You know how sometimes you’re taking a few minutes to scroll through your socials, and you’re intentionally avoiding falling into a period of doom scrolling, so you look through old pictures or scroll through your on profile. You’d figure this could be a beautiful retrospective walk down memory lane – even if the memories are somewhat fresh. But sometimes you forget the Terrible Ouch lingering in your feed of images or words.

Today that Terrible Ouch was my mother. I was scrolling for a few moments and (in all fairness) was killing a few minutes before I needed to go pick up Kid One™ and here rolled the Terrible Ouch – my mother. The image you see above is one of the last images of us together in October 2019 before she died of lung cancer less than a year later. A cousin was getting married, and we met in Arizona with the rest of the family. She showed my daughters the Grand Canyon, bought them all the taffy they wanted, and basically was the greatest grandma ever. I was having a pretty decent day – not gonna lie, friends. But grief is WEIRD. And boom – image relayed to brain, memories processed – INSTANT TEARS!

My mom passed nearly four years ago, and there was a lot of healing that needed to happen to move forward. Her cancer was lightning fast. I’m talking diagnosed July 30th, died August 12th fast. In the middle of the height of Covid, round one. I know now that the speed in which we moved from “mom doesn’t feel good” to “mom has terminal cancer” certainly didn’t help anyone process and prepare for what would eventually come next.

The first year she was gone, I put a lot of my grief on hold to look after my father and be available for him to grieve. Little did I know then that I was doing myself an incredible injustice at the time. The Terrible Ouch was born, and until at least 2023, I could barely think of my mother without checking out emotionally. We’ll touch on the Terrible Ouch so much more I’m sure – but today – it showed up, and I made it through.

In mid-2024, the Terrible Ouch still rears up when I least expect it, but I can reflect and breathe and move on, thinking about this trip and her showing her granddaughters the Grand Canyon for the first (and last) time, and the Route 66 hoodie that Kid One™ wore until it fell apart because “grandma bought it for me”. And the dream catcher that Kid Two™ still has on her wall because “grandma said it was an important part of our history”.

So today – in the face of the Terrible Ouch – I’ll smile and really REALLY miss my mom.