When my Mum died of secondary liver cancer on October 3rd 2023, I was less than two hours away from the hospital. My brother and I had just pulled into a rest stop, and we were in the queue at a small grocery shop when my brother got a call from my Dad. Without my brother saying anything or even looking at me, I knew. I fled outside, where I collapsed. Next to stone pillars, I couldn’t hold myself together, and for lack of a better word, I really did wail. The few people that passed by left me alone, hunched over, with my hands on the cold asphalt, keeping myself from the temptation of lying face down right then and there. Now, over two years later, as I think of that moment, I can still feel the pain I felt then, and I can only think of it briefly, otherwise I will once again find myself hunched over in a pile of grief.
Grief has changed me. It has made me terrified of feeling it that strongly ever again. As cliché as it sounds, it haunts me, and I’m so scared of eventually having to deal with another death again. Unfortunately, death is pretty much the only thing that is certain in this life.
People who haven’t felt this gut-wrenching, life-altering grief say “I can only imagine,” but no, you really can’t and you really don’t want to. The same people also seem to unconsciously put a timer on grief.
I was given allowances when Mum first died, because it was brutal and so sudden and I was 25 and she wasn’t even 60, so everyone seemed to agree that I would be wobbly for a bit. But as time passed, I think people expected me to move on.
I hate to break it to you, but my Mum is always going to be dead. She is always going to be gone forever, unable to text me or hug me or talk to me or annoy me. She’s never going to see any of my accomplishments. I will never get to show her any of my crochet projects. She won’t be there on my wedding day, at any of my birthdays. There’s an empty chair at Christmas Dinner. All of this is to say that this is not something I will move on from.
I continue to put one foot in front of the other, get up in the morning, brush my teeth, wash my face, get dressed, not because I’ve moved on, but because what is the alternative? And because, as everyone’s told me (even those who didn’t know Mum), she’d want me to continue living.
The pain is still here, engulfing my throat, clawing at my heart, pounding on my lungs, these two years later. I may not collapse in public, though it’s tempting, but every so often, I have an evening where no amount of self-soothing will calm down the hysteric sobs. I don’t wail, because I don’t want to worry my neighbours, so instead, it’s a lot of tears and snot and whimpering. And when this happens, the one person who could make it better is the reason I’m feeling this way in the first place, and so it causes an evil cycle of realisation.
I’m almost 28 now, so I’d imagine that I would understand that dead means gone from this world dead, but sometimes, it hits me like it’s brand new information. When I’m wondering what year we went on holiday to Denmark, or where a recipe is, or when my grandparents met, I want to text her. And then I remember, there is no one to answer the text.
I’ve always had quite a vivid imagination, and I’ve always fantasised about the future, so when I envision the future, I now have to train myself to edit her out of the images. It feels like such a given that both my parents will be there at highlights of my life, but that’s no longer the case.
Grief forces you to adapt, not just to huge changes, but to mundane ones too. The certainty that she would always be there, just a text away, has been shattered. Not only is she not going to be there for the highlights, she’s also not there for the every day, the times where I just want her to check in, the times where I want her to worry about if I’m eating well enough, for when I’ve had an exhausting day at work, or I’ve changed antidepressants, or I have a cold.
People are also ill-equipped to handle the information that I have a dead Mum. I don’t tend to sugar coat it because their discomfort is none of my business, because once again, my Mum is dead. But people assume that a 20-something year old would still have both parents. They might be divorced, but they’re both certainly alive.
A few months after Mum died, I got an MMR top up vaccine, because though I was 90% sure that I had it as a kid, I couldn’t be 100%, because of the fact that vaccines might be slightly different in Finland to what they are in the UK, and because I couldn’t ask Mum, who would’ve known. I explained to the nurse that I just wanted to be on the safe side, and she said: “Well, what about your mother, doesn’t she know? Mums usually know these things.”
As mentioned, people’s discomfort is none of my business, so I said matter-of-factly, “Well, she’s dead, so no, I can’t ask her.” As the nurse scrambled to apologise, I realised that this would be my life going forward. People assuming, and me giving them the bad news that they’ve made an oopsie.
When I tell people now that she died over two years ago, people go “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry”, but not in the same way they said it when it was within a year of her death. Then it was “Oh my god, I’m so so sorry, that’s awful, I don’t even know what to say.” Somehow, people treat it like it’s not as bad now, but again, she’s still dead. This is always going to suck.
People tell me I’m doing so well, but I haven’t really been given a licence to not do well. I don’t think I’ve even fully cried about it at work. I take grief days every once in a while, but worry that I’ll get in trouble because there’s only so many sick days you can have before you need to have an intervention with HR. The last grief day I had was in November, but obviously, that’s not the last time I was sad about Mum being dead. That’s just the last time I felt I could allow myself a day in bed because I couldn’t face the world.
It feels like I’m only allowed to grieve on other people’s terms. Terms set by people who have not had to experience the heart-ripped-out-of-your-chest kind of grief. Don’t talk too much about her, in fact, they’d prefer it if you avoid it all together. Also, don’t mention things adjacent to the grief, such as your Dad being alone, or him wanting to sell your childhood home, or you being able to maybe buy some nice things with inheritance money. Above all, don’t make people uncomfortable.
So I’ve packed it all in, giving myself licence to grieve in public only around the anniversary, her birthday, Christmas, my birthday, and Mother’s day. The rest of the 360-odd days are spent quietly crumbling. But as I’ve said, she will always be dead. And that will impact me every day for the rest of my life.
Considering how life-altering this grief has been, I’m actually amazed that I haven’t cried more in public. The only times I did was when I found out, at the hospital seeing her lifeless body, and at the funeral. Because once again, the number one priority has been to not make people uncomfortable.
I know I contradict myself by saying people’s discomfort is none of my business, and then also saying I’ve been following the terms set out by other people, including “don’t make people uncomfortable.”
So, to clarify, I don’t have a problem with making people uncomfortable by telling them my Mum is dead. I know people will always be uncomfortable with that, and so that’s none of my business, because she will always be dead, and there is no nice way to say “she’s dead.” No matter how I would put it, the message is the same, so I just say it bluntly, and people can scramble, panic, get uncomfortable, and that’s fine, because that will always be the case.
What I struggle with is actually feeling the grief around people, because that is what I haven’t been given licence to do. Once people know she’s dead, they don’t want the rest. And they certainly don’t want it over two years later.
I guess all of this rambling is to say, if you have truly experienced grief, you know that it’s not something you move on from, but if you haven’t experienced it, you may unconsciously put a timer on it, and give or withhold licence to grieve based on that. My Mum is always going to be dead, and I am always going to be grappling with that fact. It will continue to sneak up on me, like a really clean glass door, that you don’t notice until you’ve already got a nosebleed. So don’t take away my licence to grieve.
And I hope that by writing this all out, maybe I will be able to sniffle a little more in public, without worrying so much about other people’s comfort.
Because once again, my Mum is dead.
