There is a specific, sharpened grief that arrives with the spring. As the world wakes up in a riot of pastels and the air begins to carry the scent of damp earth and blooming lilacs, the calendar begins its march toward the second Sunday in May. For those of us whose mothers are no longer here to receive a bouquet or a phone call, Mother’s Day can feel less like a celebration and more like a high-altitude climb in thinning air.

My mother passed away in 2017, but as anyone who has walked the path of dementia knows, losing started long before that. When I look back at that year, I don’t just see a date on her cremation urn; I see the end of a “long goodbye” that spanned years of shifting identities and fading echoes. As Mother’s Day approaches, I find myself navigating the duality of missing the woman she was and honoring the woman she became at the end.

The Thief in the Room

Dementia is a cruel architect. It doesn’t just take a person’s life; it dismantles their history room by room. By the time 2017 arrived, my mother had already been slipping away in fragments. First, it was the keys, then the other personal items and finally, the names of the people she loved most.

Missing a mother who died of dementia means grieving twice. You grieve the vibrant, sharp-witted woman who raised you—the one who knew exactly how you liked your toast and could spot a lie in your voice from three rooms away. Then, you grieve the hollowed-out version of her that remained, the one who looked at you with kind but vacant eyes, searching for a familiar face in a fog that wouldn’t lift.

When Mother’s Day comes around, I am often caught between these two ghosts. I see the “Before Mom” at her easel, doing what she loved  which was her painting. I see the “After Mom” in the quiet stillness of a nursing home hallway. Both deserve to be remembered, but the “After” is often the hardest to reconcile with the joy the holiday demands.

The Silence After the Storm

Since 2017, the silence on Mother’s Day has changed. In the first few years, it was a heavy, suffocating silence. I would walk through stores and feel a physical ache in my chest at the sight of the card aisle. I felt like an imposter in a world designed for sons with mothers to call.

But as the years have passed, that silence has become more contemplative. I’ve realized that while dementia took her memory, it couldn’t touch the foundation she built within me. The lessons she taught me before the fog rolled in. She showed me how to be resilient, how to find humor in the absurd, how to show up for people—those are the parts of her that are dementia-proof. They are the parts of her that survive the “long goodbye.”

Creating New Traditions in the “After”

If you are approaching this Mother’s Day with a heart heavy from a similar loss, please know that your grief does not have to look like anyone else’s. For years, I felt guilty if I didn’t spend the day in deep mourning. Now, I realize that honoring her means living the life she can no longer remember.

I’ve developed a few “Mother’s Day Survival Tactics” that help bridge the gap between 2017 and today:

• Honoring the Senses: Dementia often leaves us with sensory memories. I have some of her paintings hanging on my walls. I have created my own special art gallery. I remember when I set her up in her one and only art show. I wanted to have her do another show but that was when the disease started taking over.
• The “Legacy Trips”: I remember those trips to the art museums. I remember us going to the art show that took place in The Village in lower Manhattan. It was a yearly trip that I probably enjoyed a lot more than her.
• Granting Grace: I give myself permission to be “off.” If the social media tributes to “Best Moms” feel too loud, I log off. I spend the day looking at the art she created in my private gallery.

To the Caregivers in the Trenches

For those of you whose mothers are still here but are lost in the haze of cognitive decline, this Mother’s Day is likely incredibly painful. You are mourning someone who is sitting right in front of you. You are doing the hardest work imaginable which is loving someone who may no longer know your name.

Please know that your love is not wasted. Even when the cognitive mind fails, the spirit often recognizes the presence of “home.” When I visited my mother in those final months before 2017, she didn’t know I was her child, but she knew I was someone who brought peace. That is a form of mothering in reverse, and it is a sacred, albeit exhausting, gift.

The Light of 2017

Eight years later, the sting of the diagnosis and the trauma of the decline have begun to recede, leaving behind the crystalline memories of who she truly was. I remember her laugh, the one that started in her belly and made her shoulders shake. I remember her fierce protection of her family.

The year 2017 was the year she found rest, and while I miss her every single day, I am grateful that the fog finally cleared for her, even if it meant she had to leave us to find the sun again.

This Mother’s Day, I will buy the flowers she loved. I will think of her not as a patient, but as a woman who lived, loved, and left a mark that even dementia couldn’t erase. To everyone missing a mother this year: may your memories be vivid, may your heart be gentle with itself, and may you feel her presence in the quiet moments between the “Before” and the “After.”

What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta.

My Glass Is Always Half Full!

I love being a DAD!

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