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I would ask her what she prefers.

My mom and I talk about my dad a lot. But she lived alone for a while after dad died and I know she also had her own time to process it alone.

I think it would mean a lot to her that you want to support her however she needs

So, in retrospect, I see that my mom grieved very differently than I did.

I was immediately hit with a titlewave of emotions that lasted the first 1-2 years. It was probably 4-5 years before I could casually talk about my dad without dissolving in tears.

My mom was able to talk about my dad more freely than I was for the first couple of years. I would cry when I thought about him, so casual mentions would just kind of ruin the moment and embarrass me (the crying in front of others). Like at our first Christmas, one of my uncles gave a long drawn out speech right before we opened presents---and while the speech was nice--all about my dad growing up, of course I ended up sobbing and then it was hard to switch off the emotions and get on with the "fun" of opening presents. Whereas my mom was just loving the memories of dad and wasn't super emotional about it. She didn't even cry at his funeral and I was a giant mess.

But then around year 3 -4, I suddenly noticed my mom getting down/blue about life in general. By then I was healing and moving on, so it surprised me. It's like her grief was delayed. I think it really set in that she was going to be alone for forever, and a lot of tasks she'd put off had to be done (stuff around the house, financial stuff). Then she had a huge adjustment period of learning how to lean on herself or hire people for things my dad used to be in charge of. And she was really sad on their anniversary and my dad's birthday.

So I think it took her a long time to really process it all...maybe she was trying too hard to be stoic at first.

I'm sorry for your loss. Losing loved ones is so hard.

It has been nearly 5 years now and it's not at all unusual for him to come up in our conversations. My mom is dating now so whenever we talk about the boyfriend of the week, it is almost always in comparison and how no one will ever fill his shoes. For me I just think so much about how much my kids are missing out on by not knowing him and when there are specific things I will talk about it with my mom. Whenever we have family events he is sure to come up as he was always life of the party. But this is 5 years in - it was SO much harder in the beginning. It is still hard now but it is less fresh and easier to talk about.

Not my parents, but fil passed away last winter; I'm obviously not privy to every conversation between dh and mil, but I def don't think they talk about their feelings-- no one has ever really been open in their family that way. They do talk about him but usually in the context of practical things-- like, his mom is selling the house and dh helped clean it all out, so they went through all of his things to decid what to keep or toss/donate.

My dad passed away almost twenty years ago but we still talk about him frequently. My mom never dated again, so I know she likes to reminisce. Have you read The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion? I read it and passed it on to my mom. We both thought it was a perfect description of grief.

@mrbee: My dad passed away 17 years ago so it's been awhile, but I still remember trying to talk about it with my mom when it was fresh, and she just brushed it off. She actually told me, "Time doesn't stop for you just because he's gone." - Ouch. After that, I didn't talk about it with her for years and grieved by myself. I think her way of grieving was to keep busy and not think about it; to avoid it altogether. Maybe it was her way of "being strong" because she still had a family to care for, mouths to feed...

Everyone has such a different way of coping/grieving. I'm sure a simple question like, "How are you doing?" would do wonders and give you insight on how to love on her during this time. A small celebration sounds nice if she is up for it.

My husband shared a piece on grieving recently that he found on reddit... I'll just copy/paste it here since I really liked it and it struck a chord with me:

"As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks."

My dad passed this summer, and my mom and I talk about him almost every day.