On the Occasion of My Mother’s Yahrzeit
May 21, 2025A year ago yesterday, my mother died. Ever since then I’ve been grieving, and I’d like to write about it to mark the time, because it has changed me, and I want to share that as much as anything else that has changed me in my life.
I’m not here to write a guide, but to confirm that there is no right or wrong way to grieve, and my grief or how it goes out into the world will certainly look different than someone else’s. That’s fine by me. There are aisles and aisles of bookstores dedicated to grief & grieving, but there isn’t a true or one-size-fits-all guide to its practice. Meanwhile, everyone you’ve n/ever met has an opinion on how to grieve and for how long, or a series of platitudes to comfort you with that will raise your blood pressure long before they raise anyone you love from the dead. Death spares no one, and of all the loss I’ve experienced so far, parent loss is its own strange and chasmic experience.
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I had taken the last flight out of JFK to Seattle the night before, gotten home, gone to sleep without much fanfare, and woke up to a series of missed calls and text messages from my stepdad. In 30 minutes I was driving to Portland, straight to the hospital. Without going into detail, my mother’s death was both sudden and slow. It came without warning, with no opportunity for last words or final embraces. However, I could sit with her living body until it gave way. I did this for 15 days, the first week in the ICU and ultimately in hospice. That time felt like both a gift and a curse - what sometimes felt like slow and endless suffering also came with the opportunity to care for my mother’s body, study her face, brush her hair, be as close as I could get to her still-beating heart. Bearing witness to her death changed me in incalculable ways. Ushering her out of this world with love, the same way she ushered me into this world in the very same hospital, was a huge privilege that is not afforded to every loved one. The time was a gift and a curse.
I became intimately acquainted with the hospital those two weeks. There were dozens of people helping to care for my mom and my family: EMTs, nurses, doctors, chaplains, janitors, cafeteria staff, music therapists, administrators, security guards. I have overflowing gratitude for all of them. I also worked for a week with Cascade Life Alliance to navigate organ donation, which I would recommend for the guidance they gave me alone. They supported me through the bureaucracy of dying (of which there is so much), prepared me for what death would actually look like (a full-sensory experience), and supported taking time to remember and honor my mom (by building playlists of music, making audio recordings of her heartbeat, and so on). If you aren’t already a registered post-mortem donor, or might be curious about becoming a living donor, I highly recommend it.
In those weeks and the weeks that came after, I was cared for by friends and strangers in so many ways. I have felt the cradle of mutual aid before, but not in a very long time and never at this scale. I wept over the kindness I was shown a lot. My mom went to a church that kept bringing meals to her house until we didn’t have room in the fridge or freezer. Some of my best friends busted into my house in Seattle to stock the freezer with meals prepped for when I returned. Other friends ordered me long-distance take-out or sent pints of ice cream and wine through grocery delivery. My mom’s coworkers helped me navigate paying out her unused PTO and sick leave, and later her life insurance. A friend from the touring industry coordinated a Venmo campaign that kept me fed, caffeinated, and out of debt when I had to bail on months of work. My dad came from Illinois to thank her for their child together and hold her hand. My friends and extended family who had planned to come for my wedding in June kept their itineraries and came just to spend time with me. And even though that wedding was postponed, my fiancé exemplified his wedding vows every day this year. He grieved his own relationship with my mother while picking up so much of our shared household responsibilities. He made sure I ate. He got me outside. He indulged every phase of healing. That is a partnership and love that I wish for everyone.
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For a full month, I only wanted to talk to people who had a dead parent, and it wasn’t long until I was acutely aware of everyone in my life who shared that experience. I began reconnecting with friends from high school or community members I hadn’t been close with, but that I knew had experienced that loss or gone through another big grief in their life. Every grief I’d felt or seen before I remembered being smaller or shorter. So much of the grief I’d seen was from TV and movies, unrealistic or shown in tableau. In the weeks that followed I was messy, asking everyone around me, “Do you know this pain? Can you show me the way?” Some declined, but so many friends and strangers were eager to share their own stories and experiences of grief with me, confirming that the depth of my pain wasn’t unusual, or that grieving wasn’t one-size-fits-all.
