grief

Two Very Different Moves

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

I started planning moving away to university months before it happened. After sixth form, I took a gap year, so by the spring before I went to uni, I knew for certain which university I would be going to and what I would be studying. My birthday is in March and I’d asked for ‘bits for uni’. Mum and I spent the day in York shopping for bedding, pans, and decorative bits and bobs. I remember it as such a lovely day; proper mum-and-daughter time. It was filled with excitement of new adventures to come. She’d just been given the cancer ‘all-clear’, and things were really looking up.

When the time come to move to uni, my whole family came (it was a bit of an event). Mum had bought me a big tub of chocolates to share with others on my floor (after all, chocolate is a fairly sturdy base for friendship). It was an emotional but exciting and happy time.

I moved again this weekend. My first ‘proper’ move since I first moved to halls – I’ve moved between home and uni since then, but only to and from halls so it never felt very different from that first time. But this time, I moved out of halls and into a real house.

I’ve had to move out of halls because I’m not returning to uni this January. I felt the need to remain around my friends and support networks, so I needed to find a place to live fairly quickly (or sofa hop for a bit, but that didn’t really appeal). Thankfully, with the help of a local youth charity, I found a place very quickly, living with a lovely lady and her two cats.

I’d been thinking about Mum a bit less recently, but over the last week I’ve been missing her more again. I always low-level miss her, but it had been getting a little easier and memories of ‘well Mum’ had begun to replace some of the ‘sick Mum’ memories. Seriously missing Mum returned though, and with it came ‘grief attacks’ and many moments where it felt like every part of my body was breaking, all at once.

When I ordered new bedding (my new place has a bigger bed), it reminded me of that day I spent with Mum in York. A happy memory, but a memory nonetheless, one that can never be repeated. Packing up my things, I relived moments that have happened in that room. It was my home, my safe place, throughout Mum’s illness. When I returned from hospital the night before she slipped into a coma, that was where I landed. When my friend came to see me and started to cry, it was that room. The walls of that room have seen more than a student room should ever have to see. It was the place I ran to when I heard that Mum had died.

On Saturday, the three month anniversary of Mum’s death, I shut the door on that room for the final time. My very kind new landlady helped me move out. Dad will see my new place at some point, but Mum never will. She will never see my new room, never meet the person I’m living with. She’ll never see me grow and learn and laugh and cry and that breaks me. So many times in the last few weeks all I have wanted is a hug from her. A bit of reassurance that I’m doing okay and that the decisions that I’m making are not ‘wrong’ ones.

Living somewhere new is a new start. It’s a chance to move on from Mum’s illness and death. A chance to start piecing my life back together, to build it back up again. I wish it were that simple though…I still jump when the phone rings, and cry-laugh when I’m reminded of a Mum quirk. Mum is all around my room, in photos, in the plaque she bought me last Christmas, and in the books that stand on my drawers. Mum will be brought up in job applications when it comes to explaining why I’m not studying right now, her name will stick in my throat every time a friend or family member of my housemate visits and asks what I’m doing at the moment. It’s not as simple as ‘not being affected by cancer anymore’ because we still are – I still am – and probably always will be in some way. That said, I can choose to let it define me, or I can choose to move on and begin to build a new life. I hope that by moving, that is what I’m beginning to do.

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A Little Update

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

I’ve gone a little quiet on here – at least in terms of writing about where I’m at.

I’ve had a lot of ‘missing Mum’ nights this week. Nights when I end up folded over, crying, silently screaming, wanting Mum back. It’s weird because before this week, I’d stopped thinking of Mum every day in that same way that I had been in the weeks since Mum died.

Tomorrow marks three months since Mum died. Tomorrow I’m moving out of halls. I’m excited to move and I’m ready to move. It is weird, though, because it will be the first place I’ve lived that Mum hasn’t seen.

The place I’m currently living is the place I’ve lived for the majority of Mum’s illness. There are a lot of memories in this room. This block is where I was when I heard that Mum died.

I’m ready to get away from here and make a new start. It’s also hard breaking away, though, because moving forward and rebuilding my life means leaving Mum behind. Mum will forever remain in 2015, at least in physical form.

