It will soon be one year since my Mom died. January 23. I have been thinking about what I want to do on that day, how to honour her memory, how I should observe the day. One thing I am going to do is place an “In Memoriam” in our local newspaper. I read the obituary section every week, and I am always touched by the “In Memory of . . .” entries for people who have died awhile ago; it is beautiful that they are still remembered and honoured. I decided that I wanted to do the same for my Mom.

I have a block canvas of the following poem, “Until We Meet Again,” that sits on my “Mom table,” along with the shamrock I inherited from her, a picture of us with my kids, and a note about what my mother meant to me. I am submitting this poem along with the photo of my Mom to be included in the obituary section. It goes like this:

Until We Meet Again

We think about you always,
We talk about you still,
You have never been forgotten,
And you never will.

We hold you close within our hearts,
And there you will remain,
And guide us through our lives
Until we meet again.

Jude McCoy (Iverson-Keeler)
September 11, 1952 – January 23, 2025

I don’t know that I believe that I will, really, see my Mom again. I’m not sure what I think about death and the afterlife. We don’t really know, do we? We can believe in certain things; have faith that death and afterlife look a certain way. But, we don’t really know, right?

But, even if I can’t say that I know that I will see my Mom again, I do wish that I would see her again.

I don’t hold onto the idea as a promise, an inevitability, or even a probability. I think I hold the idea as more of a shaky hope; a hope that death might not be the end – that we might be reunited in some way after all.

I have been experiencing all these opposing thoughts since my mom died. Knowing that there is no way of proving the existence of life after death, but since I lost my Mom, I really hope that there is. There is no way of knowing if there is a “Heavenly Father” and that my Mom is “standing in his presence on holy ground” (Davis, 1983); but for her sake . . . I really hope there is and that she is standing there. I don’t believe in ghosts or angels, but I really want to think that my Mom is still here with me, like a ghost or an angel. I believe that when we die, we are dead and that’s all there is to it; but I want to think that this is not true in for my Mom, that she is not gone, that death isn’t the end.

When it’s all said and done, I’m okay with acknowledging that I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I can keep her memory alive. I can let her know, if she is out there somewhere, how I feel. I can tell her that I still think about her and miss her always. I can share her memory with others, remind them too. I can remind the world of the amazing person it has lost. I can honour her by remembering – and that’s just what I will do.