Today would have marked my mom’s 71st birthday, but she will forever be 44, the age she was when she passed away.

Grief is strange. Some years, a holiday, anniversary, or birthday can come and go with little impact, while other years, it hits you hard. Sometimes, even an ordinary day can catch you off guard. Honestly, I think one of the toughest aspects of grief is its unpredictability. It’s never a straightforward journey. CS Lewis captured this complexity in “A Grief Observed,” where he described grief in a profound way:

For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.

After 26 years, I still struggle to make sense of how much I miss my mom. I miss her, even though I’m a completely different person than I was the day after I turned 19, when my life had to continue without her. In the same way, she would be different at 71 than she was at 44.

Maybe it’s not that I miss her but that I long for her presence. I wish I could call her, ask her how she managed to raise such an emotional kid—because she did. I long for her smile and the sound of her laughter. I wish Mandy could hear her say how proud she is of the strong, compassionate attorney she’s become.

I wish I could see her as a grandmother; I know she would have been incredible. She would marvel at how Keaton soars through the air in ninja, admire his sharp mathematical mind, and most of all, she would treasure his empathetic heart. I wish she could have met Matthew and seen how deeply he loves and cares for me.

Though many people reassure me that she would be, and is, proud of me, I’ll always long to hear her say it herself. I’ll always wish I could feel her hug just one more time and hear her say “I love you Sugar Bear”.

I’m not sure when my grief shifted from simply missing my mom to longing for her. One isn’t harder than the other; they’re just different. Over a decade ago, I accepted that I would always face the journey of life without her. Most days, it’s a quiet reality in the background, but on days like today, I don’t get to choose. I have to pause, let myself fully experience the emotions that come with longing for my mom.

And so, here I am, letting my heart ache for her, understanding that the person I’ve become is shaped not just by how she loved me for 19 years, but also by how I’ve grieved and longed for her over the past 26. Grief reveals life’s paradoxes—the conflicting emotions, the clashing thoughts. Grief has taught me I must embrace it all, but that is life. I truly believe the purpose of life is not only to live it fully, but also feel it fully.