bereavement

There Was A Life Before Cancer

~ Naomi ~ 1 Comment

It feels as though cancer has been part of my life forever. It’s only been 4 years. Two elevenths of my life. Or 18%. So not all that much when you calculate the percentage, but I suppose cancer will always be part of my life, now. Having a Mum die of cancer does that to a person. The word cancer will always hit me in a way it never did before August 2012, and I’m more alert than I ever used to be for signs and symptoms of cancer in both myself and those around me.

So over time that percentage will grow. But however much it does grow, whatever number it hits, it will always be under 100%; I had a life before cancer, and there will be parts of my life to come that won’t be defined by this disease, either.

I’ve just cleared out my childhood bedroom at Dad’s house. It used to be called home, or my parents’ house, but none of those seem to fit any more. So it’s now Dad’s house. It’s been a few weeks since I was last there. It’s all a bit odd… When I first went to uni, I didn’t go home for weeks on end. But as Mum became more ill, I went home more often, so it never really felt like I was moving out… or moved out. I haven’t slept in that room since Mum’s coma in February 2014, I’ve always stayed in the spare room, but that’s another story for another day.

Going through my room was like travelling through time. With every cupboard, every drawer, and every bag, another set of memories was uncovered.

It’s amazing how many details of childhood get lost in the fog of memory and time. I had a house in a village and a small primary school and some friends. I had reading achievements, book cover design achievements, a poem in a published book. I had a church, a Sunday school, the Fairtrade stall, a few Christian camps. I had swimming badges, Brownies badges, Guides badges, Explorer Scout badges, and Duke of Edinburgh awards. I had music certificate after music certificate after music certificate. I had multiple art books, a jar of wool-ends from the granny square blanket Mum helped me put together, another jar of little paper stars I used to fold. I had tennis trophies, a table tennis bat, a few medals from charity runs. I had enough charity and volunteering t-shirts to clothe a small army.

I uncovered the life of a person with hopes, dreams, aspirations and confidence. Someone who looked to the future, knew what she wanted, and had long-term goals. Someone who got involved in anything and everything, and aimed to be the best at everything she tried. I uncovered the life of a person who feels so far removed from myself that I’m not sure I recognise them.

Some of losing these things is just growing up. It’s a natural part of life. But it’s almost as though cancer came into my life and slowly took my interests, and what made me ‘me’, erasing them from my life one by one.

I had a life before cancer, but I don’t want to go back to that life, because it doesn’t feel like ‘my life’ anymore. I don’t want to try and go back to the person I was before because it would be like trying to fit a jigsaw piece into a hole that it doesn’t belong in. I would say I feel broken, and irreversibly changed, but I’m not sure that’s entirely true. I have changed. My perspective has changed, and to some extent my life values have, too. Cancer has ripped a hole in my life, and caused me to forget to live for a couple of years. It makes living hard at times, even now, because it feels like I’ve ‘checked out’ for the last few years, and in that time things have changed and people have moved on – it’s impossible to jump straight back in feet first.

I had a life before cancer, and I’m not going to get that back. I don’t want to get it back. But if I had a life before cancer, I can have a life after cancer, too. I’ve just got to keep taking steps forward, no matter how hard it gets. I’ve just got to keep on keeping on

Also posted on Huffington Post.

I’ve Lost My Anchor

~ Naomi ~ 1 Comment

Losing my anchor is hard to explain. It feels like I’m floating around in life with nothing to tie me down or ground me.

As Hope Edelman writes in Motherless Daughters:

But if you’re twenty-five and you’ve lost your mother, how do you know where you are? It’s really, really difficult to not know where you are at that age. You need to be in relation to something. Dad may be really important and helpful, but he’s not a woman.

I’m a bit younger than 25… but it still resonates with me. My emotions can run wild and there is nobody to keep them in check. Sometimes I get upset (like anyone else), but where there used to be that person to give me a hug or receive a ‘brain dump’ text, there is now a blank space. Other times I’m really happy, good things have happened and I want to share them. But it’s hard sometimes to find that person to share it with. So it peters out.

