This Is What Your Life Will Be Like Six Months After Losing Your Mom

You’ll adjust to life without her. You won’t be ready to delete her number from your phone, but you’ve come to accept that you can’t just text her. You’ll be able to talk about her without crying, but the sadness will still creep in.

Some days it will feel like she just died and the amount of pressure bursting inside your heart will make you want to shut off from the outside world for days. You’ll see how worse your father has it. You’ll see how six months has done nothing for him. He still cries. He still misses her to an indescribable level. You’ll want to try and fix him, but you can’t find the words to do it. Every single thing you could possibly say has already been said, so you’ll just start to listen.

Your extended family will stop asking about how you’ve been because they’ve already moved on. Your loss is more extensive than theirs. Losing a sister does nothing to compare to losing a mother. Losing a friend does nothing to compare to losing a lifelong companion. People will ask only if you bring it up to them because they’re worried that talking about the one you lost will tear you four steps back. You’ve gotten tired trying to convince them it doesn’t.

Your first holiday will have been lackluster, at best, and you have mixed feelings about the major holidays, like Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and their birthday. You wonder how it will be this year, if you need more time, or if holidays from here on out will ever be fun, or enjoyable, or worth celebrating ever again. You are terrified of big moments, because for some reason, your mom not being around to share in them, make them feel significantly less significant. You tell yourself that you’ll make the big plans next year. Six months is not enough time.

Your days will be brighter, but they’re not really happy. You’re just not happy six months after you lose your mom to cancer. You’re not happy about the circumstances. You can cry at the drop of a hat. Sometimes you’re still angry. Sometimes you listen to sad songs on your drive into work and fake a smile so no one knows you were crying, but your eyes show off your deceit. You still feel like you’re living in someone else’s shoes.

Six months after you lose your mom, you envy what other women still have left. You envy that someone in their 40’s still has their mom, while you, in your 20’s, lost out on them ever being around for the life-changing moments that 40-year-old got to have. You’re pissed she won’t be around to watch you have a baby. You’re pissed you were cut out of another 20, another 30, if you’re lucky, another 40 years. You still wonder why it happened and there is no logical explanation. People avoid bringing her up to you like she’s some sort of toxin.

You’ll be able to pick up the pieces and rejoin the living. You’ll laugh with friends, and go to movies, and you’re just being able to handle going into your favorite store, but still feel the sting of her absence. You try and push yourself to enjoy the little things you once loved, and you’re getting there. You listen to her voicemails a little less. You put away the photo albums, but you can’t bring yourself to throw out the yogurt she still had sitting in your fridge all those months ago. Right now, it’s all about the little changes and not the big ones.

You find solace in her memory while still longing for her laugh, for her warm embrace, for her to pronounce to the world she’s proud of you. And in those difficult moments, when all you want is to hear her say it, you tell her out loud how much you miss her, hoping and praying she hears you, too.