 

900 Cancer Diagnosises A Day

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

Someone just rang me up on behalf of Macmillan. It was someone asking for donations, as you might expect (I don’t think they’ve ever rung me up for anything else, and yes you can get annoyed at cold callers, but at the end of the day it’s their job and at least this time it’s for a charity not for PPI or something). The line used to get donations this time was ‘900 people are diagnosed every day with cancer in the UK*’.

900 people. Every single day. Now of course, their reason for telling me this was to get donations, but 900 people is a LOT.

That’s 900 people who are hearing the news every day, and then 900 people who are going to have to go home and tell their family and friends. 900 lots of family and friends who are going to have to hear the news that someone they love has cancer. Well over 900 lives that are going to be affected by cancer on any given day.

Not all of these will be terminal, like Mum, but some will be.

It makes me so angry. I hate this disease. I hate what it does to people. Not just to the people diagnosed – but their family and friends too. Look at my family – a unit of 5, plodding along. Mum diagnosed the first time and we did okay. We accepted it, we dealt with it, we brushed ourselves off and got back up again.

Then round two hit. My youngest brother is doing okay at the minute. But at 15 years old he saw his Mum for the last time, and that shouldn’t be something which happens to anyone. My middle brother is doing okay at the moment too. He’s in a decent job with bright university prospects. But last year it hit him hard, he had an incredibly difficult time at university and ended up not pursuing that particular course and that particular uni. Dad’s taking things in his stride but it’s clear he’s not exactly ‘living the dream’, so to speak. I don’t want to write much more than that on the 3 main men in my life – it’s their life to share if they want to and not really my place to do it for them. But they have been deeply affected, as anyone would be if their spouse or Mum died?

Me? Well, it’s been 2.5 months since Mum died and almost 24 since she was diagnosed. I’m not back at uni yet – it doesn’t feel possible at the moment and my GP was fairly explicit that she didn’t think now was a good time to go back, either. I’ve been struck down with anxiety so bad that it can take me a long time to even venture as far as the kitchen opposite my room, and that’s if I make it.

I’m working on it, but I’m currently faced with having to find a new place to live, and new support, which isn’t exactly helping. I have found an absolutely brilliant charity this week though who have really been helping me out, and I am so grateful.

Building my life back up is not something that is going to be quick or easy. It’s going to be difficult and it’s going to take time. My Mum hasn’t just died, but she was ill for 20 months and if anything, that’s currently affecting me more.

I get frustrated often. I am desperate to get back to the person I used to be. The person who was able to hop on a train and nip down to London for the day. Who spoke in front of rooms full of people. Who enjoyed living and learning. Who socialised. Who never stopped. I used to be able to do all of that and now some days I can’t travel as far as 3 feet, and I feel unable to even comment on something on Facebook, never mind talking to hundreds of people.

Then I hear stats like this and I get even more frustrated because Mum’s cancer wasn’t a one off and it sucks. Cancer is affecting people every single day and I feel powerless to do anything about it. I’m not a scientist, I can’t cure cancer. I can’t take the pain away from people. I can’t cure their loved ones or better yet, stop them from even getting ill in the first place.

I wish I could, but I can’t. So I feel like I’m standing here watching it all from behind a glass screen. No matter how much I blog, no matter how much I scream or stamp my feet (figuratively, of course), it’s not going to fix this.

It’s times like this when I wish I had the faith that my Mum held so deeply. I wish I could believe in this bigger plan drawn up by a loving God. But I’m struggling to. I’m working on it. But it’s another thing which just isn’t that easy.

*At a very quick Google, I can’t find their evidence for this, but I didn’t look very hard. But whether it’s exactly 900 or not, it’s still a lot.

UK Blog Awards 2016

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

UK Blog Awards popped up on my Twitter feed with a call for nominations a couple of months ago. I procrastinated for weeks -my confidence isn’t all that great and I’m constantly surprised that people actually want to read what I write. It took a lot of persuasion from friends but eventually I nominated myself.