I don’t really want anyone to fix anything. I’m not really expecting any answers. I just want someone to say ‘actually, yeah, that’s crap’, and then have a chat, give me a hug, and move on with life.

It’s a weird sensation losing your life anchor. Sometimes it’s a very lonely place to be. It can feel like you’re out at sea and you can shout, scream, sing, dance, whatever… but nobody can see or hear you.

When you have an anchor, it can be easier to try new things, meet new people, and go to new places, because you know that there is someone to come back to if it goes wrong (or if it goes right!). You know that after a long day, when you’re tired, there’s someone to welcome you home. You know that if you get ill, there’s someone to look after you (even if it is by text). You know that if you have questions to ask, there is someone to go to.

My Dad is very good for a lot of these things. He’s still there to go to and is pretty much always there when I need him. My two brothers are also lifesavers at times (even if communication is sometimes a struggle for a 16-year-old boy). I have some amazing friends, too, who listen to my brain outpourings and answer my questions. I’m lucky to have some fantastic women in my life who mentor me, listen to me, answer questions and give me hugs. Some I view as almost adopted ‘big sisters’. But nobody will ever replace Mum. Nobody has the seemingly unlimited amounts of time, love, and patience that Mum possessed, and there is nothing on this planet that is as safe, warm, and grounding as a Mum hug.

Missing Mum is to be expected. Nine and a bit months on and I’m almost more frustrated that she’s missing out on stuff, than I am upset that she’s gone. I get angry. Cancer sucks, in a big way. I want to shout and scream at it for destroying her body and taking away her life, but there is no point in that because cancer wouldn’t hear or care. I’m frustrated that she’s not here when I need her. Sometimes I get mad at her for leaving life, even though I know it wasn’t her fault or her choice. I often want to throw a tantrum at the injustice of it all. Or to run and run until my body burns and I can focus on external pain, rather than the internal pain I feel. I want my chest to burn from being alive, not from the pain of someone being dead. I want Mum back.

I’m floating around. Bouncing backwards and forwards like a ball stuck in a pinball machine. I feel like I’m flying away and losing control and there is nobody to catch me and bring me back. I try to communicate things, but my words get stuck and lost and float away, unheard. Mum used to practically be able to read my mind (which I definitely was not a fan of at times!), but that seems to be a power that only Mums possess. It’s nobody’s fault but my own. It’s not that people aren’t listening or don’t care, it’s that I don’t have the words. I just miss her. I want my anchor back.

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Cancer Takes Another Life

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

I’ve just heard that Dr Kate Granger died yesterday, at the age of 34.

I first ‘spoke’ to Kate over twitter a couple of months before Mum died. I’d seen her floating about on Twitter a while before then. I knew she was being treated in Leeds, and had asked Mum if she knew her (a high probability given that there were just 3 consultants in Mum’s palliative medicine team). Mum said that she’d seen her around, fundraising and things… or something along those lines.

Kate contacted me last April, after I started blogging about Mum’s illness, saying:

Im so sorry to hear about your Mum. She helped me through some very tough times…

In fact Im really missing her support now & I almost feel disloyal for seeing another pall care cons.

I had no idea Mum had treated her and when I mentioned it to Mum, Mum brought up the whole doctor-patient confidentiality thing which I’d forgotten… I later read Kate’s books and, though Mum wasn’t mentioned by name, with the knowledge that Mum was her consultant at times, I could sometimes see the Mum I knew coming through.

She then contacted me again a week before Mum died:

Dear Naomi, reading your latest blog was heartbreaking… Just wanted to let you know Im thinking of you and your mum. K xxx

We had a short conversation. She asked me to pass on to Mum that she was still defying the odds and was in their thoughts. Mum wasn’t particularly responsive at the time, but I told her and she smiled.

