She Is Still Here, and She Is Already Gone
- Designing Moves
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
On loving the mothers we are losing slowly, and honoring the ones already gone.
There is a grief no one warns you about — the kind where she is still in the room, still warm, but the thread between you has gone thin. Dementia makes you mourn someone who hasn't left yet. And on Mother's Day, that ache can be very hard to name.
She may not remember your name and still light up when you walk in. Memory is not the only thing that holds love in place.
Grief settles into objects. Into things that were never supposed to matter as much as they do. You go to sort through a drawer thinking you'll be efficient — and come out an hour later having found her favorite jewelry tucked somewhere "safe" — a place so careful, so considered, that no one can quite remember where that was supposed to be.
If your mother is still with you — in any version — go to her. If she is somewhere in the fog, go anyway. A song can reach her when words cannot. You don't have to be remembered to matter. You just have to show up.
Some find comfort in giving her things new life. The apron to the daughter who loves to bake. The books donated to the local library or a charity close to her heart. There is grace in that — in letting her belong to the world a little longer.
For those sorting through what remains — whether she is gone from this world, or simply gone from herself — be gentle. It is not weakness to cry over a wooden spoon. It is not weakness to keep the things you can't explain: the ones that feel warm to hold, that make the room feel a little less quiet.
Whatever form your love takes this Mother's Day — a Sunday brunch, a quiet visit to memory care, a drive past the house she used to live in, a long cry over a shoebox of birthday cards — it is love. All of it. The tender, complicated, aching, enormous love of people who were shaped by a woman they will never stop carrying with them.
Happy Mother's Day — to the mothers being celebrated, to the mothers being patiently, faithfully visited, and to the mothers being quietly, fiercely missed. You shaped more than you will ever know. And you are not forgotten. Even when forgetting is all around you — you are not forgotten.
She is in the way you laugh. In the things you can't throw away. In the fact that you remembered, when she no longer could.
With love, for all the mothers — here, fading, and gone.
Copyright 2025 by Christine E. Smart
Designing Moves LLC 309 7th Avenue, Suite 2
Marion, IA 52302 (by appointment only)
319-377-6891
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