In all honesty, the main reason I decided to do it was to increase the exposure of this blog, not because I want tens of thousands of followers on Twitter or to be the most popular blog in the world ever or anything like that. I just know how alone I felt when Mum was first diagnosed, and how alone I’ve felt at times throughout her illness and eventual death and the more people who read this blog, the more likely it is that it will read someone who is in a similar position and needs to feel less alone.

I can’t cure cancer. I can’t bring my Mum back. I can’t change what has happened in our lives over the last few years. I can’t write off anyone else’s diagnosis or stop anyone else from going through the pain of cancer or of a loved one dying. All I can do is keep writing and hope that someone might read it at 2am when the world feels dark, and that it helps them to fall asleep knowing they’re not completely alone.

If you’d like to vote for me in these awards, you can do so here.

If You Make One New Year’s Resolution This Year: Make It to Talk About Death

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Death is something we don’t routinely talk about.

Our understanding of death changes as we grow. As a child we’re fairly open about it. We have grand ideas of our loved ones (normally pets or worms) going to a ‘happy place’ or going on ‘holiday’. Death doesn’t seem particularly scary to us, it’s just a part of life.

As we grow, our understanding grows too. We begin to learn that death means our loved one is never coming back, and start to respond to that. Some of us might then believe in reincarnation. Others hold on to ideas of heaven or an afterlife. Whatever we believe, somewhere along the line most of us learn that death is not something that’s widely talked about, and it becomes something scary and unknown.

Whether we’re scared or not, and whatever we believe, one of the few certainties in life is death; it’s going to happen to all of us at some point. In our house we’ve tended to be fairly open about it – Mum was a palliative medicine consultant, so to ignore it would’ve been to ignore Mum’s job almost entirely – but even if it’s not something you want to discuss around the dinner table, it’s something we need to talk about.

Let’s start with the medical bits. Would you wish to be resuscitated? Would you want tube feeding if you reached the stage where you couldn’t feed yourself? Would you want your child to look after you when you became immobile, or would you rather be in a nursing home?

Moving on, what about immediately after death? Would you like to be cremated of buried? Would you like a traditional funeral or something a bit different? You can’t answer these questions once you’re unconscious, or dead. The worst thing for your family would be to have a conversation with a doctor about whether to resuscitate you (if needs be) in the night, and for them to have absolutely no idea of what you would want. It’s worth thinking about these questions not just for you, but also in the context of your loved ones.

You could even chat to those closest to you about what they believe happens after death. Is the finality of death simply too much to think about, or is it important to consider it fully? Perhaps you believe that death isn’t the end, that reincarnation or an afterlife makes sense to you. I often find this conversations a lot less morbid than you’d think, and you can learn a lot about someone from their responses, and the reasons behind those responses.

There are lots of scary things in life, and I think death is one of them. But I can’t think of anything much scarier than being asked what my Dad or either of my brothers would want in this situation, and having absolutely no idea. It would destroy me.

I’m so lucky that Mum and Dad had these conversations, because in February when Mum slipped into a coma, Dad was able to tell the medical staff exactly what she wanted. When Mum died, Dad knew not to try heavy CPR to buy her a few more painful hours. Knowing what Mum wanted has saved out family so much suffering, and has given us some peace of mind.

So maybe death isn’t something you really want to think about at the start of the New Year (let’s face it, there are more fun things to think about). Perhaps you think you’re not old enough to discuss it. Maybe it’s not the most exciting of topics to chat about over a few pints, or maybe it is, but either way I challenge you to talk about it. I don’t mind how you do it, or when; it could be tomorrow or in three months’ time. Maybe it will be a short, sweet conversation, or perhaps it opens up discussions you didn’t realise you needed to have.

For more information on talking about death, check out Dying Matters, a charity who aim to help people talk more openly about death, dying and bereavement.

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Two Month Anniversary… And A Celebration

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday marked two months without Mum. Two whole months. At one month I wasn’t sure whether it felt like more or less time since Mum had died, but at two months I can confirm it feels so much longer.

