When my mom died in 2016, a rope slipped from my hands and I floated into a vast, open sea of unfamiliarity. I’d lost so many people in life already, but this one felt as though someone grabbed me as a finished puzzle and scrambled my pieces carelessly for storage, not noticing how many fell to the floor.
Today, I want to share about some of the things I wish I’d understood before losing my mom, not as a list of things for you to attend before losing your own parent, but just as a witness for my own story and an act of care for the person I am always becoming.
All grief is not the same.
Before my mom died, I thought grief was grief. Painful, yes, but ultimately recognizable. What I didn’t know was that every loss creates its own landscape. We don’t compare our losses to one another or put them in any kind of hierarchy, but losing a parent is different from losing a friend, a partner, a sibling, or a child. It leaves its own particular imprint. It gives us different questions, different wounds, different pain points as we begin to unravel our stories of loss.
I didn’t know that grief from a parent would leave me feeling so unmoored. Even as an adult, even with other loving relationships around me, there was something about losing the person who had been there from the very beginning that changed my understanding of stability. The world kept moving, but my internal compass felt altered.
I’d lost parent figures including many grandparents at this point, and I had so many other parental figures in my life as well. But without an anchor of my parent to call upon, I felt so less tied to the world around me.
I wish I had known that listening to her stories wasn’t annoying. It was necessary. Those stories weren’t repetitions; they were inheritance. They were clues about who she was before she was my mother, and who I am because she was.
I wish I had asked more questions when there was still time for answers.
There are questions you don’t know to ask until it’s too late. Questions about family history, childhood memories, favorite songs, old heartbreaks, dreams abandoned, fears overcome. Family history disappears faster than you think, and every person carries stories that leave with them.
I tend to have a difficult time recalling stories I’ve already heard, so when I ask someone to tell me a story about her life, even if it’s not new to me, I soak it up. I let her be human, rather than looking for any validation about how wonderful she was and how much I miss her. I let her stories tell me of her flaws, her failures. The pieces of her life she didn’t maybe want to share with me at the time. The stories give her life body; importance. We’re all made of stories, and as a young person, I know I spent far too long worrying about my own life to ask about hers.
I wish I had known that discomfort isn’t dangerous. It’s okay to confront hard things with people you love. Difficult conversations, misunderstandings, old hurts, awkward questions—these moments feel risky when we have all the time in the world. But once someone is gone, there is no chance to repair, revisit, or understand more deeply.
Having courage to confront someone about a rupture in our relationship is crucial. We grow resentful and distant when we leave the things unsaid, and the hurt we take on is often not necessary.
I didn’t know that grief isn’t just missing her. It’s missing who I was with her.
Every relationship creates a version of us. When someone dies, we lose access to that version too. There are jokes that no longer land the same way, memories with no witness left to confirm them, and parts of ourselves that only existed in the presence of that particular love.
My mom allowed me to be who I am without judgment. I am a goofy, playful, loud, witty smart aleck with way too much energy for most people. It has taken a decade without her to realize how much of my lightheartedness disappeared after her death. She was among the few who knew all the parts of me and celebrated each one.
I wish I had known how much it would hurt not to have her at all the landmark moments with my own child.
Not just birthdays and graduations, but ordinary moments. The random Tuesday phone call. The story she would have told. The advice I would have ignored and secretly treasured. The hardest grief isn’t always the biggest moments. Sometimes it’s the accumulation of small ones.
My own daughter is nearing her teenage years. We’ve already had many moments of wondering how to navigate certain situations, but I just wish my mom and I could talk about what it’s like to raise a child this age, and to hear more stories about what I was like as a teen.
I wish I had recorded more of her voice.
No photograph can hold a person’s presence. There are things we think we’ll always remember until we realize memory changes. A laugh. A greeting. The way they said our name.
I have quite a few voicemails, but they’re just not the same. Always short, and toward the end, she started to sound so tired, they’re painful to listen to.
I wish I knew that losing a parent would make me feel both grown up and childlike at the same time.
Loss has a way of collapsing our carefully constructed identities. We can be competent adults, caring for children, leading businesses, supporting communities—and still feel like a child looking for their mother.
It’s not about having another parent. It’s about the attunement and the relational aspect of being a human. We aren’t meant to be fully independent of one another, so when we lose what should be a grounding and healthy relationship to a parent, we will struggle to make sense of our identity as it shifts over time and through changing tasks.
And finally, I wish I knew that grief would keep introducing itself in new ways for years.
Not because healing failed. Not because I was doing it wrong. But because love continues. As life expands, grief finds new places to meet us. In every milestone, anniversary, moment of chaos.
Grief is an experience of life; the other side of the coin, the thing we all wish we could avoid and yet we are denying ourselves an integral part of our humanity by running from it.
If I could go back and tell myself one thing, it might be this: the ordinary moments matter most. Listen to the stories. Ask the questions. Make the trip home. Stay for another cup of coffee. Have the uncomfortable conversation. Pay attention.
Not because loss is coming, but because relationship is here now.
Thank you for listening to episode 248 of Restorative Grief. This is just a short list of the things I wish I knew before my mom died, but they’re also things I’ve wanted to share for a while in one place. The ongoing learning of the healing process is part of what makes it challenging; we’re not always in the open or regulated state that is necessary for us to learn and internalize new things. So, as I share this, know I am also still learning from each sentence and moment of awareness as part of my own grief work.
If this is your first time listening to the podcast, thank you for joining me on your grief journey too. I hope this conversation helped you reflect on what feels tender or in need of care and intention in your life, and that you’ll begin marking the moments of ordinary life with your loved ones, too. Not in the way that detracts from being here now, worrying about future losses, but in a way that allows you to release some of the fears you’ve carried about the people you love. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you’re inclined, to leave a review so others in need of grief care can find the show as well. A special thank you, of course, to the patrons of the show. Your support is what keeps this little project afloat, and I am so grateful to have your partnership with my work.
And as always, before we go, one last thing. Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next week.
Links + Resources from this episode: