Wander Rona

Grief has its own calendar.

Every year, as May comes to an end, something inside me shifts. It’s not dramatic. It’s not loud. It’s more like a quiet ache that rises slowly, the way dusk settles into the sky. I don’t need a reminder on my phone or a date circled on a calendar — my body remembers on its own.

Six years have passed since my mom died, and still, this time of year feels tender. Heavy. Sacred. Painful.

People say grief gets easier. Maybe in some ways it does. But what they don’t tell you is that grief also becomes part of your rhythm. It becomes a season you learn to move through, the way you move through winter or spring. You don’t fight it. You just learn to live with it.

For me, the end of May is that season.

It’s when memories feel closer. It’s when I miss her laugh a little more. It’s when I wish I could tell her everything I’ve survived, everything I’m building, everything I’m becoming.

Sometimes I feel guilty for still hurting. Other times I feel guilty for the days I don’t hurt as much. That’s the strange thing about losing a mother — you’re always balancing between remembering and moving forward, between holding on and letting life carry you.

But I’ve learned something important: Missing her is not a setback. Missing her is love that never had anywhere else to go.

So I let myself feel it.

I let myself cry if I need to. I let myself slow down. I let myself remember the softness she gave me — the kind that still shapes the way I love, the way I care, the way I show up in the world.

Grief doesn’t mean I’m stuck. It means she mattered.

And every end of May, I honor that.

If you’re reading this and you’ve lost someone too, I hope you give yourself permission to feel whatever rises in you. There is no timeline for healing. There is no “right way” to miss someone. There is only love — and the ways it continues to echo long after they’re gone.

For me, that echo sounds like my mom. And I’m learning to listen without breaking. To stand tall without shaking and to smile when my heartaches.