Photo: Marisa04 from Pixabay via Canva
Whether it's your first Mother's Day without mom or she's been gone for many years, celebrate her beautiful life with special quotes in her honor.
By Shavella St.Preux — Last updated on May 12, 2023
While Mother's Day is a time to celebrate your mom, that can be painful when your own mother is no longer here. That's why these heartfelt quotes about missing mom hit so close to home.
After facing and grieving the loss of your mother, it can be incredibly difficult to watch your friends, family members, and even strangers celebrating Mother's Day, knowing that your mom has passed away and you can't do the same.
This day of celebration may turn into a day of mourning and nostalgia, but although your mom is no longer with you in a physical sense, her love will forever live within you.
On a day like Mother's Day, it's understandable that you might cry and grieve that she isn't here with you, but try to also remind yourself that her greatest gift remains — and that gift is you. This is undoubtedly one of the most difficult days of any year for someone who's lost their mother.
Finding positive ways to honor and remember your mom when you're missing her on Mother's Day can be a great way to deal with the grief and getting through the holiday without feeling emotionally drained when it's over.
One way to do that is by reading beautiful quotes and poems that help you remember your mother for the positive effect she had on your life.
In memory of mothers who have passed away, here are the best missing mom quotes to celebrate her life.
1. "The world changes from year to year, our lives from day to day, but the love and memory of you, shall never pass away."
2. "Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy." — Jandy Nelson
3. "Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form." — Rumi
4. "Whenever I am missing you, I also remember how fortunate I was that you were in my life. I wouldn't trade those moments for the world." — Cindy Adkins
5. "If I had a flower for every time I thought of you... I could walk in my own garden forever." — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
6. "You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be." — Nigella Lawson
7. "Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place." — Sarah Dessen
8. "We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love." — Madame de Stael
9. "Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy." — Eskimo Legend
10. "Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated." — Alphonse de Lamartine
11. "Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever." — J.K. Rowling
12. "There is something about losing a mother that is permanent and inexpressible — a wound that will never quite heal." — Susan Wiggs
13. "No daughter and mother should ever live apart, no matter what the distance between them." — Christie Watson
14. "Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." — C.S. Lewis
15. "Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them." — Emily Dickinson
16. "I miss the warmth of your gentle hug and the love I felt when my arms were wrapped around you. I miss seeing your beautiful smile and the sound of your voice saying my name. I miss hearing you say, ‘I love you’ and me saying, ‘I love you’ in return." — Millie P. Lorenz
17. "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." — Abraham Lincoln
18. "Mothers never really die, they just keep the house up in the sky. They polish the sun by day and light the stars that shine at night, keep the moonbeams silvery bright and in the heavenly home above they wait to welcome those they love." — Helen Steiner Rice
19. "Mom, I am missing you today but I know that you will always be with me in my heart... I am who I am because of your loving hands. I have my sweet and compassionate soul from watching you and your generosity and kindness to others. I see the world full of wonder because of your imagination. I've learned to never give up seeing your drive and perseverance... I love you always and forever..." — Karen Kostyla
20. "A mother's love is always with her children. Losing a mother is one of the deepest sorrows a heart can know. But her goodness, her caring, and her wisdom live on, like a legacy of love that will always be with you. May that love surround you now and bring you peace."
21. "You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you." — Janet Fitch
22. "'There is no death, daughter. People only die when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.'" — Isabel Allende
23. "In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ." — Ocean Vuong
24. "No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply." — Billy Graham
25. "I wish I had the power to take back every pain, worry, and hurt that I ever gave you. I wish that I could just undo, all the moments that made you blue. I miss you, mom."
26. "I cannot forget my mother. She is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely." — Renita Weems
27. "What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes part of us." — Helen Keller
28. "I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence." — Alyson Noel
29. "Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart." — José N. Harris
30. "But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone." — Mitch Albom
31. "My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart — a heart so large that everybody’s joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation." — Mark Twain
32. "There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart." — Mahatma Gandhi
33. "I miss saying 'Mom' out loud. I miss not being able to find that special card for you and then having found it, writing 'To Mom' on it for yet another cherished Mother’s Day." — Millie P. Lorenz
34. "Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality." — Emily Dickinson
35. "A mother understands what a child does not say." — Jewish Proverb
36. "I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." — Abraham Lincoln
37. "If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them." — James O’Barr
38. "Losing people you love affects you. It is buried inside of you and becomes this big, deep hole of ache. It doesn't magically go away, even when you stop officially mourning." — Carrie Jones
39. "I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it." — Jodi Picoult
40. “My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual, and physical education I received from her.” — George Washington
41. “My mother was the one constant in my life. When I think about my mom raising me alone when she was 20, and working and paying the bills, and, you know, trying to pursue your own dreams, I think is a feat that is unmatched.” — Barack Obama
42. "A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest." — Irish Proverb
43. "My mother is a never-ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune." — Graycie Harmon
44. “My mother... had a very deep inner spirituality that allowed her to rebuild her life. It’s extraordinary that she had such a strong sense of self and such a commitment to the future and such a strong creative sense that she could build new worlds for herself and for us out of the total devastation in her life.” — Caroline Kennedy
45. “I don’t think of myself as a terribly confident person. But I have a survival mechanism that was instilled in me by my mother.” — Naomi Watts
46. "The mother memories that are closest to my heart are the small gentle ones that I have carried over from the days of my childhood. They are not profound, but they have stayed with me through life, and when I am very old, they will still be near." — Margaret Sanger
47. "Grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm and sometimes is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim." — Vicki Harrison
48. "There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love.” — Washington Irving
49. “I know for certain that we never lose the people we love, even to death. They continue to participate in every act, thought, and decision we make. Their love leaves an indelible imprint in our memories. We find comfort in knowing that our lives have been enriched by having shared their love.” — Leo Buscaglia
50. "Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity." — Terri Guillemets
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Shavella St.Preux is a writer with an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College.