After Mum died, she messaged me again:

Oh I’m so sorry to hear that Naomi. Thank you so much for letting me know. She was a fab woman your Mum. Never forget that. Huge hugs & love to you & your family xxx

And then, later on:

Have been with my girlfriends today – not something we manage as often as we should. We were planning our Christmas get together – an unexpected event for me – but found myself stopping & thinking about you & your Mum. How tough Christmas will be… Your blog is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for speaking out about dying & grieving so eloquently. Thoughts are with you xxx

I know that Kate caused waves in some of the work she did. I know that some medics weren’t always happy with the way she tweeted things, or what she wrote. I also know she raised a huge amount of money for charity, got people talking about death and end of life care, and highlighted the importance of clinicians introducing themselves (#hellomynameis).

Hearing of her death is upsetting. For me, it is another link to Mum which has been lost. But from a wider perspective – it’s another life lost to cancer. Another person who’s life has been cut short due to this horrible illness. Another grieving family who are left to make sense of the nonsensical. I hope that they can take comfort in the fact that Kate was loved by many, and that she made a difference.

9 Months Too Long

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

Dear Mum,

It’s been 9 months since you left and to be honest, it’s about time you came back. I’ve definitely learned the lesson of how fab you are and how much I need you in my life; I promise to never forget that ever again. I just need you to come back.

Sometimes I think it’s all maybe getting a little easier, but then I’m hit with another huge whallop of grief – determined to knock me down and keep me there. I have to do whatever I can to find some air again and claw my way out of the grief vacuum. It would be far too easy to drown in it.

It’s sunny now. Summer is here (in true British form of ‘is it going to rain today? 1186773_429236453855696_2130074871_nI better take a coat just in case’). Last summer you hardly left the house – it was too painful and tiring. The summer before I barely remember, I think you must have been working, and I was too. The summer before that we all went away as a family, climbing up mountains in France and mountain biking down them. It was boiling hot but there was snow at the top of the mountains. There are photos of us standing in snow in t-shirts.

You loved summer. You would come home on time to watch Wimbledon (unlike the rest of the year when you would often work late), then would finish your work later that evening, after ‘Today at Wimbledon’ had finished. We’d play table tennis in the garden, or actual tennis down at the local tennis club. We’d go to places on weekends sometimes; Yorkshire Sculpture Park or Harewood House, or even just have a potter around Wetherby. 166 (2016_04_23 16_52_32 UTC)You would normally take a couple of weeks annual leave and we would go somewhere – France for many years, but Spain once or twice, or different places in the UK.

I remember one day last summer really clearly. It must have been summer because I was wearing the dress I’m wearing today (I hadn’t realised that until I thought about it just now!). Dad was at the cottage so I offered to come home and be with you. You woke up mid-morning. I helped you to the bathroom and found your medication that Dad had left out for me. You thanked me for looking after you – you had kept insisting that friends could come over or carers could come round – but that morning you told me you appreciated it being a family member. In that moment I wished more than anything that I had my life more ‘together’. I wished I’d passed my driving test so I could have come over more and done more. I wished I was more sorted, more settled, more able to help. I wished I could have spent more time with you.

I miss you.

My driving test is coming up – I’ve finally almost reached that point (let’s hope I pass…). I’m settling down. I’ve got a better work-life balance. I might have been more able to help this year. But it’s a year too late.

Nine months is no time at all, yet in my head it stretches on forever. It’s not even a year. In the grand scheme of things it’s nothing, but it’s a nine months which have perhaps been harder than any previous nine months that I’ve ever lived through.

So, it’s about time you came back now, you’ve been gone long enough. We’ve learned to do a few things without you – we’ve learned to make a decent Christmas cake, we’ve learned which suncream to buy, we’re learning how to have fun again. E managed to get off on a school trip with all documentation intact, J has finished a year of work without killing or maiming any children, Dad’s kept the house going and the boys alive. We miss you, though.

I miss you, Mum, it’s been nine months too long and the sun is screaming out for you to bustle through the house and throw us all outside.

