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# I Still Reach for My Mom
- URL: https://www.mikebakerhq.com/writing/i-still-reach-for-my-mom/
- Published: 2026-09-02T18:56:18.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-02T18:56:18.000Z
- Description: There are still moments when something happens and my first instinct is to tell my mom.
- Author: Mike Baker
- Tags: Human First

There are still moments when something happens and my first instinct is to tell my mom. It might be something with the kids, something funny that happened during the day, a story she would have understood immediately, or one of those small victories that would have mattered to her simply because it mattered to me. The impulse happens before I have time to think about it. For a fraction of a second, I am still living in a world where I have a mom I can call and tell about my day, and then I remember that I don’t.

I used to hate that little moment of forgetting because it felt like losing her again in miniature. I would have the thought, catch myself, and feel that old ache return before I could do anything about it. Years later, I don’t wish that reflex away anymore. Some part of me still believes my mom belongs in the important parts of my life, and I have come to love the fact that my brain has not completely learned otherwise.

My mom had early-onset Alzheimer’s, which made losing her a long and complicated process. There was no single day when she stopped being the mom I knew. Pieces disappeared over time. Conversations became harder, stories she had told for years faded, and details she once knew without thinking became inaccessible. We adjusted because families do that when they love someone and there is no other choice. We learned whatever version of life the disease gave us, then learned another one when it changed again.

There was a time when my mom knew everything about me. She knew what I was doing, what was happening with the kids, where I was struggling and where I was pretending I had everything figured out. She had that particular kind of knowledge mothers accumulate without anyone realizing how much they are collecting. I did not need to explain every character in a story because she already knew them. I did not need to provide years of context because she had lived through most of it with me. She knew which version of me was talking.

Alzheimer’s slowly took that kind of conversation away from us before it took her life, and that was one of the hardest parts for me. My mom was still physically here, but the person I wanted to call when something happened was becoming harder to reach. I learned to appreciate whatever connection remained, and I was grateful for it, but gratitude never erased what I missed. I could love the mom sitting in front of me while also missing the mom who once knew exactly what I meant before I finished the sentence.

Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that years of watching the disease progress would prepare me for her death. It seemed reasonable because we had already experienced so many losses and I understood where Alzheimer’s eventually went. I had cried over parts of my mom before she died, so I assumed the final loss would carry at least some familiarity. I was wrong. When my mom died, I punched a wall, and there was nothing thoughtful or graceful about it. I understood exactly what had happened, and I was still furious that my mom was gone.

Looking back, I understand that moment better than I did then. I had spent years learning how to live with Alzheimer’s, but I had never spent a single day learning how to live without my mother. Knowing someone is dying gives you information. It does not somehow teach your heart what the world will feel like after they are gone.

Her funeral came right as COVID started shutting the world down. We were fortunate to gather before so many families lost even that, and I remember how strange the timing felt. I also remember how naturally I slipped into being useful. There were things to do, people who needed care, arrangements that had to be handled, and family members trying to get through their own grief. I have always been comfortable when there is a job in front of me, especially when somebody I love needs something.

That instinct has served me well in a lot of places, but grief eventually exposes its limits. You make the calls, finish the paperwork, take care of people, and keep moving because somebody has to. Then life begins returning to its normal rhythm. The phone calls slow down, people stop checking in as often, everyone goes back to work, and eventually you are making dinner and answering emails again. The person you lost is still missing, but there is no longer anything obvious to accomplish about it.

That was when I started noticing how many things I still wanted to tell my mom. My kids have grown into people she never got to fully know, and their lives keep unfolding in ways she would have loved hearing about. They accomplish something, make a big decision, say something hilarious, or become another version of themselves, and I immediately think about how much she would have wanted the story. I want to see her reaction. I want to know what she would say. I want five ordinary minutes where I get to tell her what she missed.

