This is my third Mother’s Day without my baby. I spent the first 2 trying to convince myself that despite being one of the most difficult days of the year for me, Mother’s Day is something I’m now not only entitled to celebrate like everyone else, but a part of me could also actually be happy about it. Whether everyone else has a mother or is a mother was irrelevant. I told myself that celebrating my motherhood would make the rest of the day—at the cemetery—bearable. I looked forward to my first Mother’s Day with cautious excitement, and made sure to set the ringer on my phone at the loudest level so I wouldn’t miss a single Mother’s Day wish.

That I had lost my own mother 12 years earlier didn’t matter either, because this was my day now, and I was going to celebrate my new status in society even if it meant seasoning my meal with my tears in a crowded restaurant. I wore a corsage, like everyone else, so that there’d be no mistaking my identity in public, and I requested the free dessert that all the restaurants give to moms on their special day. No one asked, and I didn’t volunteer, anything about the whereabouts of my child. On our way out, narrow-eyed sneers called me a liar and accused me of taking advantage of the holiday.

I would receive only a few well-wishes by the time the day ended. One was from our server as he opened the check presenter to collect his tip.

But everyone else was busy today, too, I told myself as I scrolled through social media feeds filled with images of happy families and tagged statuses wishing grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, wives, girlfriends, girl friends, and hell, even like–a-mothers and fathers who are also mothers, a happy Mother’s Day.

Just over two years after losing our son, my husband and I are still learning how to live through the other “ordinary” days of the year. Our new life is like having to wear shoes two sizes too small; the pain it inflicts cripples our ability to do what was once the simplest things. But like the single pair of shoes, it’s the only one we have, so we ignore the bleeding and force a smile through the calluses, and hope that no one notices the awkward fit.

It’s the not-so-ordinary days—Mother’s Day, Christmas, baby’s birthday—however, that make us feel sorely underdressed and exposed. After almost three years of guarding my heart, my mind has exhausted more than my energy. I have an increasingly harder time reasoning with my heart that the iron walls and razor wire that help us survive the not-so-ordinary days shouldn’t come down. Ever.

But we’ve peeked over that wall and through that wire more than once. On the other side is the realization that Mother’s Day is a day that will never be one we can look forward to with the same blissful innocence of parents who haven’t experienced bottomless, hopeless devastation.

Peeking over the wall and through the wire has shown my heart that my husband could shower me with all the precious and thoughtful Mother’s Day gifts in the world, but that won’t change that I’ll be opening them at our baby’s gravesite. It won’t change that after my tear-blurred vision clears, I’ll fall in love with them and we’ll both pretend that our dead baby picked them out just for me, his Mama. And I’ve realized that, yes, I can cling desperately to whatever sentiment I might attach to them, but the reality is that no one smiles cheesy smiles or “oohs” and “aahs” at photos of a couple holding trinkets.

For me, Motherhood means that I now live with an inoperable sob that’s wedged at the back of my throat; a boulder heavy with the weight of a thousand guttural moans. And every moment of every day, The Sob threatens to reveal itself. It bullies me with three sudden gasps for air, then retreats when I force it back with a whimper.

Sometimes, though, The Sob wins. It has betrayed me at the most inconvenient moments: on a busy morning at work; the first—and last—time I accidentally walked right into the baby section of a store; in a public restroom filled with the thundering cries of a baby on the changing table who is resisting her frustrated mother.

The moment I became a mother showed me that it’s possible to feel hopelessness and despair and unconditional love in the same instant. Thankfully, my heart is just as stubborn as that awful sob. Despite the devastating heartbreak of burying a child and a new ill-fitting life that can’t be altered by the finest of tailors, my love for my son will always be greater than my deepest despair.

On this Mother’s Day, I will again honor and celebrate this love, my motherhood, and the tiny life that gave me the gift of this role. Even if it means seasoning my meal with my tears in a crowded restaurant.

Because I feel my baby’s presence, even if no one can see him.

Because I am still a mother. Dammit.

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Erika

Erika and her husband have a baby boy whose memory they keep alive with the books they read him, the mementos they keep, and the I love yous they share. Undeterred by increasingly grim prognoses during pregnancy, they chose to carry their baby until he was ready to go Home.

The couple has found comfort and relief, albeit temporary, from devastating heartbreak through frequent gravesite visits and the sense of Baby’s presence via many things, including small birds, ladybugs, and pennies from Heaven. Although as bereaved parents they can no longer provide for his needs, they can—and do—give Baby his many wants, so they skip the diaper aisle and head straight for the toys. Together they decorate Baby’s gravesite with these and other gifts, often arranging them in themes or in celebration of his birthday and holidays.

Erika is an editor in the energy industry. She and her husband live with their two kittens, Barnes and Noble, near their baby’s resting place in Texas.

Latest posts by Erika (see all)

• I Still Celebrate Because I’m Still a Mother - May 10, 2015