By Louisa Vilardi 
It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice.
Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can.
My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone.
What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson would be how to survive grief. How to be strong. How to “move on.” That’s what people say, after all, right? “She’d want you to move on.” As if grief is a location you accidentally linger in too long. But losing a mother doesn’t teach you how to move on. It teaches you how to live alongside absence.
I’ve learned grief changes shape, but it never actually leaves. At first, it’s loud and sharp and disorienting. Then one day it’s quieter. Not gone…just folded neatly into the background of your life.
I’ve learned becoming a mother without a mother is its own kind of heartbreak. Every milestone with my children has carried a quiet ache because I don’t get to ask her how she did it. I don’t get to watch her become a grandmother to my boys. I don’t get her reassurance on the days when parenting feels like an unsupervised group project. Instead, I hear her in my own voice. I catch myself saying things she used to say and reacting in ways that feel eerily familiar. Apparently, you don’t actually lose your mother entirely. She just upgrades her office and works remotely from inside your head.
I’ve learned there are moments you don’t think about your mom at all and moments you miss her so much it feels inconvenient. Like when something breaks and you realize there’s no one left who knows how to fix it her way. Or when something wonderful happens and you instinctively reach for your phone before remembering there’s no one on the other end.
I’ve learned grief has a sense of humor: dark, inconvenient, and poorly timed. Like the way my mom shows up in the grocery store when I buy the cereal she hated. Or when I’m folding laundry and suddenly remember something ridiculous she once did and start laughing alone like a person who is definitely fine. Totally fine. Just laughing in the detergent aisle of life.
I’ve learned grief makes you fluent in clichés you never asked to hear.
“She’s in a better place.”
“At least she’s no longer suffering.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
These are usually offered with good intentions, which makes it harder to say what you’re really thinking, which is something along the lines of, “Please stop talking. Seriously…just stop talking.” Because the truth is, the better place for my mother would be here. With her family. With the people who love her. In the life she was actively living before it was taken from her. There is nothing comforting about reframing loss as a cosmic trade-off. Nothing healing about suggesting that death is some kind of upgrade. It isn’t. It’s an absence. A rupture. A before-and-after that never fully blends back together.
I’ve learned to nod politely when these phrases are offered, even as my insides recoil. I’ve learned people reach for clichés not because they’re cruel, but because they are uncomfortable with pain they cannot fix. A platitude feels safer than silence. But silence, it turns out, would be far kinder.
What I wish people understood is this: acknowledging loss does not require silver linings. Grief does not need to be explained away to be survivable. Sometimes the most compassionate response is simply, “I’m so sorry. How awful.” I don’t need my mother’s death to make sense. I don’t need it to be part of a plan. I just need space to miss her honestly without being told why I shouldn’t.
I’ve learned people stop asking about your loss long before you stop feeling it. The world moves on fast. Anniversaries pass quietly. Your grief becomes invisible. But that doesn’t mean it’s smaller. It just means you’ve gotten better at carrying it (and hiding it).
I’ve learned to mother myself in ways she no longer can. To give myself grace. To rest when I need it. To stop apologizing for taking up space. To trust my instincts. These are things she would have told me…so now, I tell myself.
Most importantly, I’ve learned that love doesn’t end when a life does. It stretches. It changes. It finds new ways to exist. My mother is not here, but she is still part of every version of me. In how I parent. In how I love. In how I show up for others. In how I keep going, even when it hurts.
Ten years without a mother has taught me this: You don’t “get over” losing her. You grow around the loss. And somehow, impossibly, life still finds room for joy…even laughter. Especially laughter. Because if there’s one thing my mother would want me to do it’s live fully, love fiercely, and occasionally find humor in the mess.
You don’t get closure. You don’t tie it up neatly. You don’t wake up one day and feel finished with the loss. You wake up and live anyway. You laugh. You parent. You grieve quietly in grocery stores. You hear her voice when you need it most. You carry her forward in ways you never planned.
And that, as painful and unfair as it is, has been enough to keep me going.
by Julie Hoag 
by Daniela Bratu 
by Amber Watson 
