Grief

Please Don’t Limit Your Unity

~ Naomi ~ 1 Comment

Today is World Cancer Day (apparently we’re having all the awareness days this week!).

The hashtag for the day is #ActOfUnity.

I think it’s wonderful that people are coming together to stand in solidarity with cancer sufferers. Cancer is scary, cancer is a life-wrecker, cancer is, let’s be honest, a bit of a dick.

I struggle with days like this, because thoughts go round and round my head: ‘why did others recover?’, ‘why didn’t Mum?’, ‘why did this happen?’, ‘why isn’t she alive to say “I kicked cancer’s bum”’, ‘why did this happen’, ‘why, why, why’. Then I feel angry, frustrated, and go and look at puppies or something instead.

My plea, for this World Cancer Day, is that in your ‘unity’, you include friends, family, and carers. Not just those ‘actively’ affected, but also those who have had someone close to them die from cancer. In fact often, a few months after the person has died is the time when they need more support, because that’s when the busyness ends. When you’re not spending your life running between hospital/uni/work/home/sleep/appointments/everything, and then home/crematorium/funeral planning/funeral/family/uni/sleep, that’s when everything hits you. It doesn’t just hit you once, either, it hits you time and time again.

When Mum was diagnosed, I remember emailing a well-known cancer support charity asking what help they could offer me and my family. Their response? They couldn’t offer anything unless the ill person triggered it (and Mum wouldn’t have done that – her and Dad decided given her job we had a lot of support already). I understand where my parents were coming from, I understand that the charity has to have cut-off-points, but it was still a tricky response to hear, particularly because if I had a pound for every time someone had told me to go to them over the last 3 years, I’d have a deposit for a mortgage. Everyone assumed they would offer help to those affected-by-extension. But they didn’t. Why was I left out of their compassion?

Cancer doesn’t just affect the ill person, it affects all of those around them, and it keeps on affecting them, even after the person is in remission, even after the person has died.

I didn’t used to get angry. I didn’t used to panic that my family were dying/dead. I didn’t used to feel sick when my phone went off. My asthma didn’t used to be this bad (a lesser-known side effect of stress). I used to be able to sleep in my childhood bedroom. I used to be able to be able to see cancer adverts on TV and ignore them. I used to be blissfully bumbling through life thinking I had all the time in the world left with Mum. I used to be able to get angry at her and know she wouldn’t leave. I used to be able to give her a hug. I’m terrified of leaning on anybody because if your Mum leaves, then who won’t?

I’m not writing any of this to make anyone feel sorry for me, or because I want anyone to offer me life-changing advice. Life happens. There’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent or cure Mum’s illness. I’ve had a lot of support through it, even now, because I’m really, really, lucky. My family are wonderful, Hope Support do a group Facebook chat every two weeks, my GP continues to either help me through life, or drag me through it depending on what mood I’m in, the welfare tutors at uni were brilliant, uni counselling helped a lot while I was there, my uni college administrator is an excellent hug-giver, I have some incredible friends who understand that sometimes I need to talk, sometimes/always I need to craft, and sometimes I need to just be quiet, and my work are super supportive.

Having people around you makes such a difference, even if you don’t want them around you, just knowing that they’re there can help.

So this World Cancer Day, please do unite. But please don’t limit that unity to those with a cancer diagnosis. Please stand in solidarity with the family and friends of those affected by cancer. Please stand in solidarity with those in remission from cancer. Please stand in solidarity with those who’ve had a loved one die from cancer (however long ago it was). Cancer doesn’t just affect people while it’s happening, it affects them for the rest of their lives.

The Moment Everything Changed

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

It’s ‘time to talk day’ tomorrow. I was volunteering at a time to talk day event when Dad text me asking me where I was and came to pick me up. He told me in the car that Mum’s cancer had come back and that there wasn’t a cure. From that point on my Mum was no longer invincible and everything changed.

Mums aren’t supposed to die, or to get sick. Especially not healthy Mums. They’re supposed to always be there. They are one of the few people in life who don’t get fed up with you (or if they do they’re not meant to show it), who put up with all of your flaws.

In that moment everything changed.