There are things in my own life I wish I could tell her too. I have changed in ways she never saw. I have made mistakes, built things, lost people, learned lessons I would have rolled my eyes at when I was younger, and become more aware of how much I did not understand about my parents while I was busy growing up. There are days when I would love to sit with her and tell her what I finally figured out about something she tried to tell me thirty years ago. She would likely enjoy that more than I would.

I also wish I could ask her more questions. That regret arrived quietly as I got older. When your parents are alive, you assume there will always be another opportunity to ask about their childhood, their choices, the things they were afraid of, the parts of their lives you were too young or too distracted to notice. Then one day those questions have nowhere to go, and you realize how much of the person behind the title of Mom you never thought to ask about.

My mom was a kidney transplant nurse. She spent a huge part of her life caring for people during some of their most frightening and uncertain moments. I knew that growing up, but I understand service differently now than I did then. I wish I could ask her how that work changed her, which patients stayed with her, which days broke her heart, and what kept her going back. I knew my mom as my mom because that was the role she occupied in my life, and I wish I had been more curious about the whole woman standing behind it.

I remember plenty of other things clearly. I remember the cookies, her faith, the way she loved her family, sitting on a front porch, and the dimple in her chin that became much easier to see when she was mad. Those details matter more to me now because Alzheimer’s tried to dominate the final years of her story. For a while, almost every memory of my mom seemed to pass through the disease because those years were so intense. Time has helped me reclaim more of her from that ending and remember the woman who existed long before any of us knew what early-onset Alzheimer’s was going to ask of our family.

I want my kids to know that woman too. I want them to know more than how their grandmother died. I want them to know how she lived, what made her laugh, the way she cared about people, the things that annoyed her, and the small details that made her herself. She was a whole person before a disease started taking pieces away, and I refuse to let Alzheimer’s become the most important thing about her simply because it was the last hard thing that happened.

That is also why the instinct to tell her something has become precious to me. I once assumed healing meant those reflexes would eventually disappear and enough time would pass that my brain would finally stop reaching for someone who was no longer there. Now I hope it never does. I like knowing that somewhere inside me, my mom is still one of the people I tell when something matters. I like knowing that decades of loving her made such a deep impression that part of me still expects her to be interested.

There is sadness in that, of course, because some days I would give almost anything for one more phone call. I do not need a grand final conversation where we solve everything we never said. I would happily take an ordinary conversation on an ordinary day. I would tell her something stupid, hear her laugh, let her interrupt me, listen to her ask about one of the kids, and enjoy the fact that neither of us knew it was supposed to be important.

I think about what I would tell her now. I would tell her the kids are doing okay and that I am ridiculously proud of the people they are becoming. I would tell her about Kellie and the life we have built, about Heritage and the people I get to work with, and about how often leadership still feels like something I am figuring out while everyone assumes I know what I am doing. I would tell her that I write now, a lot, and that somehow I became a person willing to put the messy parts of himself on a page for strangers to read. I think she would be proud of some of it and very willing to tell me when I was full of shit, which is another thing I miss about having a mom.

Life keeps moving after someone dies, even when you once believed that moving forward would feel impossible. The kids grow, work changes, families expand, people leave, people arrive, and ordinary days continue piling up. Eventually you become surprisingly capable of living in a world without the person you thought you could never live without. Their absence becomes familiar enough that you do not consciously feel it every day, and then something happens that sends your mind toward them before you remember.

Those moments hurt less than they used to, and sometimes they even make me smile. They connect the life I am living now with the years when my mom was part of it. I get a brief reminder that before Alzheimer’s and before death, there was a woman who knew me well enough that I spent most of my life assuming she should hear the stories that mattered.

My mom has been gone for years. I would have loved more time with her, more conversations, and the chance for her to see the people her grandchildren are becoming. I do not get any of that back, but I still have a lifetime of knowing exactly where I wanted to take the good news, the stupid stories, the hard days and the things that mattered. Every once in a while, my brain still takes them there before I remember.

I hope it always does.