Mother’s Day looks different after child loss.
There’s no way around that truth.
No matter how much time passes, no matter how many people gather around the table, there is always someone missing.
And when a child dies, a mother changes too.
My mom had three children.
Now she carries the unimaginable reality of losing one of them.
Three years ago, we lost my youngest brother, Jesse, in an extremely traumatic and sudden way. Since that day, none of us have been the same. Our family hasn’t been the same.
And I don’t think we ever will be again.
People often talk about grief as if it only belongs to the person who died.
But grief touches everything around it.
I didn’t just lose my brother when Jesse died.
In many ways, I lost the version of my mom that raised me and my other brother too.
Of course she is still my mom. She still loves us fiercely. She still shows up. She still tries every single day.
But there is a heaviness she carries now that never leaves.
A quiet ache behind her eyes.
The kind of pain that settles into someone after losing a child.
And watching someone you love carry that kind of heartbreak is its own kind of grief.
There are moments where I catch glimpses of who she used to be before all of this.
A laugh that sounds familiar.
A story she tells.
A small moment where the weight seems lighter for just a second.
And then reality settles back in.
Because when a mother loses her child, part of her leaves with them.
I think one of the hardest parts of grief is mourning not only the person you lost, but the life your family was supposed to have.
The future that should have existed.
The holidays.
The milestones.
The ordinary moments that now feel incomplete.
We all continue living because we have to.
But there will always be a version of our family that exists only in memory now.
Mother’s Day can be beautiful, painful, bittersweet, or unbearable depending on the moment.
For grieving mothers, it often holds all of those feelings at once.
So today, I’m thinking especially of the mothers carrying children in their hearts instead of in their arms.
The mothers who still wake up every day and keep going despite carrying unimaginable pain.
The mothers who love just as deeply, even through absence.
And the mothers whose lives have been forever divided into before and after.
To my mom:
I don’t think there are enough words in the world for what I wish I could do for you.
Growing up, you were my superhero. You raised the three of us as a single mom and somehow always made things work, even when life was hard. In my eyes, there was nothing my mom couldn’t handle.
And then we lost Jesse.
Watching you live through this kind of pain has been one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.
Not because you stopped loving us. Not because you stopped showing up. But because I can see how deeply this broke your heart in ways that can never fully be repaired.
And still… you keep going.
The way you continue to show up for your grandchildren despite carrying this grief every single day honestly astounds me. Even on the hardest days, your love still pours into everyone around you.
I know people see the strength in that.
But I see the pain too.
I see the exhaustion.
The heartbreak.
The moments where you’re trying so hard to hold everything together when your world has already fallen apart once before.
You are one of my best friends, and the truth is, I don’t know what I would do without you either.
Sometimes I wish I could carry even a fraction of this for you. I wish there was something I could say or do that would make this hurt less.
But I know there isn’t.
So instead, I just hope you know how deeply loved you are.
Not just as a mom.
But as a person.
As the heart of this family.
And as Jesse’s mom.
And to every bereaved mother this Mother’s Day:
You and your children matter.
Always.
-Willow Vandoloski
With my mom’s permission she has allowed me to share the below poem she wrote.
Again
By: Darlene Thorpe
I thought that I was in a point in my life that I did not take anything for granted
Until the night my youngest son was killed
I now realize that no matter how thankful and grateful we think we are we take the simplest things for granted
Tomorrow is not guaranteed and it does not matter where you live, who you are, or where you go
We cannot control what others will do or not do if they come into our lives
In a second everything can change and in that second we are left at the mercy of the goodness, the decentness, of others, of all those around us
We would like to think that most people are basically “good” but that is not so
And so, on the night my son was killed I was reminded of this as so many did nothing
I had taken for granted that I would see my son again that night
That I would hold my son in my arms again
Hear his voice, his laugh, hear him say “mom” again
That he would get to eat his favorite foods again
And I could tell him he needed to eat healthier again
That I would smell him, his hair, as he hugged me again
That I would wake him up and say I love you and he would say it back again…
From Jesse’s Justice
No one should have to walk through grief alone.
Through free grief resources, advocacy, education, and community support, we strive to honor Jesse’s life by helping others navigate theirs.
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🖤♥️ For Jesse. For Justice.