FEATURE: Mother's Day Blues
Mother’s Day is this weekend. People everywhere are making last minute dinner reservations, ordering bouquets of flowers and scouring shelves of picked-through cards looking for the words that tell mom they care enough to send the very best. Wanda Rivera, however, will be going about her business as if it’s any other day. “The last time I celebrated Mother’s Day was the last one I had with my mom,” says the 40-year-old planning assistant from Newark, NJ. “For me, celebrating Mother’s Day was about celebrating her. Now that she’s no longer with us, it’s just not the same.” Rivera lost her mother in 2008 from a heart attack. Before her mother passed away, they would celebrate the day spending quality time together. “It was different every year,” recalls Rivera, who has two children of her own. “If the weather was nice, I’d take her out for the day. Or we’d go over to her place to cook, eat and talk. I loved doing things to make her happy on Mother’s Day. It was all about her.” S...