of the longest and shortest days of my life. Watching her waste away, becoming a shell of the woman who raised me, the woman who loved me even when I was ugly and angry, broken and lost. She was my fiercest protector, my best friend. She didn’t just love me. She loved all of me.

And when the end came, I knew. I felt it. There’s a shift that happens when someone’s leaving this world, a quiet you can’t describe until you’ve lived it. She asked for the pastor, and I knew it was time. The nurse said hearing is the last thing to go, so I crawled up on that hard hospice bed, laid next to her, and for the first time, I let the brave face fall away.

I told her everything. How much I loved her. How much I needed her. How unfair it was that I wasn’t ready to do this life without her. I told her I was scared. Scared of what life looked like without the one person who always loved me exactly as I was. I asked her to stay close, to watch over me, to keep my sweet dog, Magnum, with her up there, because he had been alone.

And I believe she did. I believe she still does.

People talk about loving their parents in the past tense. I loved my mom. I loved my dad. But I can’t say that. I love them. Still. Death didn’t change that. It didn’t lessen it. That love is stitched into every piece of who I am. Forever and always.

I see her in so many moments—when I’m writing, when I’m staring into the mountains in awe, when I’m watching my kids chase down their dreams. I wish she could see this life she helped build. I wish I could call her and tell her about my books, about the successes I never imagined back when we were sitting in that little apartment in Arlington Heights talking about dreams that felt too big.

She’d be so proud. And honestly, I owe so much of it to her. To the way she believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. To the way she taught me loyalty, strength, and the beauty of loving someone through every messy, imperfect moment.

I don’t need a holiday to remember my mom. She’s here. In the quiet. In the laughter. In every word I write. But still, as Mother’s Day and her birthday come around, I feel that pull—the wish that I could sit with her one more time, that I could tell her you were right about everything and thank you for loving me so well.

I miss her. I always will. But most of all, I still love her.