Lots of love,
Xxx

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Here’s to Those of Us Who Aren’t Graduating This Week

~ Naomi ~ 5 Comments

It’s graduation season. Facebook knows it, Instagram knows it; it feels like everyone in the world is graduating. If you can count yourself among that number, then all I have to say is this: congratulations. I have so much respect and admiration for anyone who completes uni, whatever their degree class. It’s really not an easy thing to do, and it’s so lovely to see people smiling next to their proud family members and friends. I know people that have completed uni despite really difficult life circumstances, and I think that it’s phenomenal to have achieved so much, and they should be incredibly proud.

I also know quite a few people who should have finished university this year, but they’re not, because life didn’t go to plan. Some have horrible illnesses to deal with, some have chronically or terminally ill family members, for others life has just dealt them a rough hand and they’ve been blown off course a bit.

Currently, I’m sat in my jimjams watching Come Dine With Me repeats and hoping that tonight might be the night that I actually get a decent amount of sleep. Looking at all of these celebratory photographs while feeling so far removed from them can be pretty difficult, because there’s a nagging voice in the back of my brain saying “that could’ve been you”. It can be so easy to look at other people’s lives and see all that you’ve lost. Had life gone to plan, I would have been stood there alongside my peers in a cap and gown, smiling next to two proud parents. That’s what I always thought would happen when I signed up to university three years ago.

But for me, and some others I know, even if we’d have stayed at uni and graduated with our class, we wouldn’t have had two parents stood smiling next to us, because we don’t have two parents any more.

The other morning, I was cycling around this beautiful city I now call home, as part of my job. I later went into the office, talked to my lovely colleagues, and spent a couple of hours listening to the radio whilst doing some work. I left the office and went to The Hut where I volunteer, and spent a while sat on a bench, chatting in the sunshine with a friend I met there. I came home and after a driving lesson, I spent some time with my flatmate, doing her hair for a dinner she was going to. I’m so lucky. I’m much more content than I have been in a long, long, time. I feel like I’m finally beginning to get a little ‘me’ back.
I wouldn’t have ever found The Hut, or my job, if I hadn’t left uni when I did. I wouldn’t have made that friend; I probably wouldn’t be living where I am now. I don’t know what I would have done or where I would be, but I wouldn’t be here; and I’m happy here.

I know a few others who have left uni, too, or are simply graduating at a later date. One or two have jobs, some are still living in this city and others have moved elsewhere. All of them are doing something with their life, and that’s amazing to see.

So here’s to those of us whose lives got blown off course. Those who are continuing to get up and face the world every single day, despite seeing how far life will go to try and make sure we can’t. Who are in new jobs, making new friends, creating a different life from the one we had always planned. Who might not have got a cap and gown on today, but who got dressed in something resembling an acceptable outfit, despite the crippling depression/stress/pain that can be in our lives, those of us for whom getting dressed and leaving the house is a real achievement. Here’s to those of us who don’t have that certificate, but who deserve a medal for simply participating in life when sometimes all we want to do is hide.

To everyone who is continuing to live their life, despite horrendous circumstances, I’m proud of you. To my friends who are watching Facebook this week with a pang of disappointment or sense of failure, I’m proud of you. I’m so proud of you for continuing to smile, for continuing to check if others around you are okay, for holding others together when you feel like falling apart, I’m really, really proud of you. I hope that you can look at all you have achieved, and all that you are, even if it’s not something you can get a certificate for, and feel a little proud of yourself, too.

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Chilling on Friday morning, reflecting on the lack of graduation, but the amazingness that is my job 🙂

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/graduation_b_11030956.html

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The Dinner Party

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Around the time of Mum’s death, I came across The Dinner Party. It originates in America, and there is currently only one Dinner Party in the UK (based in London). It’s been at the back of my mind for a while, but has come to the forefront of my mind recently, for a couple of reasons.

The idea of the The Dinner Party, is that people who’ve experienced loss come together over some food, and chat openly and honesty about loss, and life after loss.

