3 Nov 2016

Grief

When someone you love perhaps most in the world dies, people don't know what to say. What can you say? It's in our nature, at least generally, to comfort the lost and the sick. Grief is a loss. Grief makes you sick. Grief is like having a terrible illness that requires long convalescence to heal and after which, you can never be the same. Grief is intangible and yet so intensely physical.
Until you experience it yourself, which you will because that is the order of things, you cannot hope to know quite what it feels like. I am aggravated by people telling me how I must be feeling. I resent every text and message on some level, because it intrudes, because it reminds, because of the fallacies and clichés. And yet, I value and crave the acknowledgement.
She is dead. She is dead. I am hurting. Can't you see my pain? Can't you feel it coming off me in waves? Can't you feel my grief?

I felt a great vast expanse open in my chest, and stay there, throbbing and empty. And it throbs on. I have to come to terms with so much, we all do, and my ability to write my feelings doesn't change the experience. But I must write. We are together in grief, but our loss is unique and grief is peculiarly personal. The only way I can make sense of it is words, because nothing feels right anymore. Like a hat on askew, like socks that wrinkle at the ankle and are too tight in the toes. Every single action feels wrong in some odd, small way. And then the sledgehammer again, through me. I've only cried once. It is unfathomable.

We had three months to get used to the idea, and when you are caring for and about someone in terminal illness, time loses meaning. A week is a year, a day is a minute. Three months seemed like a thousand years and nothing. I had a mum and then I didn't. I had a healthy-ish mum who did things like go to work and cook food and who spent hours on the phone telling me she had to go in a minute, and who cuddled and smelled of Chanel and red wine and cigarettes and Mum. Then three months of limbo, of watching her decline and knowing there would be no cure and taking a strange solace in the absence of hope. And then she was gone, pinched out like a candle. In a heartbeat, I had no mummy.

This is me and Mum in early August, when she was still in Scarborough hospital. We were messing about, doing pictures for her "MY BOWEL BURST IN BRID! HOLIDAY HORROR!" Take A Break spoof. I had a mock up made and sent it to her and it made her cry laughing. She had the best sense of humour. That was the day I realised I had hardly any photos of us together. And after a few weeks, I stopped taking photos. I hadn't before because I thought we had an eternity together and then I didn't because I couldn't bear a record of the changes to her appearance, which reflected the changes to her insides.

I viewed the changes to my mum through a medical lens, because of the cognitive dissonance in seeing what was happening without understanding why. I envy those who didn't need to. I watched her for the signs of jaundice, I took her pulse, I stared at her monitors in hospital like a hawk, I read her blood results, I read her hospital letters, I watched her having medical procedures done, I looked at her ultrasound, I asked doctors what was happening, I checked her reflexes when nobody was looking, I checked her output, I learned about her medications, I tried not to be doomy but I couldn't bear the false hope of optimism.
I held her hand. I told her I loved her. I told her what things meant. I tried to take the fear out of it. I tried to advocate. I was blunt with her when she needed it. I translated. I told her when to look away, and when it was safe to look. I held her sick bucket. I gave her drinks. I stroked her hair. I put cream on her. I tried not to hurt her.
I saw her at least every three days. Before she got ill, I would go weeks without seeing her and not really mind too much because I knew she'd still be there when we caught back up.

There is peace in the darkness. There is peace knowing that she is quiet now. There is peace knowing she can't hurt now. There is peace in hoping she has gone on. There is peace in the pain of loss.
But nothing is right anymore, and it will take time to grow used to her absence. Mum had a presence like no other. She was all scent and hair and love and chat and humour. You always knew she was there. I don't know where she is now. That is the loss they speak of. Where did she go?

My sister said we will miss her every day of our lives. She is right. It is the endlessness of grief that outfaces me. When I am 88, I will miss her. I will wonder what she would think of things. I will wish I had her to ground me. I will miss her every day.

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