Dad told me that Mum’s cancer had come back. That there was no cure. We were driving from the White Rose Centre to home. I didn’t cry, not really. I looked out of the window. We drove home. Mum and the boys were there. We didn’t talk about it.

I went back to uni that night. I started crying and didn’t stop. I think I maybe text one of the people I was living with in halls. I text a friend from home who drove over to be with me, with another friend. The two of them sat with me until the early hours of the morning. They tried to persuade me to go home, but I couldn’t. They helped me tell the other people I was living with. The next day I sat with a welfare tutor for hours (even though it was a Sunday). I cried, I talked, I sat in silence. I tried to make some sense of it all. We wrote a list of all of the people I needed to tell.

I miss her and sometimes I need her more than others. And given that I’m now 22 and rather more independent, I probably wouldn’t be living at home and wouldn’t be able to crawl into her bed, like I did at 16/17 when things were rough. But I would have been able to text her, and to be honest some days I might have gone home for the evening and got a Mum hug. I miss her. Some nights are long. Sometimes everything feels dark and twisty. And sometimes at 22 you still really need your Mum.

Toast Didn’t Kill My Mum

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

It’s rare that I write a blog post directly in response to things I see on my Twitter feed. A lot happens in the news every day, and there are many people, far more qualified than me, who write articles informing us, explaining things to us, and offering up their opinions on the various things happening in the world.

However, I’ve decided to make an exception this week, because I am fed up of seeing articles pop up telling me that if I eat a certain food, it could lead to cancer.

My Mum had cancer. My Mum died from cancer. Mum was a normal weight, she didn’t have the ‘cancer gene’, she never smoked, never got drunk, ate relatively healthily (she was fairly convinced chocolate could cure all of life’s problems, but balanced it out with all the other major food groups so it was all good), she exercised, wasn’t overly sleep-deprived the majority of the time, she never used sun beds, rarely got sunburned (not content with suncream, we went one-step further in our family and wore long-sleeved tops when it was particularly hot (ginger genes!)), she never used drugs, in fact I don’t think pre-cancer she was even on any prescriptions bar an inhaler. She still developed cancer aged 49. It still came back aged 51. She still died aged 53.

Mum was obviously unlucky, and I’m not saying that all of the science linking various cancers to various lifestyle factors is wrong – far from it. There are clear links between sun damage and skin cancer, alcohol and liver cancer, smoking and lung cancer etc. (for more on scientifically proven links, check out the cancer research ‘causes’ page). Most weeks Mum, a palliative medicine consultant, would come home from work and tell us smoking horror stories – I think if any of us had ever come home with a whiff of smoke on us, she would probably have temporarily disowned us.

That being said, there are some, quite frankly, bizarre claims flying around at the moment, and they’re just not helpful.

The three I’ve seen this week are: burned toast can cause cancer, potatoes can cause cancer, and toothpaste can cause cancer. All have some scientific link between food item (for the purposes of this blog, toothpaste is a food), and cancer. None have proven the link in humans.

There are so many food controversies surrounding cancer; often the same food is listed as a cure and a cause, depending on the study. It’s just not helpful.

Perhaps there is a very, very small link between an ingredient in toothpaste and cancer (in rats) – but I’d go out on a limb and say that it’s probably more damaging to your health to never clean your teeth, than to use a blob of toothpaste twice a day. (After all, unhealthy gums has been linked to heart disease, so we’re clearly all stuffed either way, and might as well die with nice teeth than no teeth!).

We’re all going to die of something at some point. As someone said to me on Twitter the other day: life causes cancer. None of us are going to live forever. Every single one of us is going to die at some point, of something, or in the words of John Cleese: ‘life is a terminal disease’.

Mum died, arguably, before her time, and I clearly remember asking her once she was diagnosed as terminal whether she was angry that it was happening. Her response? God had given her so many days, and she’d lived those days to the full. (She was religious, but change ‘God’ for ‘life’, or the religious figure of your choice, and it still works). She was definitely stronger and more dignified than I think I’d be in that situation – I think I’d be annoyed, upset, and pretty angry – but Mum was right, she really did live every day to the full.

Which would you rather – surviving until 103 but never really living, being scared of everything you touch (and never having crispy potatoes or slightly over-done hot-cross buns), or dying at 53 having lived a full and happy life? I know which one I’d choose.

