The Things I Notice Now

It’s my third Mother’s Day without my mom, and this year I found myself wanting to be close to the memories.

So I went to Siesta Key by myself for a few days.

Anna had just graduated from Ohio University last weekend and was visiting her brother Jake in Chicago, and somehow the timing felt right. There was something about being there that felt comforting to me, even if I couldn’t fully explain why. Maybe grief makes you retrace familiar steps. Maybe love does too.

I went to some of my mom’s favorite places while I was there. One afternoon, I stopped at a little local burger joint she loved. Her favorite burger used to cost five dollars. Now it’s ten. I added cheese, which made me laugh quietly to myself because my mother absolutely would have commented on the price increase and definitely would not have paid the extra $1.25 for cheese.

And somehow I could hear the entire conversation anyway while I sipped my Diet Coke.

That’s the strange thing about grief after a few years. The person is gone, but the dialogue still lives inside your head so clearly that for fleeting moments, it almost feels real.

Another day, I took a little trip to St. Armands Circle. I ordered the famous 1905 Salad and a sangria and sat along the black wrought iron railing just as we had done countless times before.

Some places become so layered with memory that you are never really there alone. Every prior version of your life somehow sits there with you too.

I walked over to her favorite jewelry store, which over time had quietly become my favorite jewelry store too. I was hoping to buy myself a little bauble in her memory. But the store had closed.

Since the hurricanes, a lot has changed.

Some places are gone. Others feel different. Familiar landmarks have shifted. And yet somehow, I still saw her everywhere.

I ended up buying a small piece of sunflower art instead because sunflowers were her favorite flower. Somehow it felt more meaningful anyway. Less about buying something and more about bringing home a small reminder of her warmth and brightness and presence.

The older I get, the more I realize grief is carried in these tiny details.

Not the dramatic moments. The ordinary ones.

The smell of sunscreen.
A restaurant menu.
A flower.
The sound of ice clinking in a Diet Coke.
A conversation you can still hear perfectly in your head years later.

I have beautiful memories of all the major moments my mother was part of. My graduations. My first real job. My wedding. The births of both of my children. My first election to public office. She was there for every one of those milestones, loving me, supporting me, worrying about me, celebrating with me.

Those memories feel permanent.

But what I find myself worrying about now are the smaller things. The exact sound of her voice. Her expressions. The cadence of ordinary conversations. The little details that made her uniquely herself.

And maybe that’s why one moment this week surprised me so much.

I looked down at my hands while I was sitting on the beach reading, and for the first time, they looked like hers.

It wasn’t sadness exactly. It was almost like a flash of recognition. A memory. A reminder of her.

Because growing up, I never thought I looked much like my mother at all. She was striking. Tall and slender with dark hair, olive skin, and the most stunning blue eyes. People noticed her when she walked into a room.

And yet now, as I age, I catch glimpses of her unexpectedly looking back at me. Sometimes in the mirror. Sometimes in an expression. This week, it was in my hands resting in the sun with a book in my lap.

For just a second, I could see her so clearly.

Losing my mother has also changed the way I think about my own children. I always loved being Jake and Anna’s mother, but now there is another layer to it. I find myself wanting more time. More conversations. More ordinary moments together. I want to know them fully as the adults they are becoming, not just as the children I raised.

I want to be here for all of it. Their weddings. Their families. My future grandchildren. The traditions and stories and inside jokes that slowly become the fabric of a family over decades.

Because I understand now, in a way I never fully did before, how much those shared years matter.

This morning is Mother’s Day, and I’m writing this over coffee and a BLT at The Dutch Valley Restaurant, one of my mom’s favorite breakfast spots, before heading back home.

She would have ordered over-easy eggs — and they better actually be easy — potatoes, rye toast, and a Diet Coke.

I can hear her saying it to the waitress even now.

And honestly, it feels like the perfect place to spend Mother’s Day.

I think when you lose someone you love deeply, especially your mother, one of the hardest parts is the fear that time will slowly blur the details of them. That you will lose pieces of them little by little.

But maybe the people we love never leave us as completely as we fear they will.

Maybe they live on in gestures and habits and memories and stories. Maybe they live on in the things we reach for without even realizing why. Maybe they even live on in the shape of our hands.

This Mother’s Day, I miss my mom deeply. But I also feel grateful that after all these years, I can still find her in the places we loved, the memories we built, and sometimes even in the reflection looking back at me.