Originally Published: September 30, 2023

Mom, there’s nothing I can say here that I didn’t already tell you. But I feel a profound need to scream how amazing you were, at the top of my lungs, so everyone else in the world knows it too.

So here goes…

Mom, simply put, you were the best. The crème de la crème. One of a kind. Irreplaceable. Unbeatable. You set the bar impossibly high. You were the mom every mom aspires to be. The mom I aspire to be. Growing up, you did all the perfect mom things—the PTA bake sales, the school drop-offs and pick-ups, the endless bedtime snuggles, the hand-made Birthday cakes better than any professional bakery. 

In high school, you were the mom who forced me to take mental health days because you knew I needed them. You were the mom who always texted to make sure I made it home safely—at age 18, at age 28, at age 38. Even last week, from your hospital room, you texted to make sure I was home safely after visiting you.

Mom, I don’t know how to live the rest of my life without your concerned texts. I don’t know how to live without the one person who always worried more about me than herself.

You were the mom who offered to make my wedding dress, and three months before the wedding, when I realized it wasn’t what I wanted, you calmly assured me we could start again. And we did. And it was perfect.

You were the mom who loved my babies as your own. Who helped me navigate the sleepless nights, the explosive diapers, the terror of having my heart now living outside of my body. You were the one who watched Jack and then Olivia on my first day back to work. And I never worried for a second, because they were in the best hands in the world—yours.

You were the one who showed me what unconditional love looked like. That no matter how far I fell, you would pick me up. That there was nothing I could do or be that would ever make you stop loving me.

Mom, your cancer was ruthless, cruel, and so deeply unfair. It guts me how much you suffered, how much it took from you. From all of us. But the one thing it couldn’t take was your spirit, your heart, your indelible love.

I know you worried about not seeing Olivia and Jack grow up. But here is the truth, Mom—you gave them more love in the 4 and 6 years respectively you spent with them, then most grandparents deliver in a lifetime. You are etched into their DNA. I see your face in Olivia’s toothy smile. Hear your joy in Jack’s belly laugh. You are theirs and they are yours and that will never change. 

And for one brief moment in time, you were mine, too.

And for that, I am so deeply lucky.

I love you, Mom.

Always and forever.