Until there is solid evidence that burning your toast, cleaning your teeth, and having some gravy-drowned roast potatoes with your Sunday dinner causes cancer, I suggest you take these articles (and any others with equally tenuous links) with a pinch of salt and carry on living your life. Life is short – make sure you live it, don’t just survive it.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/toast-cancer-risk_b_14420240.html

Is it getting easier, or am I just numb?

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

There have been a few things that have happened in the past few weeks which would normally trigger off ‘missing Mum’ alarm bells. They range in size, from those that would have knocked me for a few days, to ones which are just a bit tricky.

Things like:

  • Christmas (without Mum)
  • New Year (oh look, you have to survive another year without your Mum)
  • Getting a new phone (my old one was inherited from Mum, but there’s only so many times you can apologise to the person on the other end of the phone for the fact that your alarm is going off (while on the phone) and you can’t switch it off because your phone has frozen… before a new one becomes a bit necessary. I have mitigated it slightly by putting my favourite picture of us as my background, so I’ve still got Mum in my pocket)
  • Feeling ill (my flatmate and I had a discussion last night over which of my meds it might be a good idea to take, whether NHS 111 might be a good plan (nah, they’ll either tell me to go to bed or to A&E, and I don’t feel like going to A&E) and eventually concluded that heat packs, gaviscon and sleeping tablets with a ‘maybe it will be better tomorrow?’ would be a good plan)
  • An exam (who knows how that went as I’m currently a person of no brain and not really well enough to do much at all never mind take an exam, but I couldn’t postpone it again, and the invigilator said that I’ve aged well, so I feel like I won a little bit)
  • Upcoming appointments that I’m not feeling too fab about (Mum’s are good people to text ‘arghhhhhhhhhh’ to).
  • Feeling like generally, with my health, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, and what to believe (Mum was always fairly blunt, if I walked in looking like I was dying she would tell me)
  • My mental health being a knob (seriously, as a twenty-something year old it’s hard enough to navigate life and try to keep yourself alive without your head attempting to kill you)
  • New year new diet crap (which she would have healthily laughed at and torn apart whereas every time ‘veganuary’ and ‘a researcher has decided that breakfast is bad for you’, I wish I was well enough to join in)

However, despite all these things, the ‘missing Mum’ part of my brain appears to have disappeared (along with the rest of my brain, arguably).

It’s not that Mum doesn’t ever enter my head, but when she does, at the moment, it’s in a much more clinical sense, with all of the emotion removed. It’s not that she never enters conversation, either, because she does (most recently this evening, with the exam invigilator), but when she does, and people say they’re sorry, I normally meet it with a bit of a shrug and an ‘it’s life’, where it might previously have set off cartwheels in my head.

I’m not sure if it is actually getting any easier, or if I’m just numb.

A lot of things, or perhaps everything, is pretty numb right now. It’s not as bad as it might sound – I’d rather be numb than distressed. I often end up in a weird depression-anxiety battle, with depression pulling at me to do nothing, and anxiety screaming at me to do everything; at least when I’m this low the battle pauses because anxiety gives in. So with everything being a bit numbed, it’s hard to know whether grief is lessening, whether it’s becoming the ‘new normal’, or whether depression is just smothering it.

For now I’m just going to keep plodding along, because I’m not really sure what else I can do.

Have ‘a year’

~ Naomi ~ 4 Comments

2016 is ending, which many will be delighted about. There’s a weird thing that we all do where on one day out of 365, we look back at the previous 365 days and judge ourselves. Lots of people are posting achievements, happy moments, sad moments, words of wisdom, and hopes, dreams, and goals for the next 365 days.

I read somewhere that:

‘it’s okay if the only thing you did today was breathe’.

I would like to extend that to this year.

It’s okay if this year you ‘just survived’. It’s okay if you didn’t achieve your goals or complete all of your plans. It’s okay if you didn’t graduate, if you didn’t change the world, if you didn’t get the promotion you wanted or finish a race you wanted to run. You have still achieved something this year – you have smiled, laughed, and loved. You have brightened someone’s day, made someone smile, and made a difference in the lives of those around you.

If this year you have been in hospital, had a family member in hospital, received a new diagnosis, lived with an old diagnosis, taken medication, had an operation, had tests done, or put up with a mind or body which seem less than impressed with being alive, then I’m proud of you.

