This is my fifth Mother’s Day without a mother to celebrate. I am bombarded with advertisements, telling me to buy her perfume, a new dress, a purse, or a gift card. Nowadays, though, I’d rather buy some more time. I’d love to buy her voice and play it over and over again. I’d give anything to be selfish with time. Five years, 60 months, somewhere around 1,800 days that I have lived and she has not. Her last two breaths are frozen in time in my head, as I scroll along websites and am force fed advertisements, telling me to buy her perfume, a new dress, a purse, or a gift card.

This Mother’s Day, I request my mother come back and make her delicious roasted chicken. I implore the universe to interlock her fingers in mine, her rings securing a fit that insures, at the end of the day, I won’t have to let go. I would rather fool Death and God and the Universe and risk my own judgment to hear her say “I love you” somewhere other than my dreams. I would make her listen to my day and my months and my years and everything she missed. I want to celebrate her ears and her eyes to hear me and look at me while she’s listening to I know she’s there. I want to celebrate her smile as she laughs at my jokes. I want to hear her heart beat. This is my Mother’s Day.