So yesterday I woke up early on Saturday to tidy the house before Zukie arrived to clean. My flatmate has been away this week which means I have kind of let things slip a bit. I have realized that I function better when I feel accountable for another person.

(That’s my excuse!)

So I’m feeling sick and sluggish as I wade through ‘half’ of my dirty dishes

(I never quite manage all of them…but somehow it ‘half’ eases my conscience a bit🙈)

…clock is ticking I am starting to get worried. 
Still no Zukie…

continue cleaning

..panic starts to arise….

“Nooooo please God, don’t let her be sick…not this weekend! I’m sick”🤒

I suddenly realize I haven’t watered my plants in almost two weeks…

so rush around doing that

(my plants understand me and have somehow managed to survive 3 years in my house, semi-unscathed🌱🌱🌷🌻)

I stop at my mother’s plant that I took from her house after she died. I actually took two….but they are both completely dead. I haven’t had the heart to throw this last one away. To be honest am slightly devastated that I managed to murder two of the things my mother loved so dearly. I think I keep watering it in hope that it will one day just miraculously pop up again.

(Denial is so sad).

Still no Zukie.

(The thought of having to do my own washing is starting to seriously depress me)

Keep busy, distraction is good.

Clean out sock draw…you bought new socks you really don’t need all those odd, holey socks anymore. 
Dam I have a lot of socks!🤔 

Realise that the reason I have so many socks is that I took some of my mother’s socks when she died and it is clear that she also took my dad’s socks when he died.

(It’s crazy how we take little things in the hope that we can keep them close.)

Suddenly found myself overwhelmed by the very real realization that:

a) I need to throw away these socks😓

b) I’m feeling sick. My head hurts😣

c) I am a plant murderer😭

d) and that I have a sink full of dishes that I am probably going to have to do😱 

( I hate dishes, in case you didn’t know)…

And I burst into tears.

It made me think of that little princess book by Tony Ross that I read with a kid on Friday called:

“I want my mum”.
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

When my mum was dying one of her friends told me that it was ok to cry when I needed to…she said a year after her mum’s death she would see something and just burst into tears.

(I have to be honest….I thought she was nuts.)

I honestly never experienced that with my dad’s death…It felt like I grieved for about 6 months and then just moved on. My dad’s death catapulted me into finding work and eventually starting to be self-employed. So my internal dialogue was like:

“Gees lady, seriously, get over it, life goes on….I most certainly will not still be crying over my mother a year later.”

It’s been a year and six months and it still hits me like it was yesterday.

(mmm and every time I cry I think of my harsh internal judgment of someone very sweet that was only trying to help.)

I have to admit I have put quite a bit of thought into why my mother’s death has been so much harder to come to terms with than my dad’s. I have some theories.

When my dad died, I still had my two mothers, my mum and Anna.

(Anna worked for our family for many years and really was like another mother/naughty sister to me)

In many ways, I have always felt very lucky to have two mothers….if one died I’d have a backup!👍(Anna’s mother lived to 90 plus so I naively thought we were good there.)

Losing them in the same year was a huge shock.

I am too young to be an orphan!!

I have always thought that finding out that someone you love is going to die is most possibly the worst thing that could happen. I couldn’t imagine ever having to deal with that. I have since changed my mind. I now feel incredibly grateful that I lost both my parents that way…because the truth of the matter is most people don’t get that time to say goodbye to their loved ones. One minute they are there, the next they are gone. Then you have to deal with all the shock, the unsaid words, and the anger at being left all at once. My dad was told about 6 years before his death that he had roughly about 6 years to live. Incidentally, he planned all of his finances for 6 years and when my mother asked what about 2011 his reply was:

“I won’t be around then!”

He even planned all the photo’s to be shown for my mothers 70 th birthday, which was one month after his death

. (Mmmm…sometimes I wish the doctors hadn’t put such a clear timeframe into his head🙍)

Anyway, I will never ever forget that phone call I received in London telling me this. Granted 6 years sounds like a long time, but the reality of the fact that he wasn’t going to always be there was still devastating.

(I was a real daddy’s girl.)

For 6 years I hated the fact that every time I said goodbye at that airport I didn’t know if I was going to ever see him again. It felt like a curse….the tears I would cry simply ‘imagining’ the pain of him not being there were abundant. After a few years like this, I had to literally train myself not to cry when we were saying goodbye.

(But I would still be the one sobbing into my peanuts on the plane)

Although my dad died relatively ‘suddenly’ in December 2010 in hindsight, I realized I was more than prepared for it. I had no unsaid words, no hugs ungiven or declarations of love that I hadn’t made. How grateful I was for those 6 years to get all that done.

My mum was the same….except three months was a lot less time. Three months sounds so short, but as anyone who has watched a family member die from cancer will know, three months can feel like a lifetime. I, in all honestly, couldn’t have handled any longer than three months. The morning of the day my mum died I sat outside and cried from utter exhaustion. I had never in my life been so emotionally and physically drained.

(It hadn’t helped that I had needed to study and write my honours exams during that time)

That day was the only day I didn’t help the carers bathe her…

(I used to just lie with her while they were doing it)

…I just couldn’t…I couldn’t even go say good morning to her like I always used to do. I couldn’t let her see how broken I really was. Luckily I gained my strength back and was able to sit reading to her for a few hours before she died. As horrible as it was to watch my mother struggle through this, it was the most beautiful and healing time for me and my mum. We haven’t always had the best of relationships. I have come to realise just how similar we were in many ways and so we continually clashed over different opinions, particularly when it came to our different spiritualities. My mum was an incredibly strong character with a very strong voice that often left me feeling drowned out. I didn’t grow up feeling like I had a voice. Even as an adult we would bump into people on the street and they would ask me about my life in London and my mum would start eagerly answering for me. Bless her she didn’t mean to …she just loved me and was so proud of me. I got to the point where I had to actually learn to stand up and say:

“Mum please let me speak.”