If you have had a baby, got a new job, graduated, moved house, passed an exam, received a promotion, got married, got engaged, learned to drive or raised money for charity, then I’m proud of you.

If you have taken a picture of a sunset, felt the wind in your hair, cuddled a puppy, taken the bins out, watched TV, read a book, hugged, text a friend… done anything at all that involves being alive, then I’m proud of you because at the times it can feel like there is hatred stirring all over the world and things can feel very bleak, and if you can continue to enjoy and appreciate the little things, and remain kind in the face of all of that, then you’re doing well.

I hope that 2017 is kind to you all. I hope that it brings you the things that you want. I hope that it provides you with family times and time with friends. I hope that you receive love and laughter and that you treat yourself with all of the kindness and compassion you deserve. I’m not going to tell people to have ‘a good year’, because I think that can feel out of reach a lot of the time. Instead I’m going to say have ‘a year’.

Let’s Talk About Grief

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

Death is part of life, but it’s also difficult, and on the whole, crap.

It might not be that bad for the person dying – they might have been ill for a long time or might be ready to die. But for those left behind it’s usually rubbish and leaves them living with grief in some form. (If there isn’t anyone left behind then that is also crap, because nobody should be alone at the end of their life, so whichever way you look at it, death is rubbish).

Despite this, grief is something rarely discussed. It’s a bit odd, because while some subjects are becoming less taboo and more talked about, which is brilliant, grief appears to be lagging behind.

I’m not entirely sure why this is. It might be because those working to break down stigma – being more open, sharing their stories, talking about difficult subjects – tend to be slightly younger and maybe haven’t yet reached an age where grief is a feature in their lives. (I appreciate this is a huge generalisation and stereotype and there are older people also doing some brilliant work).

Whatever the reason, grief isn’t hugely talked about

This year seems to have contained more celebrity deaths than any other in my memory. A lot of people are blaming 2016 but it’s more likely to be that they were all a similar age and life happens. The fact that so many people are blaming 2016, instead of seeing death as part of life, further illustrates how afraid people seem to be to see death as something unavoidable that happens to everyone. It can be far easier to blame the concept of an evil year, than to face up to our own mortality.

Mum had excellent end of life care. She worked in palliative medicine all her life, so she knew what she was doing, but she died where she wanted (at home), pain-free, next to Dad, and I can’t think of a better death than that. Mum knew what she wanted, Mum and Dad discussed it, and her wishes were made known to all of the people looking after her. I’m absolutely convinced that Mum wouldn’t have had a ‘good death’, without having these conversations frankly, honestly, and in enough time for her wishes to be carried out.

Since Mum died, I’ve blogged about grief a little, and heard from people all over the world, of all ages, who are going through a similar thing. The fact that I have heard from the variety of people I have, shows that there is a lack of conversation surrounding grief, because if my blog attracts these people (and I’m just one little person typing from my bedroom, onto a blog that I put no money into advertising), then people are clearly hunting out the ‘I get it’ of another grieving person.

I’ve found that when it comes to grief, so many people don’t know what to say or do with me. As many of my friends know – I’m as blunt as they come at times – I certainly don’t expect anyone to do and say, or not do and not say, anything at all, but I still feel like there can be a wall between me and other people sometimes. Weirdly, the people I’ve found most at loss of what to say have probably been services, some people in services are brilliant, but others blame things on grief that aren’t grief-related, ignore grief at times when it’s probably worth bearing in mind, and trot out generic lines which aren’t at all helpful. I know I’m not alone in this because I’ve spoken to other one-parent people my age who have found the same thing.

If there’s anything that comes from all of these celebrity deaths, I hope it’s that we can open up conversations around death, dying and grief. It’s something that I never really thought about until Mum became ill, but since her illness and death, it’s something I’ve realised is massively important. It’s important to have conversations with your loved ones about what you’d all want at the end of your life, it’s important to keep talking to your grieving friends, and it’s important to keep talking to others if you find that you are grieving yourself.

Happy Christmas

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

xmasHappy Christmas to you all with so much love from me and my blog.

