My life changed forever in one moment. A minute that will shape all other monumental moments like my graduation, my wedding, and having children. It’s funny how such a small, measly, and unimportant minute in a day can flip your life on its head, but that’s exactly what happened on April 27th, 2024 at exactly 7:37 when I found out my mom died. 

I step out of my family’s red SUV, I am still half awake from my nap on the ride home from a late-night dance competition. The air is thick with the spring mugginess of late April showers and I am content with my placement in my dance competition and excited to share my winnings with my mom who stayed home. As I walk through my front door I notice a slight shift. The air feels different, the house feels darker. I shake off my concern as I tell my mom about my time at dance. I reach the stairs and stop dead in my tracks as the world caves around me. 

My mom epitomized the saying, “Wear your heart on your sleeve”. When my mom found someone to love, she was never afraid to show it. One of the things I most admired about her was her ability to love often and fiercely with her whole heart. Finding my mom dead on the stairs to our home has broken a piece of me I will never be able to truly heal. Through my grief, I’ve tried the methods recommended for dealing with grief like reading and being with my thoughts, but sometimes the room is just too quiet and I quickly revert to numbing and chilling thoughts of why the house is so truly quiet and cold. 

As this new feeling surrounds my everyday life in a way I can’t escape, I begin to not only live with it but adapt. As I sit at my mom’s funeral showing I am hit with a wave. It was not a physical wave, but something I was not expecting nor wanted to feel. It is a wave of grief, something so powerful and emotional that it hurts. My mom was my best friend, confidante, and the person I looked up to most, losing her feels like I’m stranded out at sea, with nothing but water surrounding me as I try to survive. Back on physical land, friends, family, and loved ones offer words of comfort and try to repair what will never be fixed. However, even as my grief tries to swallow me whole, I feel her. I feel my mom in my brother’s laugh which sounds exactly like her. I feel her in her favorite songs that play from the speakers of the funeral home. I feel her in everything I do and every word I speak, because she always told me I reminded her of herself. Knowing my mom is with me will never bring her back, but having her spirit by my side gives me comfort in a sea of pain and despair. I will choose to use that tether to remain strong and honor my mom now and for the rest of my life. 

While the loss of my mom was a devastating moment in my life, it will not be a negative defining moment, but a positive one. One that will motivate me to be the person my mom was a genuine, loving, and devoted individual who loved freely and often. My mom may have passed, but it will be the life she lived that will stay with me forever and shape me into the individual I will grow up to be.