October 12, 2026: On losing my mom, the strange rules we put around grief, and why I’m not doing anything special today.
One year ago today, my mom died.
And apparently, according to the unofficial rulebook of grief, I’ve reached some sort of milestone.
One year.
Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. Four seasons. All the firsts.
The first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas. Her first birthday without her. My first birthday without her. The first Mother’s Day. All the dates we’re told to circle on the calendar and brace ourselves for.
And now I’ve made it through an entire year.
I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do with that information.
Am I supposed to feel better? Different? Healed? Am I supposed to have learned something profound about life and death and the importance of telling people you love them?
Because mostly, I just feel like a midlife woman whose mom died a year ago.
And maybe that’s enough.
The First Year Is Supposed to Be the Hardest
People say this a lot.
The first year is the hardest.
I suppose there’s some comfort in that. The idea that if you can just make it through those first 365 days, things will somehow get easier. That grief follows a predictable timeline, and at the end of the first year, you get to graduate to the next level. I don’t think grief works that way. I don’t think she’s out here scheduling her milestones in Apple Calendar like the rest of us.
Congratulations. You’ve completed Grief 101.
The first few months after my mom died were some of the strangest months of my life.
I don’t even know how to explain them.
My shoulders were tense all the time. Not occasionally. All. The. Time. Like my body was bracing for something, even though the thing I was bracing for had already happened.
I was exhausted in a way that sleep didn’t seem to fix.
And then there was winter.
If you’ve been around here long enough, you know that winter and I have a complicated relationship of our own. The short days, the cold, the darkness. None of those things are particularly helpful when you’re already feeling a little lost.
So there I was, grieving my mom, trying to figure out what that even meant, while Wisconsin did its annual impression of a gray wool blanket.
I picked up her cross-stitch.
There was something comforting about having something to do with my hands. Following a pattern. Making little Xs. Watching something slowly take shape.
It gave me something to concentrate on that wasn’t death, paperwork, family relationships, or the thousand other things running through my head.
I don’t know if it was healing.
I just know it helped.
And sometimes I think that’s all we can ask of something.
Don’t Make Any Big Decisions in the First Year
Well.
Shit.
If that’s a rule, I failed spectacularly.
I’ve made plenty of decisions in the past year. Big ones. Small ones. Financial ones. Business ones. Decisions about what I want my life to look like and what I’m no longer willing to carry.
Some were probably good decisions. Some might turn out to be terrible ones.
Which, frankly, is pretty much how I made decisions before my mom died, too.
I understand the intention behind the advice. Grief can make everything feel urgent, and sometimes waiting is wise.
But life doesn’t stop requiring decisions just because someone dies.
Businesses still need running. Bills still need paying. Kids still need parenting. Relationships still need tending. And sometimes a death makes you reconsider things you were already questioning long before it happened.
Maybe the better advice is to give yourself some grace when making decisions during a difficult season. Not to assume that every decision you make while grieving is automatically one you’ll regret.
Grieving Someone You Had a Complicated Relationship With
This is the part that doesn’t fit neatly on a sympathy card.
My mom and I had a complicated relationship.
I loved her. And there were things about our relationship that were difficult.
Both of those things can be true.
I think sometimes we have this idea that when someone dies, the relationship gets rewritten. Suddenly everything is beautiful and precious, every memory is wonderful, and every difficult part of the relationship gets quietly tucked away.
But death doesn’t erase the complicated parts.
It doesn’t magically resolve decades of misunderstandings or unmet expectations. It doesn’t turn someone into a different person, and it doesn’t turn you into a different daughter.
And yet, you grieve.
You grieve the person who died. You might grieve the relationship you had. You might also grieve the relationship you wished you’d had.
Sometimes those are three very different things. And yet, all of them can be true at the same time.
I don’t think we talk about that enough.
I also don’t think we talk enough about how grief can coexist with relief, frustration, anger, gratitude, love, and a whole bunch of other feelings that don’t look particularly appropriate at a funeral.
But feelings aren’t always appropriate.
They’re just feelings.
The Business of Dying
Here’s another thing nobody puts on the sympathy cards.
Death comes with a surprising amount of administrative work.
Trusts. Accounts. Attorneys. Paperwork. Phone calls. Waiting. More paperwork. More waiting.
And money.
There’s something deeply uncomfortable about waiting for an inheritance while grieving the person who left it to you.
Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because it’s such a strange combination of emotions.
You’re sad that someone died. You’re trying to understand what life looks like without them. And you’re also wondering when the attorney is going to call and whether the trust is finally going to be settled.
It feels almost inappropriate to be annoyed by the process.
But I was.
There were moments when I just wanted everything finished. Not because I wanted to forget my mom, but because I wanted to stop having her death show up in my inbox as another task to complete.
And I think that’s an important distinction.
Wanting the business of someone’s death to be over isn’t the same as wanting to be done grieving them.
I Thought One Year Would Feel Different
This is the part I keep coming back to.
I thought today would feel different.
I’m not sure how.
Maybe I expected some kind of emotional shift. Some invisible line between the woman who had just lost her mom and the woman who had been living without her for a year.
Maybe I thought I’d have more clarity about our relationship.
Maybe I thought I’d feel more settled.
Or maybe I just bought into the idea that a year is a significant amount of time, and significant amounts of time are supposed to produce significant revelations.
But here we are.
It’s October 12.
My mom died one year ago.
And I’m still me.
I’ve had a year full of joy and frustration, laughter and tears, good decisions and questionable ones. I’ve celebrated birthdays, worked on businesses, written essays, worried about money, spent time with people I love, and done approximately a million loads of laundry.
Life has continued.
Not in some dramatic, inspirational way.
Just in the ordinary way life continues.
And maybe that’s the part I didn’t expect.
I’m Not Doing Anything Special Today
I’ve seen people mark the anniversary of someone’s death by doing something that person loved.
Eating their favorite meal. Visiting their favorite place. Lighting a candle. Making a donation. Spending the day remembering them.
I think those things are lovely.
For people who want to do them.
But I don’t want to turn today into a production.
I don’t want to spend the day trying to do things my mom would have loved, or things that would have made her proud of me.
I don’t want another set of expectations around how I’m supposed to feel or what I’m supposed to do.
I don’t want to perform grief any more than I want to perform happiness.
I’d rather just love my ordinary Monday.
Drink my coffee. Write something. Go for a walk. Maybe do some laundry. Enjoy my house. Talk to my kids. Laugh at something ridiculous.
Maybe I’ll think about my mom.
I’m sure I will.
Maybe I’ll feel sad. Maybe I’ll feel grateful. Maybe I’ll feel absolutely nothing unusual until some random Tuesday three weeks from now when something catches me off guard.
I don’t know.
And for once, I don’t feel particularly compelled to figure it out.
One Year Isn’t a Deadline
I think that’s what I’ve learned, if I’ve learned anything at all.
One year isn’t a deadline.
It isn’t a finish line or a report card or proof that you’ve successfully processed the loss of someone you loved.
You don’t have to be healed.
You don’t have to have forgiven everything.
You don’t have to have made peace with every complicated memory.
You don’t have to turn your grief into wisdom or your loss into a beautiful lesson.
And you certainly don’t have to spend the anniversary doing something meaningful just because the calendar says you should.
You can simply acknowledge that someone was here, and now they’re not.
That you loved them in whatever imperfect way you were both capable of.
That their life mattered.
And that yours is still happening.
One year ago, my mom died.
Today, I’m going to live my life.
Not because I’ve moved on.
But because she gave it to me as a gift.
And it’s mine to live.
