loving what's left, a bargain and a big birthday week

remembering for him and with him: as featured in Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper

My Mom was an Olympic discount shopper. Full stop. I grew up in the corner of the communal dressing room at Loehmann’s where Mom and a myriad of bra and panty clad ladies threw caution to modesty to score designer looks for less. I realized my Mom’s eye and art of the bargain were a superpower. In 1991, she bought the dress she’d wear to my wedding from this hallowed off-price haven and told folks proudly as she walked the aisle, as if it were her very own runway.

I woke up on the morning of what would have been my mother’s 81st birthday to a text from a friend. Mom died at 50, and while I continue to celebrate her (yearly, daily, hourly…) I can only imagine her now. As a grief expert, and someone who has been in conversation and communion with my own mother loss for over three decades, I have learned to celebrate her in different ways.

On her birthday, my sister and I buy something at discount in her honor. You could pop in to one of her haunts like Marshall’s or use an on line code. She would absolutely have adored TJ Maxx and Home Goods, but alas, after her time. (Hope they have them in heaven, Mom.)

Needed or not, meaning-filled or a tiny trinket, something I could share in an exchange at day’s end with my sister Danna. We can giggle and remember her in a way that makes sense and memories— perhaps to just us two. This year when I woke, I got a gift from her! The early am text message shared a piece I had pitched about living with my Dad’s memory loss. It was in Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper. On. Her. Birthday.

Mom was an eloquent wordsmith, spent years as a copywriter for Steinbach’s Department Store and her Scrabble prowess was legendary. She always encouraged my writing in school and perused my pr releases. She died before I dedicated books to her and had bylines and gigs at The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine.

My folks invented conscious uncoupling when they separated in 1975 (sorry Gwyneth). The two remained friends and my Mom and Stepmother later worked together on ads for Mom’s real estate firm. She would be so saddened my Dad’s memory loss, and so proud of the way we have cared for him. When we use the Scrabble tiles to sort the names of family he forgets, I feel her at my shoulder. It is just one of the tips for meeting dementia with dignity and creativity featured in the piece.

I popped in for a coffee at G.E. Brown, the local shop in our new town back east. This was only after proudly texting the article to dozens of family and friends. It was BIG ya’ll! The woman at the counter said, “You have a coupon on your account, would you like to use it today?” The shop is filled with curated gifts from cooking potions and dishwear to bath oils. A tiny roll on fragrance struck my fancy while I had been waiting for my order - so I added it to the check. For Mom, I thought to myself as she rang the purchase with five bucks off.

Some may call publishing on her birthday a coincidence. As I leap frog through the mucky terrain of motherloss, I have come to enjoy these serendipitous moments as signs. “No accidents,” I say. They bring her along for the ride.

We share our birthdays just a week apart, and it was always fun to be her Scorpio sidekick. I have also come to buying myself a treat from her each year. This year I sat for a 30 minute portrait with Jessica Miller. She did the now famous cover for Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, best selling author of Dear Edward. It was indulgent and magical and I highly recommend it. Something about looking into her eyes and she into mine felt somehow — like being mothered.

Here is the thing of it, grief is a bear. It can be heavy and debilitatingly sad and awful. And I am not going to lie - even thirty years in, some milestone moments still take me out. This reframing of those hallmark days, is something I came to in an effort to find a little power over my grief and memory making when the calendar strikes a big one.

How do you celebrate a loved one you are remembering? How do you help a loved one who has trouble remembering? All of the ways in which I re-member the me I am on this side of living with loss is the one I know Mom would be ever so proud of — and Dad too.