The White Corsage

Mother’s Day is quickly approaching, and for many people it brings excitement, laughter, reservations at favorite restaurants, flowers, cards, and family gathered around tables filled with love.

But for others, Mother’s Day arrives quietly.
Heavy.
Tender.

Especially for those whose mothers are no longer here.

I remember when we would all gather at my grandmother’s house. Cousins running through the yard, aunts in the kitchen talking over one another, food covering every inch of the counters. There was one tradition I never forgot:

If your mother was living, you wore red.
If she had passed, you wore white.

Those corsages symbolized far more than flowers pinned to a dress or jacket. They quietly told a story of love, loss, gratitude, and remembrance. They reminded us that motherhood does not end simply because someone is gone physically.

And for those facing Mother’s Day without their mother this year, perhaps if she could speak, she would say:

“If I had one more moment, one more day, I would spend it walking with you down memory lane. But God wanted me home.”

Maybe death is not as far away as we imagine.
Maybe it is like two parallel paths side by side.

When a baby is preparing to be born, the family on the outside is overwhelmed with joy and anticipation. Yet the baby, still inside the womb, cannot fully understand the world waiting beyond what has always felt safe and familiar.

Perhaps death is similar.

Maybe those leaving this world are simply being welcomed into another one.

And maybe the people we grieve are no longer afraid, no longer hurting, but simply adjusting to a different kind of home.

So this Mother’s Day, grieve if you need to. Tears are love with nowhere to go. But don’t stop there.

Celebrate her.

Celebrate the memories.
The laughter.
The recipes.
The lessons.
The sacrifices.
The way she loved you the best way she knew how.

Pour that love back into yourself and into your family.

Put on that white corsage and think back to a simpler time, when life still felt sweet, when her voice filled the room, when her hands still reached for yours.

Because love like that never truly leaves us.

Reflection 

These were the women who taught us how to gather.
How to love loudly through food, laughter, sacrifice, and presence.
At my grandmother’s house, Mother’s Day wasn’t about perfection or expensive gifts.
It was about family remembering family.
The red and white corsages quietly told the story of who we still held in our arms and who we now carried in our hearts.”