Everybody Went Home...Now What?
The part of losing your mom NOBODY really prepares you for.
The funeral is over.
The flowers are still sitting around. There are food containers in the refrigerator that I definitely didn't put there. Sympathy cards are stacked on the table. People have gone back home, back to work, back to their regular lives.
And suddenly, it's quiet.
Way too quiet.
That's the part nobody really prepared me for.
When my mom died, there were things to do. Calls to make. Decisions to make. Arrangements. Funeral programs. Photos. Clothes. Flowers. Family. Paperwork.
You're grieving, but you're also strangely busy and preoccupied doing all of the things that a "good" daughter would do.
Then the funeral happens.
And afterward?
Everybody goes home.
But you still have to figure out how to live in a world where your mom isn't physically in it anymore.
Apparently, grief comes with an administrative department
Here's something I didn't know before losing my mother:
Grief has paperwork.
So. Much. Paperwork.
There are accounts to deal with, documents to find, people to call, belongings to sort through and questions you didn't even know you were supposed to ask.
At some point, I found myself thinking:
Mom… why do you have important papers in seventeen different places?!
😂
And that's the weird thing about grief.
One minute you're crying because you found something with her handwriting on it.
Twenty minutes later you're irritated because you can't find a document you KNOW she had.
Then you find one of her old purses.
Then you're crying again.
It's emotional whiplash---without the neck brace.
Losing Your Mother as an Adult
Then came the stuff
Nobody tells you how strange it feels to go through your mother's belongings.
They're just things.
Except they're not.
A shirt isn't just a shirt when you remember her wearing it. You find yourself smelling her clothing---because traces of her favorite perfume still linger. It's the only physical proof you have that your mom was just alive. And if that's weird, then the truth is you give zero fucks in that moment.
The reminders of her close in on you now that it's just you in her space after she's gone. Even a kitchen utensil isn't just a kitchen utensil when you've watched her use it your whole life.
And her favorite chair still looks like her chair.
You start realizing that a person's life leaves fingerprints everywhere.
And you're suddenly responsible for deciding what stays, what goes, what gets given away and what you're absolutely keeping even though you have no logical reason to keep it.
Logic doesn't always get a vote in grief.
I thought being strong would make this easier
I've always been the responsible one.
The level-headed one.
The person who figures things out.
So when my mom died, part of me approached grief the same way I approached everything else:
Handle it.
Get through the funeral.
Take care of business.
Make the calls.
Figure out the next thing.
Keep it moving.
But grief doesn't care how competent you are.
Eventually I realized that constantly being capable and actually processing what happened were two very different things.
That's part of what eventually led me to try therapy for the first time.
And funny enough, one of the biggest things I learned wasn't how to "fix" grief.
It was how to stop trying to manage every emotion like another item on my to-do list.
Sometimes I just needed somewhere to put it all down.
There's no finish line called "moving on"
I don't particularly like the phrase moving on.
Moving on sounds like you're leaving someone behind.
I'm learning something different.
You can carry someone with you while still building a life that looks different from the one you had before.
You can laugh again.
You can change the house.
You can travel.
You can make plans.
You can get excited about something.
You can have a really good day.
And none of those things mean you loved your mother any less.
That realization matters.
Because sometimes happiness after loss comes with this tiny little side order of guilt nobody asked for.
I'm learning not to order that anymore. Real talk? Take that shit off the menu altogether.
And then I started looking at Mamma's place differently
Her home became part of this journey too.
There are things that need repairing---a lot.
Things I want to modernize.
Things that make me look at them and think: pink, yellow, mint green walls?
Ma...what were you thinking? 😂
But then there are other things I wouldn't change for anything.
Working on her place has become more than a renovation project.
It's memories.
It's frustration.
It's healing.
It's me figuring things out as I go.
Sometimes with a plan.
Sometimes with a drill in my hand pretending I know exactly what I'm doing.
And maybe that's a pretty accurate description of life after losing your mom, too.
That's why I'm creating Life After Mom
When I created Was It Sad?, I knew I wanted to help families honor the people they love.
But after experiencing loss myself, I realized something:
The funeral isn't the end of the story.
There's an entire life waiting on the other side of it that nobody talks about enough.
So Life After Mom is where I'm going to talk about that part.
The practical stuff.
The emotional stuff.
The ridiculous stuff.
The paperwork.
Therapy.
Family.
Cleaning out the house.
First holidays.
Things I wish I'd known.
Things I'm still figuring out.
And yes, eventually finding reasons to laugh again.
I don't have grief completely figured out.
I'm not sure anybody does.
I'm simply a daughter learning how to live a life that still has my mother's fingerprints all over it—even though she's no longer here to leave new ones.
And if you're figuring out your own Life After Mom, maybe we can figure some of it out together.
Because grief can be sad.
It can be confusing.
It can even be funny sometimes.
But most importantly...
it's still life.
And we're still here to live it.
🌷 Need a Little Help Figuring Out What Comes Next?
I made the guide I wish someone had handed me when my mom died.
FREE: My Mom Just Died. What Do I Do Now?
Practical first steps • funeral questions • paperwork • things to remember • what happens next