For Naya Rivera's ex-husband Ryan Dorsey, Mother's Day is a painful reminder of what he—and their 6-year-old son Josey—have lost.
"I woke up thinking about so much," Dorsey, who split from the Glee actress in 2018, wrote on Instagram May 10 alongside a series of photos of their son. "Josey with his grandma & me by myself. I don't text Happy Mothers Day b/c that seems like an insane thing to do considering. My mind full of so many thoughts. So many things. So many things to do this Sunday but first thing on the list was to get on with it & head to my least favorite place in the world."
Dorsey wrote he "tried to go back to sleep for a little longer as if I could just dream through reality and postpone real life a bit longer." But as he lay in bed, "Flashes of memories of me as a little boy...w/ my mom turned into some gratitude for the years I've had & still have," he continued, "turns into the times my son & I had with his and how they were stopped..."
Ultimately, Dorsey knows that day will never be easy. "Plenty of time for water works, but not now," he added. "I fight it & up I get."
While paying tribute to Rivera—who died in a drowning accident in 2020—Dorsey remembered the places they used to go, thinking of the restaurants where they used to eat, the street where he lived when they met and the store where he used to buy her flowers.
"I miss my exit as I feel like I didn't blink for 10 minutes as my mind was wandering with so many flashes," he shared. "The harder I think about things, it's harder to believe. Un-fu*king-believable, still that this is reality. That this is our real life and I have to blink hard & shake my head as if to snap out of it & grasp the facts of it all once and for all. The thing about LA for me is its like every mile or so I drive is a memory of an experience that stings bc it's gone."
His mind then went to Forest Lawn Drive, the street that enters the memorial park where Rivera was laid to rest. While Dorsey noted it will always "bring the memory of two summers ago," he also wrote that the "memories prior to that I have to be grateful for & our son."
"So I have my time & my talk & shed my tears," he wrote. "Talk about the dumb s--t that set us apart. Thinking about regrets & how life could be, but how it is. Then I have to go on with my day and…that's all we can do is go on, go on while we can."
At the end, Dorsey left his followers with a reminder: "Hug your mommas and grandmas, and love ‘em while you can," he stated. "Forgive & forget, if you can. You don't wanna maybe wish what if you did one day."