I reached out to friends who went through their own losses this year, and most of us continue to check in on one another regularly. Later, I lucked in on a particularly incredible table at The Dinner Party, and they have kept me grounded and given me a unique sense of partnership ever since. I’m equally as thankful to everyone who reached out to share their own recent loss with me, looking for guidance of their own and knowing I was new to the same path. I have found so much community in grief - maybe the most element of this whole experience.
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A year later, and I’m stunned by how potent my grief remains. I wept on a daily basis for those first months, and then as I returned to a routine and later back to work, I wept in the arms and the laps of gracious colleagues through tours, festivals, retreats, and recording sessions. I was afforded the privilege of learning how to work and be accountable again, with plenty of mistakes made along the way. I cannot imagine a life where I had a short mandated bereavement period, where unpaid time off might lead to my termination. I was lucky to feel safe enough to give into the grief without shame, and have the security to take time away and return as a rawer version of myself. Honestly, it probably saved my life.
Time would pass and grief would later come in waves, with my worst days aligning with the days and dates I associate with my mom’s death - Sundays and Mondays, 5ths and 20ths. Even now, a year out, I will find myself crying on the bandstand or on flights between shows. I wept through an entire headlining set last Saturday, and I am still riding the catharsis and release it provided me. I don’t feel strange about crying in public, about sharing my grief in public, about remembering or missing my mom in public. It has had no negative consequences, has helped other friends and strangers confront their own grief. In the same way, I have not felt guilt or discomfort in continuing to match the size of my grief. I welcome its presence and my mother’s memory - don’t feel uncomfortable on my account - my grief is a part of me and it has a seat at my table.
Death changed the way I live my life. I have pulled back on how much I work and travel. I limit my social activity and feel more comfortable doing solitary activities now. I’m more honest in my interactions with others. I ask for what I need, I don’t do things I don’t want to do, I don’t say yes to make other people happy. I take the vacation I want to go on and I spend the money I’ve saved because my mom accrued nearly a year’s worth of PTO that she never used. My stepfather, with whom my only commonality for years was our love for my mom, is now one of the most important people in my life - something that would thrill my mother. The instant we began this shared experience of loss, he became one of my closest confidants and a true parent in my life.
With one year lived and more to come, I wonder how my grief will change and where it will guide me next. The life I’d planned feels cryogenically frozen in time, waiting for me to bring it back when the conditions are right. I’ve yet to publish an obituary for my mom, let alone schedule and organize a celebration of life - which, as it turns out, isn’t totally unusual, and I’ve been thankful for the time to think about how I want to honor my mom in community. My fiancé and I still haven’t rescheduled our wedding, and much of what we’d planned I now want to change. My feelings about having a child someday have changed, too - though always complex, my reasoning is even more complicated by losing a mother who loved motherhood, and who would have embraced grandparenthood with fervor. Do I want to live that experience she loved, or do I want to prevent the pain any child might experience by losing me? I would give just about anything to talk to her on the phone, or hug her, or ask for her advice. But while big questions await big answers, I feel free enough and grieved enough to forge new pathways. My mom and I spent the last several years recording hours of interviews with each other, initially for a show I wanted to mount to the stage and that for now I still want to share through musical storytelling. I’m feeling affirmed to devote more time to what really makes me happy, and continue leaning into my impulses to brighten the lives of those I love. I’ve spent a lot of this year honoring her through gardening, as has my stepdad, tending to the perennials she planted by hand and that keep coming back. I’m paying attention to the littlest details, finding her in the presence of lingering robins or moments that feel otherworldly in their humor or coincidence. She is everywhere and nowhere, gone away from me and next to me in the grass with her hands in the dirt. HF