The difficult first post

So in case you weren’t sure, my mum died.

It’s been 7 weeks since she left us.

We knew it was coming so it wasn’t a shock. For the last 2 and a half years I’ve lived with this knowledge, yet nothing that I thought would happen in this time happened. I didn’t feel how I thought I would. I didn’t behave like I thought I would. I didn’t get caught up in the parts of death that I feared the most.

The relief I initially felt after her death, has long gone. Without me realising, over the last week or so, grief has crept over me. It’s dug it’s claws in, and as yet, there’s nothing that will shake off this cloak of consuming sadness. I feel as thought this pain is visible, and therefore to everyone else in the world, it’s abundantly clear that I’ve just lost my mum. There might as well be a sign around my neck broadcasting this news to anyone who approaches.

I’ve started this blog now, a day after what would have been her 54th birthday, because I feel as though if I don’t harness these feelings, if I don’t put into words and truly express what is going on, then I’ll just continue to manifest in this mindset.

I also hope (if I manage to lure any readers to this page) that this is helpful to those experiencing grief, or tragically find themselves in a similar situation to what I experienced, where I found myself knowing her life was going to be cut short, and having to contend with that all of the time.

This isn’t going to be doom and gloom. It might sound like it, but I promise, that’s not me. Nothing gives me more pleasure than making people laugh. When I’ve written stuff before, I’ve always quizzed the reader on ‘what made you laugh?’ ‘What was funny about it?’, in a desperate attempt to soothe my ego and have the confirmation that I so desperately want. I mean, I even did this when practising the speech I put together to read at my Mum’s funeral. So this will hopefully be a mixed bag of the sadder stuff, with the light relief peppered through out.

I’ve reached a point within this process now, where it feels like the activity around her death has truly died down. There’s nothing left to plan as the funeral is a distant memory. The barrage of ‘let me know if I can do anything’ or the classic ‘thinking of you’ messages have (thankfully) eased up. So here we are. Trying to keep her memory alive and working through the mess her dying has left.