I’ve been thinking about hosting one in York… I’ve spoken to TDP about how I would go about that and they’ve been super helpful. But before I go any further, I wanted to know if there would be any interest from people in attending a Dinner Party based in York? If you would be interested in joining us, please could you drop a comment below with your email, or email me, and I can put a list together and get back to you all 🙂 Thank you!

TDP_Manifesto

Learning to Let Go

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Letting go is hard for anyone, with pretty much anything. Letting go of one of the only things that has been consistent in my life since Mum died, is really really hard. But necessary.

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Volunteering at Time to Talk day 2014 – the day I heard Mum’s terminal diagnosis.

I’ve volunteered with Shout Out Leeds for three years and in doing so, I’ve met some wonderful people, had some amazing opportunities, and really grown as a person. We’ve supported each other through ups and downs and (hopefully!) made a real difference with the work we’ve been doing. I was actually with them when I got the text from Dad asking to meet up on the day he told me about Mum’s terminal diagnosis.

I started with the group as a fairly inexperienced member and learned a lot from those older than me, as time went on, I began to lead on things and eventually I took ownership of the Twitter/Facebook/Website. It’s now reached the point where I’ve gone as far as I can go with the group, and I have to move on and continue to build my life in York, rather than constantly returning to Leeds. I’m beginning to get paid for a lot of the things we would do in Shout Out for free, and as much as I’m an advocate for volunteering, I also need to afford to live. I had a good chat with the facilitator of the group, and we decided now was a good time to move on, before I began to get frustrated or stagnate.

My friends and I joke about ‘adulting’ all the time. We all seem to bounce between changing lightbulbs and colouring in, buying non-slip bath mats, and consuming frozen frubes, navigating tax and eating our tea off disney plates. We’re fumbling our way into adulthood with much hilarity and the occasional unmitgated disaster.

Part of this adulting is learning when to let go of things. Working out what to take with us, and what to leave behind. Knowing when it’s time to stop, breathe, and regroup. It’s not easy! Occasionally there will be times when it is clear that something needs to go, and sometimes it might even be a relief to cut something out of life, but more often than not, it’s really difficult. There are no right and wrong answers and no guidebook. It’s just life. It’s giving things a go, experimenting with things, taking risks and watching what happens.

I find it hard to move on because I’m leaving Mum behind. But I can’t remain in the place I left Mum forever. It’s not possible, and she wouldn’t want me to. She would be telling me to get up, get out, and live life. We’ve all got to keep on keeping on, and learn when it’s time to let things go.

 

I Don’t Want to Become ‘Hardened’, I Just Want to be Me

~ Naomi ~ 5 Comments

Lots of things have happened in the news this week. Lots of things have happened in other people’s lives this week. There is a lot of stress, upset and anger in the air. Facebook is a melting pot of unkind exchanges, arguments, and blame. It’s not a nice environment to be in and I find myself shrinking away from it and burying myself in other things.

Several times in the past week, something horrible has happened either on the news, or to a friend or acquaintance; the kind of horrible things nobody should have to face. Ashamedly, when these things have happened, the first thought that has popped into my head has been ‘so?’.

You lost your bag, so? You broke up with your significant other, so? Your housing plans fell through, so? So what? You’re still living, breathing, healthy. You’ve still got both your parents. You’ve still got a steady income, a place to eat, clothes to wear. You’re still richer than most of the world’s population. Nobody’s died, things can be fixed, worse things have happened, I could go on.