These last couple of years she was often on the receiving end of some very stern looks from me, where she would always immediately stop talking and let me speak. The sheepish look I always got summed it up beautifully:

“I am so sorry my darling; I really don’t mean to do it…it’s just me.”

Years ago my mother once said to me in pure desperation and pain that everyone tells her what a lovely daughter she has, but she never gets to see her. I was so incredibly hurt and angered by that statement but the truth of the matter was it was true. I did always shut down around her…even after she had mellowed in age and so desperately wanted to be the mother that I needed. I am so incredibly grateful for those six years my mother and I had together after my dad died. They weren’t easy but we managed to build a loving, somewhat accepting understanding of each other. We learnt to laugh together and we found a place that felt more normal and more loving than we had ever had before. But those last three months, they were the most excruciatingly painful and yet most unbelievably powerful time for our relationship. Right from the beginning, we both seemed to be on the same page.

“This is happening, we can’t change it…let’s make the most of it.”

I had some of the most wonderful moments with my mother during this time. Her absolute joy at having me around was so incredibly touching. I got to put her to bed every night, hold her hand, and tell her my stories. One night as I was putting her to sleep she just looked at me and said with tears in her eyes:

“Wonderful, wonderful….so wonderful”.

She was talking about me.

My mother has never been shy of telling us how much she loves us….how amazing she thinks we are…her family has always meant everything to her

(like me she was a woman of many words)

but that was the first time I was actually able to really hear it.

I used to have to take her to the toilet and would just sit there waiting, talking to her. At this stage she was unable to speak anymore. I would sit there and pepper her with stories, always trying to keep her entertained. I finally took the chance to say what I had always wanted to say:

“Mum I know we have always had very different spiritual beliefs, but I want you to know that I believe as souls we choose the people that come into our lives. We choose the people that are going to shape and make us who we are. I believe we chose each other. Without you, in my life I would never be the person I am today and I am so grateful for you”

My mother’s response was in true Brenda Hill style: She rolled her eyes at me.

(Her internal dialogue no doubt being: “My child, I may not be able to speak, but I still think you are speaking rubbish!”)

We then both packed out in absolute hysterics. It was at that point that I finally got that my mother could no more accept my point of view on spirituality as I could accept hers and at that point in time, frankly neither of us cared. I will never forget that moment with her. The fact is even if she didn’t agree with me…I knew she still loved me unconditionally…as I did her. I had finally found my voice…I was finally able to be genuinely grateful for all the wonderful things I had learnt from my mother.

Her continued encouragement of me to simply always do my best,

Her strong character that made her stand up for what she believed in,

Her utter resilience to keep trying and to never give up even when things got hard

Her determination to never give up on our relationship,

Her loving and kind heart meant she was always thinking of other people,

Her joy of writing about her experiences and yes her love and faith in God

(Even if not quite her way.)

I am so in awe that after all those years of searching for my voice, not only did I get to find it but I got to be my mother’s voice. I got given the gift of mothering my mother.

How beautiful is that?

So no, now I consider myself one of the lucky ones.

I got given the gift of time to say goodbye.

If I am honest the sudden death of Anna has left me with more pain and more frustration than both my parents’ death. With them I had my closure, I was prepared. With Anna not so much. There was so much I never got to say, so much I would have done differently, had I known it was coming. I have had to do quite a lot of work on self-forgiveness as far as she goes…and its still a work in progress.

(Forgiveness is a whole new post😳)

A few years ago, the same friend who I wrote about yesterday once implored me to treasure my mother, after I had done my usual rant on how frustrating our relationship was. She had recently lost her mother quite suddenly. While I appreciated her thoughts I felt a little annoyed:

“Easy for you to say, you and your mother had a wonderful relationship. And let’s face it…it’s a lot easier to appreciate something when it’s gone.”

I have come to appreciate the other side now and I am so aware of how “Not easy it is” when they are gone. How much I miss those random calls at the most inopportune moments.

(And regret sometimes not answering).

How I miss just dropping by her house and getting that hug. How I miss the crazy text messages with the million smileys. And how I miss her bringing me food when I was sick!

(And how I regret the times I said no…”You don’t need to bring me food!” )

I am so incredibly grateful that I did actually take my friends advice in those last few years. I made a point of visiting her every Monday night. We had ‘little old lady movie nights’ with some of her friends. I would take her out for coffee, shopping or a meal and her absolute delight was always so palpable. I had a photo shoot done with her, not realising it would be our one and only.

(We had such an amazing photographer who had my mum giggling like a little school girl! It was one of our best days ever together🤗)

I came to appreciate that my mother was simply a perfectly flawed human being who genuinely did the absolute best that she could. All she ever, ever wanted was a little time with her precious daughter that she had prayed for, for so long. All she wanted was my friendship and I think I managed to finally give it to her.

So for that, I am so very grateful.

So now I have spent the last 4 hours crying, but I am finally glad I got all that out!

I don’t ever like giving advice. Advice is so subjective….and personally, I hate people telling me what to do! 😬 But if one or two mums and dads get a call today or better yet a visit and a hug, then I will be over the moon with happiness.

Now my head is killing me so I am going to take my sick arse to bed and sleep!

(I just heard my flatmate wheezing and coughing in the kitchen…I think it’s an epidemic…. If I don’t make it through the night.…I love you all!😍)

Much love
😍😆🐝💐🌸🏵🌹🌷🌱

Ps Tomorrow I will throw the dead plant away…I think it’s time!