I haven’t got a text

During one of my evenings, where I sit and explore grief, and how other people manage, I read something that has stuck with me ever since. It said (something along the lines of) ‘nothing is as final as death, and that is why it’s impossible to get our heads around it’. How very true.

I’ve text her phone once she died. We had just had some bad news, and I needed her more than ever. I thought I would have more time to get used to her not being here before something of that caliber happened. But time doesn’t work how we want it to.

The next time I opened my messages after I text her, ‘Mum’ was top of my recently text list. For one second. One tiny second, everything was normal. She wasn’t dead. We were talking like we normally do. Then I remembered.

It floored me. It left me in physical pain. My heart hurt. But like with everything, you get up and you carry on.

Technology has cruel ways of reminding us that a loved one has died. I had read an account by a girl around my age, who said that one day, her mum just spontaneously left all the whatsapp groups she was in. So I knew it was going to happen, and I warned my family. But seeing ‘Mum has left the group’ (in hundreds of whatsapp chats. See would make a new one for any event, occasion or conversation she wanted to have) was crippling.

I mean, I know she’s dead. We’ve buried her ashes, I’ve left flowers for her, I have cried rivers of tears for her. But this visual kick in the face was a bitter pill to swallow.

Fucking hell I miss her.