We recently posted on UtahMama.com the questions we’d ask our mothers. (and I promise I’m usually more upbeat than this!)

What would I ask my mom . . . as I thought about this question, I wanted to be lighthearted, I wanted to be funny. Let’s be honest, I was a pretty easy, wonderful child to raise, and I can’t imagine I caused her much trouble, so what would I really ask her? ;)

And then this really heavy part sets in for me. It’s Mother’s Day — and something is missing. It’s my sister, it’s her baby, the girl we buried the first week in October 2008 after a brief but aggressive battle with cancer. I look around at the arms that are empty or mourning, like Maddie’s mommy, like Thalon’s mommy and yes, like my mommy, and many others.

It’s these people, their events, their stories, that have made us all pause in our children’s bedrooms, staring at them for just one more minute, paralyzed at the thought of losing them.

What I really want to know is not how my mom handled raising me, or how any other mom raises her kids, I want to know how one lets them go. No matter how old you are or how long you have been a mother, I want to know how.

When all is said and done, the greatest Mother’s Day gift any of us has ever received is the gift of these little people in our lives, however hard it is, for however long we get them.

“Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood – finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.” — Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match: A Novel)

So how, Mommy? How do you live “without”?

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Image by Maigh, shared via Flickr.