I don’t say any of these things. It’s bad enough that I think them. I hate that I think them. The problem is I compare everything to Mum’s illness and death. When compared to that, a lot of things seem small or insignificant in comparison. They’re fixable.
Sometimes, this is a really helpful way to think. I certainly stress less about little things that used to really bug me. It can help me to have a clear head when dealing with difficult situations. It’s made me more resilient.
But it’s not a kind way to think. I feel as though I’m becoming ‘hardened’. I’ve always liked that I am able to empathise with a wide range of people. I love that I feel able to talk to different people about different things. I love that people feel able to talk to me. It’s an incredible privilege and very humbling, and I don’t want to lose it.
On the whole, I’m pretty good at giving myself a time out when these thoughts strike. A little bit of time to breathe, think, and then respond. I’m not sure of any other way around it.
Something that seems so small to me is something which can seem massive to someone else. It’s all relative. If a person has never gone through anything particularly difficult, then they’re more likely to find something upsetting that I might barely blink at. Other people will have gone through a lot more than me, and something which I find incredibly distressing, they may well see as nothing.
But I worry that as time goes by, I will only become more ‘hardened’. I worry that I am beginning to close off more. Sometimes I feel like shaking people, shouting at them; anything at all to make them realise how lucky they are. To stop dwelling on the seemingly insignificant and look around at all they’ve got instead of all they haven’t got. There would be no point in doing anything like that, though. It wouldn’t help. The saying ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’ wasn’t born out of thin air, but it’s not a great thing to yell in someone’s face.
I don’t want to become hardened. In many ways, I wish I still worried about things which now seem insignificant. I want the old me back. I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to be hard, I don’t want to be grieving, I just want to be me.
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Some days are just HARD

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

Nothing specific has happened today. Well one or two things, but nothing of great significance (compared to Mum dying, anyway… I compare any challenges in my life to Mum dying, it’s a pretty effective tool for minimising any stress). The whole country feels somewhat unsettled after the EU referendum which certainly isn’t helping, and my Facebook feed is pretty unpleasant. It was noticeable in The Hut today that many members were more anxious and/or flat than normal. I had two appointments. Neither were bad, in fact they wer both pretty positive, but both contained things which are difficult to hear.

Nothing ‘bad’ has happened. Some days are just hard.

I’m tired, I’m not sleeping well at the moment. The sleeping tablets I’ve been off and on for the last 10 months (sleeping is hard when closing your eyes prompts images and memories of a very poorly Mum) aren’t cutting it right now. It takes ages to fall asleep and once I do, I wake up all night. It’s not ideal, and all day I just want to nap. I’m tired, and I don’t just mean sleep tired.

Life keeps throwing up challenges and sometimes they’re cope-able-with, sometimes they’re cope-able-with-a-bit-of-help, other times it can feel hopeless. Perhaps I’m not making any sense, but I’m not sure I understand myself right now or that I have the words to explain how I feel. I feel mute.

I miss Mum, that much is clear. I want nothing more than to run home into a Mum hug. I want my Mum to look after me, to help me through the difficult days. I want to text her when I’ve had a tough appointment, I want to let her know when good stuff happens, I want to ask her advice on which food containers to get for my cupboards. I want her to come into my room on the mornings when the world feels bleak and I’m unable to move, to bring me some cornflakes with skimmed milk and brazil nuts, to get my clothes out for me and remind me how to get dressed, just like she used to. I want to go into her room at 2am when I can’t stop crying, to sleep next to her in the big double bed, to feel safe.

I want to feel safe, anchored and ‘me’ again.

Dad: Picking Up Where We Left Off?

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

I was in a well-known hardware shop last week and I saw a girl who was probably about 3 or 4, being pushed around on one of those trolleys you only get in big hardware shops (they’re sort of like a platform with a handle, rather than your standard shopping trolley) by her Dad. It prompted such a clear memory of doing the same with my Dad… only instead of it being one child it would normally have been two or three. Saturday or Sunday afternoons, being pushed on one of these trolleys by my Dad, feeling like I was on Aladdin’s carpet. Everything was right in the world, I was safe with my Dad buying something exciting like wood and then we’d go home and have tea, have a bath, and go to bed listening to The Archers play on the radio in the next room.