I hope that you all have a lovely day wherever you are – whether it be alone or with family and friends, and whether you celebrate Christmas or not. I hope that you can be as happy as little me in this picture, and that if you’re not feeling that way , then your day is peaceful at the very least.

Christmas can be a tricky time when coping with loss, it can highlight the fact that someone is missing, I know I miss Mum a lot, so be kind to yourselves if you can.

I’ve donated to our Martin House fund in Mum’s memory this year because I can’t exactly get her a present. You’re more than welcome to do the same which you can do here.

If you’re feeling lonely, Sarah Millican is running her #joinin hashtag on Twitter again this year. The Samaritans line is always open, Blurt’s peer support group is there, and Beat have kept their helpline open again this year if you need someone to talk to.

This is to those of you for whom Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas.

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

This is to those of you for whom Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas.

I’m sorry that you are hurting.

I know that the ‘merry’ in ‘merry Christmas’ can feel as though it is mocking you.

When the whole world feels as though it is laughing, smiling, and celebrating, but those are the last things you feel like doing.

Crowded rooms can feel the emptiest.

Hugs can feel like they’re not quite tight enough, not quite long enough; never quite reaching you.

You smile but it doesn’t reach your eyes, and your own laugh seems distant and far away.

The pressure to be perfect can press down on your chest until you can no longer breathe and the number of people around can make your head spin. Occasionally you feel your mask slipping and you have to run to a bathroom and fix it before anybody sees.

Everybody wants to know what you’ve been doing all year and what your future plans are. That can be hard to answer when you’ve spent so much of the year in doctors appointments, hospital visits, and counselling sessions. It’s hard when your test results are medical rather than academic, when so many of your peers are patients or services users not students or colleagues.

It’s okay if your biggest achievement this year is survival. Fighting against the crap in your head, the illness that is determined to infiltrate your body, or the general difficulties that life insists on constantly throwing your way, is huge. It’s hard, brave, and courageous to continue to get up and dressed every day (or most days), when circumstances seem determined to destroy you.

Maybe you’ve lost someone this year. They might have died, or might have just exited your life. Maybe you lost someone last year, or the year before. Time doesn’t heal it, it just gives you longer to attempt to get used to it. Sometimes it makes it harder because the longer they’re gone, the more they’ve missed. Christmas can feel like it’s shining a light on the space that they’ve left behind.

It’s okay to miss them. It’s okay to grieve for them. The fact that they have exited your life doesn’t mean that you have to erase their existence entirely.

Be kind to yourself this Christmas. Let yourself have some time off. It’s absolutely okay to cry if you need to. If you want to laugh, then laugh – nothing in your life cancels out your right to feel happy. Let people in; if you can, and if you want to. Let them hug you. Let them be at the end of the phone. Let them text you. Let them listen. Let them be there.

Maybe you’re feeling just fine. If so, then please: try to be considerate this Christmas. Please understand that not everyone will be happy, not everyone will want to share copious amounts of food, not everyone will be able to manage being around large groups of people.

Christmas is only one day, but it can be incredibly stressful for those of us who don’t feel able to tackle it. Mental illness, physical illness, or other things, can all affect people’s ability to ‘Christmas’, and more often than not, we’re not trying to be difficult, we just can’t do it.

I hope that you all have a peaceful Christmas this year. I hope that it’s as stress-free as possible. I hope that you get a little time with your family or friends and that it’s as enjoyable as it can be.

I’ll leave you with some Winnie the Pooh wisdom:

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.
“So it is.”
“And freezing.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”
― A.A. Milne

Wallowing

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

You know that episode of Gilmore Girls after Rory breaks up with Dean and Lorelai is begging her to wallow but Rory just wants to stay super busy and then at the end she decides she needs to wallow?

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That’s how I feel about grief right now.

For a while everyone says ‘well it’s so soon’ and ‘you’re still experiencing the first of everything’ and ‘you’ve bounced back quickly’ and stuff like that and then grief just settles into this sort of monotony and everyone (including me!) goes on with their lives not forgetting but not really remembering either in quite the same way.

It almost feels as though for a year everyone’s been telling me to slow down/step back/be sad/whatever but all I’ve wanted to do is to get on/move forward/learn how to live again without the unpredictableness of cancer (because however unpredictable grief can be I can guarantee it’s still more predictable than terminal cancer).

