this mother's day, my heart is filled with grief. i am not alone

by: louise solomita, special to montreal gazetteas mother’s day approaches and the prospect of large family gatherings slips further into the future, part of me is relieved. despite a year’s worth of grumbling over subdued holidays at home and missing my extended family, i’m dreading our first family gathering after the lockdown. because it will be the first celebration without my mother, and that empty chair will be devastating.we’ve said goodbye to so many mothers over this last year, whether because of covid or other cruel diseases. these women were the beating hearts of families who will only feel the loss more acutely when they’re finally allowed to gather around the table.my mother, monique girard-solomita, died on april 26, 2020, during the peak of quebec’s first wave. she died of cancer, but the pandemic played a role in her suffering all the same. her disease took a serious turn and she was hospitalized just before visits from family members were banned. my father, sister and i never felt so powerless. we lay awake at night wishing we could be by her side, terrified that she would die alone. the same situation was playing out all over the province, the country, and the world: our loved ones were surrounded by strangers — or by no one at all — as their lives ebbed away.my mother used her last ounces of strength to pack up and leave the hospital, not because she was feeling better but because she was running out of time. she would live for one more week, during which my father, sister and i had the enormous privilege of caring for her. despite her fierce desire to live, my mother was incredibly brave in the face of death. with her trademark good humour, she gave us advice and dictated recipes. we told her how much we loved her; when the end came, we held her hand. as horrible as it was to lose her, we were lucky to be together.in the months that followed, in a haze of grief as the pandemic raged on, i pored over obituaries in this newspaper, feeling a kinship with all the mourning families who shared those smiling photos and heartfelt words. each mention of grandchildren was a reminder that my mother will never see my 10-year-old son grow up. that my youngest niece, who is named after her grandmother, will not remember her. i wept for my family, and wept again for those who never had the chance to say goodbye.yet something about the pandemic and this neverending lockdown is preventing the loss of my mother from fully sinking in. this last year has not been real life — we’ve all been in a suspended state, every day like the one before it, staring at screens and waiting for good news amid waves of devastation and death happening near and far.

we never had a proper funeral for my mother: her family and friends didn’t get the chance to pay tribute to her in a packed church, to reminisce about this extraordinary woman, to share tear-filled hugs in my parents’ living room afterward. in the absence of these important rituals, can we still move forward? stuck in this pandemic limbo, can we even move through the stages of grief?a return to family gatherings is coming, that’s inevitable and welcome. but as i hear people talk about a return to “normal,” for me there’s no such thing. life never gets back to normal after your mother dies.so many people will be grieving on this mother’s day — let’s spare a thought for them now, and also when family gatherings are permitted once again. that empty chair will be devastating.