When life stops you in its path.

Saying goodbye to My Mother.

Last year my life changed forever. The desire to write how I feel comes in ebbs and flows. Sometimes it feels like the only way to get through what I am feeling and sometimes it feels like ‘whatever’ who cares.

My mother died. It was quite sudden. She was ‘ill’ so we knew it was a possibility, you just keep hoping for longer, for more time. It was a shock. Deep down we all know it will happen to us all, we all die, it is one of the sure things in life. BUT at the moment, in the moment you are not prepared, knowing does not help. It was too soon. She was too young. I wanted more time with her.

It is quite a few months now but not a year. The grief stands there between everything. It has changed over this short time but it is there. It is like a hollow, something niggling in the back ground, always getting in the way and you just can’t ‘put your finger on it’ and then there it is. She is gone. Forever.

There are days, moments in days, split seconds, that are unbearable, that it is unbelievable and unfathomable. The foreverness it WTF. The pain is just Ow. I swear out load. I say f**k off to the world. I mutter OH my gosh. And then carry on. And you do and can ‘just carry on’.

I am a lucky one, I had my mother in my daily life. I know not all families have close intimate relationships with their parents, their siblings. I do, I did. Does it make it harder? I don’t know. Maybe but maybe not. Less to regret, though there is lots. Less to resolve, though there is always something. More happy memories yes maybe. More yearning and a bigger daily ‘hole’ to miss, possibly.

I do wonder how I am dealing with it, do other people manage to understand death, accept it better? I just want my mum back! I hate cancer. There are no answers. Unfortunately, we don’t have a team of doctors we can say were amazing that tried their best, did all they can, it seems a bit more like it crept up behind them too. They followed protocol. There are so many questions, so many unanswered moments of why, how, WHAT?

There is anger, sadness, regret, longing, questioning, emptiness.

There is loving.

There are the whys and why us.

And then there is your daily life.

Life goes on.

I have screamed out load, I have balled my eyes out whilst driving along, I have woken up sobbing.

I feel like I am waiting for something; for it to pass, to change, to be over. I have spent these months speaking to friends, reading and listening to podcasts, of others and their experiences with grief. I am normal, it is how it is. I understand too, I have been told, it does not really go away. It will always be a gap. There will always be something missing. I will keep crying and remembering and longing. But life goes on and you keep living. The good bits, the best memories eventually take over (I hope) to keep you close, to hold you tight and the flashes of her last days slowly fade (I hope). Of course that is what my mother would have wanted.

I am not  and have not been alone. I am very lucky to have my brother close. We have gone through this together. There is no way we could have done this without each other. And we are so lucky to have our families, our extended families and our Ibiza (and Ibiza world communities). It is not something to be done alone.

Maybe this is a ‘funny’ place to be writing such a personal dialogue of such a personal piece of my life, on my happy wedding and family photography space!!  It just did not feel right after such a long gap of not posting anything on the blog to go straight into – “here I am with a bunch of happy family pics or some wedding advice”.

This is where I have been for the last year. Saying goodbye to my mother.