It’s been working, too. There have been moments/days/the occasional weekend when I’ve cried more than others. It’s definitely not all been an upwards trajectory of ‘feeling better’, more a steady meander into ‘okayish’ via a few potholes and the odd massive dip… but on the whole I have been slowly beginning to feel a bit more ‘me’ again – dipping my toe into old hobbies, finally meeting up with friends I haven’t seen in yonks, allowing myself to smile and laugh again.

At the moment, it feels as though things are sliding. In truth, things began to slide and I didn’t realise, then I ignored them, then I pretended to ignore them, and it’s only been the past few weeks that I’ve been a little more forced to stop ignoring them.

Right now there is so much in the world that is making me so sad (and occasionally angry). Every day I seem to see or hear something that makes me feel as though I’m breaking all over again. Often it’s things in the news, or on my social media feeds, but sometimes it’s a song or a smell or a memory. All of a sudden I’m wanting to cry all of the time (again), and finding it harder to leave the house than I have done in months (except for work… the majority of the time work seems to break that particular spell), and I’m struggling to come up for air.

I want to be doing projects and organising things. I want to want to go out and do stuff. I want to want to get dressed. I want to want to jump in the car and go to places… but I don’t. I’m permanently exhausted.

I’m trying to limit my use of some social media sites/apps right now. I’m trying to be kinder and softer towards myself – surrounding myself with blankets/teddies/heat packs. I’m trying to get to bed on time, trying to let myself wear my new fluffy PJs (my old ones were at least 6/7 years old and it’s only taken a few months of almost flashing every time I stand for me to force myself to buy some new ones with some elastic that works…) and let myself sleep in the new bedding I finally persuaded myself to buy. I’m trying to give myself the hug that Mum would have given me.

I will get the me of a few months ago back again, I hope. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but I know I have some amazingly lovely and wonderful people by my side to help me get there. For now, until I get there, I might just need to let myself ‘be’.

(PS. If you haven’t seen Gilmore Girls then I don’t even know what to say other than please go and get yourself a Netflix subscription and watch every episode ever made back to back. It’s important, I promise).

We’re currently fundraising in memory of Mum, one year on.
Here is where you can donate to Mum’s ‘one year on’fundraising page online.
If you’d like to donate via your phone, please text ‘FOYO53’ followed by £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070.

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Dear Mum, It’s Been A Year Since You Died.

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

Dear Mum,

It’s been a year since you died. 525600 minutes if ‘Rent’ is to be believed. ‘525000 moments so dear’ (quite what happened to the other 600 moments is anyone’s guess).

It’s gone fast in many ways, though part of that could be because I lost a number of months to depression, sadness, anxiety, or whateverelse you want to call it.

Time is a funny old thing. No matter what is happening, it continues. It can feel fast or slow, but ultimately, a second is a second, a minute is sixty seconds, an hour is sixty minutes. Time really does go on.

The world is a little darker without you in it. A little duller. Your laugh no longer bounces off the walls of the house. Your arms no longer gather me into a hug when I walk through the door. Your smile doesn’t greet me as I come up the drive. I’m remembering things with a positive slant. Of course it wasn’t always like that, especially when you were working late, or once you became ill, but who wants to remember the bad stuff? I still can’t believe I’ll never take another photo with you.

The depression is nothing new, you know that. Often, when you would wake me up on a morning, I would be crying – crying in my sleep, literally waking up on the wrong side of bed, having a bad day before I’d even moved a muscle. You would see me crying and give me a hug. You would get my clothes ready for me and remind me how to get dressed. You would feed me chocolate on an evening (because it could fix anything). You would only ever be a text away, even when you were ill. You would let me come into your bed in the middle of the night when the world felt dark and the nights felt never-ending. You would ask what was wrong but not expect an answer. Your calm, quiet understanding and love could carry me through the hardest of days and the toughest of nights.

I need a hug, Mum. Things were getting easier for a while but at the moment they are getting hard again and often getting from my bed to the kitchen feels like wading through treacle. It can be hard to move. Everything aches and I don’t know why. Maybe my body is missing you. I have to set my alarm earlier in the morning to allow for the dazed confusion when I can’t function or remember anything much at all when I wake up. Sometimes life can feel all over the place and I need a ‘Mum hug’ to ground me. A Mum hug to set everything straight. A Mum hug to make the world feel safe again.