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My relationship with my Dad has got buried somewhere in Mum’s illness and death. It got put on pause on February 8th 2014 when he text me to find out where I was (I was living at uni at the time), came and picked me up, and told me in the car that my Mum’s cancer had returned and that there was no cure. I don’t know how he ever found the words to tell me, and then to tell Mum’s’ family and friends, but he did.

Mum became ill for the first time when I was 18. Dad brought my brothers and me into the kitchen and told us about Mum’s cancer. He told us Mum had caught it early and that we shouldn’t be overly worried. We cried and hugged each other, but we were calm. I went to work that afternoon. Mum bounced back from cancer round one, and wasn’t diagnosed with terminal cancer until around 9 months later.

Once Mum was diagnosed as terminal, Dad would drive me backwards and forwards to uni, clocking up miles and miles, allowing me to continue my education as well as spending valuable time with Mum. It was Dad who learned all the biology behind Mum’s condition, Dad who learned how to care for her at every step, and Dad who became fluent in doctor-speak. It was Dad who managed all of the visitors coming in and out of our house, Dad who spent hours every day on the phone to people updating them on Mum’s condition, Dad who slept downstairs next to Mum, there for her night and day. It was Dad who was next to Mum when she died, Dad who really was there ‘til death do us part’, Dad who had to ring the GP, the coroner, and anyone else you ring when someone dies. It was Dad who rang me when Mum died, Dad who spoke to me as my world fell apart in a university stairwell, Dad who gave me a hug when I walked through the door later that day.

It’s Dad who’s left in a big house, in a small village, with three offspring and no wife.

When Mum was ill, Dad and I spoke about it a lot. At the beginning of Mum’s illness, Dad asked me to explain a few bits or bobs using my A-Level biology knowledge. As Mum’s illness progressed, Dad and I would spend half an hour in the car together between uni and home at least twice a week, which was a lot of time for talking. We would talk about Mum’s symptoms, her level of care, sometimes about what life would be like without her. We rarely talked about things that weren’t in some way related to Mum.

Mum and Dad had so many plans and so much they were looking forward to, together. Without Mum, Dad’s lost more than his ‘other half’: he’s lost his best friend, partner in crime, and confidante. They had plans to travel, to do charity work, perhaps to foster after we’d all grown up and moved out. They had other plans, ideas, hopes and dreams that I know nothing about.

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As for Dad and me, I’ve got to learn to become a daughter again. Our relationship paused two years ago, and in that time I’ve changed in so many ways and so has he. I’ve had to grow up quickly in a lot of ways, but in other ways I’ve got stuck in time. I’ve also not moved away from home in the same way as many of my peers. I’ve moved away from home physically, but I’ve got very used to going backwards and forwards on a regular basis and contacting my family multiple times a day; something which the majority of my peers definitely do not do.

Dad and I have had to start navigating this whole Dad-daughter-motherless-grief thing. He’s my Dad… but I don’t have a Mum anymore, so to some extent he’s been plonked in the role of Mum-and-Dad combined. Things I used to go to Mum for, I now either have to find a close female friend, or go to Dad. He’s got to do things he didn’t used to take sole responsibility for like remember what we have for birthday teas, or buy the odd bit of clothing.

There are times when it’s been really, really hard. Dad has never shied away from challenging me and my decisions, and as much as I love that and respect it, it can be hard when we disagree on something and I don’t have another parent to run to. Without another parent to mediate, it can then take a little while longer than it might have done to resolve anything like that. Admittedly, at times, I’ve felt like I’ve had to be a ‘Mum’ to my brothers. My Dad told me when Mum died that we should never let anyone tell us what Mum ‘would have wanted’, and that I was not my Mum, and I was not my brother’s Mum. But that can be hard; I remember things Mum did for me, like buying my favourite foods during revision periods, and I want to do the same for my brothers (this particular one resulted in a few kilos of milk bottle sweets arriving at my Dad’s house).

Working out how we all relate to each other as a family is just one more difficulty in the mountain of change that occurs when someone dies. I know that we will get there and I’m really glad we’re close enough to work through these things together.

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