My mother didn’t tell me how sick she was. When I arrived at the emergency room, after getting a call that she’d collapsed, I found out about her metastasized cancer from the doctor. Three days later, she was gone.
Our two-bedroom apartment was always brimming with stuff. A free-spirited art teacher at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she had a meticulous eye for detail with work, but not when it came to her home.
As I sifted through everything, the overwhelming clutter unexpectedly gave me comfort. I knew I’d find things I couldn’t part with, but it was the simplest everyday object that had the most profound effect on me.
I discovered a tiny pink Post-it stuck to the back page of my mom’s 2010 pocket-size, black, leather daily planner, which I found in her handbag. I’d brought the bag home from the hospital, and as I dug through, the contents carried an unbearable weight. The blue ballpoint pen was the last thing she ever wrote with. A pack of Trident Gum, the last candy she chewed. The planner sat in a side pocket, filled with doctors appointments, scripted notes and reminders — many that included me: “Call about Bee’s insurance.” “Buy Bee a scarf.”
I flipped through the pages, reading her calendar like a diary until I came to the back cover, confronted by the 3x3 hot-pink Post-it. In cursive, it read: “Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass … it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”
My mother hadn’t shared the full extent of her cancer resurgence with me. Her remission from breast cancer had lasted four wonderful years, and I remember the moment — Valentine’s Day 2010 — when she told me that a small bit had returned in her lungs. She would have chemotherapy and be fine, she assured me. I was 29 years old, naive and trusting, and while it was scary, the thought of losing her never crossed my mind. I didn’t know we only had four short months left together.
Sitting in my childhood living room, tears overcame me. A lot of rain had fallen throughout my mom’s short life. She’d lost her father when she was a little girl, and as a young woman, her own mother died of cancer. She rarely spoke about it, and I realized only now the deep heartache she must have felt. She’d endured various illnesses, and a difficult divorce from my dad when I was 2. Through it all, she was loving and resilient and always preached positivity to me.
When I got hot tempered — which was often — she gently urged me to soften.
“You act so tough, but I know the real you,” she’d say. In my tumultuous teenage years, her cards and notes with stenciled images of Buddha or quotes from the Bhagavad Gita would get an eyeroll from me.
In later years, when we were best friends, a smile crossed my face when I read emails from her that told me to “shine bright like the star you are” or “always lead with love and light.”
My mother was prone to long-winded paragraphs in her writing that, while motivational, could also be called toxic positivity today. I recognize the irony that the most clichéd phrase of all — one typically relegated to refrigerator magnets — had become my most cherished of all her platitudes. I once took them for granted, but in their absence, I clung to each one like a life preserver.
I wasn’t the type to hang clichés in my home, but the Post-it was different. It was the last of the sayings.
Over time, its literal placement in my life moved. After I first found it, I put it in my own paper planner (like mother, like daughter). I carried her words in each new planner — initiating every one by sticking the Post-it to the back page. When I got anxious or sad, I turned to it.
Eventually, it moved to the mirror above my bedroom dresser, where it has remained. The bright color that once stood out has faded — now a mottled mix of pale hues. The sticky backing lost its ability, and now a small, transparent piece of tape keeps it on the left corner of my mirror.
It occupies the slightest fraction of space, but I can’t see my reflection without noticing it. Every time, the 19-word mantra emanates a quiet optimism. One that had carried me through some of the darkest times when I needed my mother’s love or support the most.
Before her untimely death, I’d never suffered a major tragedy. Eight years after I discovered the Post-it, I lost a baby when I was five months pregnant. My grief continued through more loss and failure over the next five years. During infertility, the Post-it was a touchstone to my mom’s strength when she faced her own difficult days.
She wrote that message all those years ago, assumingly as a reminder to stay positive and hopeful, and never intended anyone to see it. That message became one of the greatest gifts she left me.
She’ll be gone 14 years on Mother’s Day, and as the Post-it continues to fade, my connection to her deepens.
In smaller moments of anxiety, or when I’m terrified of the future, its presence nudges me to be present and pause for gratitude. I hear her voice uttering those simple, still-cliché words, telling me it’s going to be okay. And I believe it.