I keep panicking that people are dying. You were the healthy one, the fit one. You ate well, had a normal BMI, exercised, never smoked, didn’t drink much… the perfect candidate for a long and healthy life. I look at those I care about now and see walking diagnoses. I panic when I get a text from Dad or one of the boys. I’m waiting to hear that someone else is ill or someone else has died. It’s only a matter of time.

A lot can change in a year, it seems. I’ve moved house twice, and well and truly moved out of the house I grew up in. I’ve started a new job – well, two new jobs, but one was short-lived. I think you’d like my boss and colleagues; they’re on your wavelength. Both J and I have passed our driving tests (finally!). J has started at a new uni on a new course, and from the significant drop in the number of texts I receive on a daily basis, I can only assume he’s enjoying it (or he’s got fed up of my lack of replies…). E has started sixth form and seems to be loving it. He’s met new people and worked out that every other week his frees align with his friend’s and they can all go round to someone’s house and eat pie. He’s found someone at school who went to his nursery – we looked for his nursery class photo but couldn’t find it. You would know where it was. Dad has started learning to swim front crawl, he’s joined the local AmDram, he’s continuing to use his share in an airplane fly all over the place (though never as often as he’d like), and he’s just about keeping on top of the selling FairTrade stuff at church. Pops has had a pacemaker fitted which brought a new lease of life – he’s back to emailing us little poems and procrastinating raking up the leaves in his garden. We’ve all ‘moved on’ in our own little ways – maybe ‘moving on’ is the wrong choice of words, but we’re all sort of continuing to live.

Someone asked me the other day if I ever talk to you. I don’t. What is there to say? It’d be a pretty one-sided conversation. I often talk about you as if you were still alive, though. It catches people off guard, sometimes. Most people have stopped asking now. Death is just a part of life, but not a part that people like talking about – as a palliative medicine doctor, you always said that people should talk about death more, and now I understand why. I don’t think that death is something which should be feared. I was talking about this with E the other day, we both decided that if we were held at gunpoint we would rather die than be seriously injured. Not that people who have had serious injuries can’t lead fulfilling lives, it’s just somehow more scary to contemplate that than it is to contemplate death.

I miss you. Many people say ‘time heals’, but time only seems to make it harder. It’s more time without you, more times where I’ve missed your advice, more time without a hug from you, more times that I’ve not been able to update you on my life, more times when you’ve not been on the end of the phone. It often feels like a gaping hole – I never knew that absence could hurt so much. The pain can be crippling.

Time has taught me how lucky I was to have you and quite how amazing you were. I hear stories from your friends, colleagues and classmates. I find your work online. Lessons you taught me come back to me when I’m going about my day. I take your values to work with me every day. I chat to people who never knew you, I describe my relationship to you (the ups and the downs, because it certainly wasn’t all plain sailing), and they remind me how lucky I was to have had a Mum as amazing as you.

I know you wouldn’t want us to spend time missing you. You would want us to make the most of every day. To take every opportunity and try our best in all that we do. You would want us to value the time we spend with each other, enjoy our jobs, and ensure that we play as hard as we work. You did all these things with such apparent ease. I have no idea how you kept everything going, I struggle with a fraction of what you did, but you did it. You worked hard, played hard, loved hard. An incredible wife, Mum, daughter, colleague, doctor, auntie, congregation member, band member and friend, right to the end.

I want to say that I’m sorry for not being more, doing more and achieving more. But I know you would tell me that my best was good enough and I need to be kind to myself. I want to say I’m sorry for not always being kind to myself – I’m not sure what your answer would be to that (probably a hug).

I’ll end this here. It’s very long and nobody wants to read all that. Plus, you can’t exactly read it so I’m not sure why I’m writing it. Maybe in a vague attempt to help someone else. Perhaps an effort to make sense of some of the crap filling up my head. I don’t really know.

I miss you Mum. Lots of love. Xxx

We’re currently fundraising in memory of Mum, one year on.
Here is where you can donate to Mum’s ‘one year on’fundraising page online.
If you’d like to donate via your phone, please text ‘FOYO53’ followed by £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070.