Today is my momma’s birthday.
She would have been 70.
The last time I visited her, in February of 2018, I asked her, “what do you want to do for your 70th? Maybe we could do something as a family – like go on a trip together or organize a big party?”
I remember she was flossing her teeth – something she took very seriously. She paused before looking straight at me.
“If I even make it that long,” she laughed half-heartedly.
Her comment left me upended – as though I had just missed a step at the bottom of a staircase.
I had somehow kept believing that – despite the stage four metastasized breast cancer – she would live forever.
It was the first time I heard her acknowledging the opposite. Her words were like a knife to my heart.
“Of course you will make it!” I blurted out, wanting desperately to erase this subtle, yet momentous shift that had just occurred.
She shrugged and went back to flossing her teeth.
I went to bed dreaming of a birthday party abroad.
…
When I talk about my mum, which I do all the time, it’s always to marvel at and impress upon just how well, and how often she lived.
It’s why I had such a hard time imagining her dying – and why I have such a hard time remembering that she is dead – because no matter how sick she got, she never stopped.
She never stopped working, and she never stopped working out; doing yoga and volunteering; helping with her grandkids and with her daughters’ professional and personal pursuits.
She hosted the most brilliant and boisterous dinner parties, marched in solidarity with other women, challenged herself to know more about reconciliation and how to be a better ally. Debated her friends who held competing views. Loved and nurtured and believed in the incredibly unique and beautiful community that she built and that she held close in her heart.
It is these people who have consistently reached out to myself and my sisters over the past year. On Mother’s Day, Christmas, the day of her death. To tell me: I see you. I am hurting too. I miss her. I miss and think of her every day.
I get so angry sometimes, thinking of others who have remained silent and conspicuously so. I feel like I have been cut off, like a gangrenous limb. Severed from a family who no longer thinks or feels about her, or her daughters, or what it’s like to live every day without your North Star. And the painful journey of reorientation that reminds me every day: she died.
Especially on days like today.
But then I hear a gentle voice at the back of my head: a voice that pipes up, mid-floss, reminding me to hold close the community that she held in her heart. Because those are the people who held her.
And to celebrate today.
So happy birthday, momma. I know you’re somewhere beautiful.
And that’s it’s a party.
Rant and Roll 
Beautiful, darling. I continue to admire this amazing woman I never met through your tales. I lost a close friend of similar vintage last year to that dreadful disease, and she shared a lot of your momma’s characteristics. It comforts me to imagine those two women celebrating somewhere beautiful. Together. For all we know, they very well may be.
Love Greemo xx
What a remarkable woman leaving us with such indelible memories. You know her spirit is joyful, Vanessa, and yes dancing! Happy Birthday, Miss Donna. 💖
Oh Vanessa, my heart is so sad for you today. I hope writing this helped you. I know I wrote a lot after my grandmother’s death. It was nice to tell stories about her. Thank you for sharing stories about your Mom. I enjoyed reading about your biking trip to Europe together. She sounds like an incredible lady.