Hi.

Sometimes your brain remembers before it remembers.

This morning I got to the office before everyone else. That almost never happens. It was quiet and my brain finally had room to wander. Most mornings someone needs something from me before I’ve even sat down. I opened my computer and did the same thing I always do. Shopify first, then emails, then texts, then Slack, catching up on everything I missed while I was asleep, because I go to bed at eight o’clock and apparently the rest of the world keeps going without me.

We have a launch tomorrow so I was refreshing the live visitors way more than necessary, like checking every twenty seconds was going to make more people show up, going through wishlists, answering messages, opening tabs, forgetting why I opened the tab, remembering another thing I forgot to answer. Same as every other morning. And then for half a second my brain went, I should call my mom.

It’s not the first time that’s happened. It’s rare now, but every once in a while my brain still does it, and it gets me every time. It’s not something I decide to do, it just happens. Some old instinct that never turned off. The instinct is quick though. It’s everything after it that stays. I spent the rest of the morning thinking about how I’ve officially lived more of my life without my mom than with her. 26 years. I did the math twice because it sounded impossible the first time. 26 years is enough time to build a company, get married, have two kids, become a completely different person than the little girl she knew. You’d think it would be enough time for my brain to understand she isn’t here anymore, and it just...isn’t.

I keep wondering if everyone’s brain does this, or if it’s just what grief turns into after enough time. If your mom is alive, do you even notice how many times a day your brain tells you to call her? You just call her. Something exciting happens, call your mom. Something stressful happens, call your mom. Your kid says something hilarious, call your mom. Mine still runs the same program, it just never got updated after she died apparently.

My brain has taught itself so many harder things than that one. It learned how to be a mom without having one. It figured out how to run a business when I had no clue what I was doing when I started SET. Payroll, hiring, inventory, all the stuff 25 year old me would’ve laughed at. It figured all of that out and somehow never figured out that when something happens, I don’t have a mom to call. I know that’s a weird thing to spend a whole morning on but I couldn’t stop. I started wondering how many times this has happened over the last 26 years without me even noticing. Probably hundreds. Maybe thousands. Maybe this morning only stuck because I caught it before my brain corrected itself.

And I don’t even know what I was going to tell her. Actually that’s not true, I know exactly what I would’ve told her. Tomorrow’s launch, the kids, the office search, probably something completely insignificant, because that’s what catching up with your mom is. Even that’s not really true though. The more I sat with it, the more I realized I didn’t actually want to tell her anything. I think the first thing I would’ve said is “Hi.” She would’ve said “Hi.” And I probably would’ve just sat there for a second. Sounds ridiculous written down, but I don’t think I needed advice. I didn’t need answers. I didn’t need a conversation. I think hearing her voice would’ve been enough. Just knowing she was on the other end of the phone. I joke all the time that I’m codependent, but maybe comfort is the better word. I make so many decisions now. Every day somebody needs an answer from me or wants my opinion or needs me to fix something, and I don’t need anyone to fix those things for me anymore. What I miss is knowing there was one person I could call who already knew me before I even got to the point. I don’t know what she would’ve said after “Hi.” and I will obviously never know…

People ask if I miss my mom and of course I do, but I don’t spend much time on the memories I already have anymore. I spend way more time on the ones I never got to make. Would we have talked every day? Once a week? Would she think I work too much? She’d definitely think I work too much. Would she have understood what Shopify was? Probably not, but I guarantee I still would’ve spent twenty minutes trying to explain launch day to her, because I’d have wanted her to get why I cared. Would Ace have wanted to sleep at her house every weekend? Would Ava have had her completely wrapped around her finger? Who am I kidding, Ava has everyone wrapped around her finger. I’ve somehow started missing things that never even happened.

When I was younger grief was loud, it interrupted everything. Now it mostly hides in ordinary stuff, checking Shopify, driving somewhere, watching my kids do something funny. It doesn’t really feel like sadness anymore, more like reaching for something out of habit and it’s just not there.

Somewhere in the middle of all this my brain wandered off again, like it always does, and I started thinking about every Instagram post I’ve ever seen from friends who lost a parent or a sibling or a husband or a wife. Mother’s Day posts. Birthday posts. Random Tuesdays where someone posts an old picture for no reason except they were thinking about them. I used to wonder what happened that day to make them miss their person so much. This morning I realized maybe nothing happened at all. Maybe you’re just living your life and your brain reaches for someone and remembers it can’t.

Then I started thinking about the people who haven’t lost anyone yet, because I actually think they get put in an impossible spot. They don’t know if they’re supposed to bring your person up or never mention them. They don’t know if saying your mom’s name is going to wreck your whole day. I don’t blame them, how would they know? We all know what to do the week after someone dies. Flowers, food, cards. Nobody really talks about what it looks like 26 years later, when everyone else’s life has moved on and yours still randomly bumps into the person you lost on a Tuesday morning before work. I wish more people knew they aren’t reminding us our person died. We know. Trust me, we know. When someone says my mom’s name, all it does is remind me somebody besides me still remembers she was here.

The thing I kept coming back to all morning wasn’t the grief, even though I made this whole piece about grief. It was that little instinct. Out of everything my brain has learned in 26 years, it won’t give that one up. I don’t know why it happened this morning. Maybe because there’s a launch tomorrow. Maybe the quiet. Maybe I just hadn’t thought about her in a while. Or maybe there’s no reason at all, and some tiny part of my brain still thinks that whenever something happens, exciting or stressful or completely ordinary, I should probably call my mom and catch her up. I think she would’ve answered with, “Hi.” And I honestly think hearing her say it would’ve been enough.