I’m home at the moment and already there are subtle changes which hint at Mum not being here… The lack of natural yoghurt in the fridge (and the huge increase in cheese). The emergency ‘crap I’ve left my eyeliner at uni’ stash is no longer there. There isn’t a spare conditioner in the cupboard. Dad is amazing and any time I mention something like this he goes out of his way to rectify it (or already has and it’s just in a different place), but they all show that things are slowly changing.

As well as marking two months without Mum, yesterday also marked 16 wonderful years of my youngest brothers’ life.

We are so blessed to have him in our lives. I love him to pieces and as a sibling unit, we’ve really had to stick together over the past few years which only strengthens our relationship.

I struggled to know how we could make the day a bit special – Mum was always so good at that and Ed didn’t seem particularly bothered about doing anything. Drop scones for breakfast, chocolate milk in the fridge, party rings for tea and a caterpillar cake did the trick and he finished the day smiling which is all that matters really.

We’re a family of four now. A little unit navigating our new lives both separately and together. Learning how to adapt to this new life without Mum, and we’re getting there slowly. Yesterday was a reminder that we can have a new normal, we can smile, and we can celebrate. Mum died but we didn’t, and slowly we’re learning to live again.

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When Cancer Meets Christmas

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Christmas has always been a special time of year in our household. Aside from the fact that my parents are both Christian, we’ve grown up in a little village, so Christmas has always involved the primary school nativity, the church party and carol service, and the vicar demonstrating each child’s favourite gift on Christmas morning (he once skateboarded down the aisle).

We have lots of lovely family traditions too; wrapping up warmly to go and dig up the Christmas tree with Dad (and it always being too tall and always needing the top cut off in order to fit Mum’s star on), baking mince pies, gingerbread houses and shortbread Christmas trees with Mum, and all three children, however big we got, snuggling up to Mum in Mum and Dad’s bed on Christmas Eve listening her read the Farmyard Tales Christmas book, finding the yellow duck on every page.

Every other year, we’d host a big Christmas with cousins (and later, their various families), aunties, uncles and grandparents descending upon us from all over the country. The house would be full from Christmas to New Year and we’d never be short of someone to play with. Mum would be ‘on call’ for the hospital and the children’s hospice the years we were home, and we’d always hope that she wouldn’t be called during Christmas dinner.

The last few years, Christmas has still been special, but there’s no denying that cancer has squeezed it’s way into it.


2012: The Christmas of diagnosis one.

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Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of August 2012.

Christmas fell during the chemo weeks. Mum would have a dose of chemo, take a week off work, then head back to work for two weeks before the next lot. I don’t remember Christmas being affected that year, though. I imagine that since I was on a gap year, I had more time to help out with baking and other things. She looks tired on this picture, but we were happy and hopeful of a better 2013.

2013: The remission Christmas.

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2013 and Mum was in remission! (As of about April). From memory we were determined to make it the best Christmas ever (or at least I was…). I’m fairly sure I spent far too much money. I was at uni by this point but I know I came home as soon as term was over and spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking with Mum. I’m pretty certain we baked quite literally everything and anything we could think of. Thanks to my extreme wrapping practice from working in a Toy Shop, I remember spending an entire afternoon with Mum in the spare room wrapping everything and singing along to Christmas songs.

Mum went on a two week cruise down the Rhine to multiple Christmas markets with my auntie, too. They had wanted to do it the year before but had to postpone it (for obvious reasons). They loved it and it probably only fuelled our Christmas fever even more. I remember my auntie posting this picture on Facebook with a comment wishing good health in the following year. We all felt so hopeful, lucky and blessed.

2014: Mum’s final Christmas.

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I think on some level we all knew it would be Mum’s final Christmas. She’d been diagnosed as terminal in the February and hospitalised once in September and again in November. I can’t remember if there was another hospitalisation in between. We were well-practiced at gowning up, putting on plastic gloves, and giving air-hugs across the room. Things were a bit more rushed due to the November hospitalisation, but I don’t remember us missing out on anything. Mum was better than she had been in weeks. After the second hospitalisation, she’d stopped chemo and I can clearly remember her being full of energy and life. You wouldn’t have known she was sick if it wasn’t for the headscarf.

2015: The first Christmas without Mum.

I don’t feel Christmassy this year. I’ve tried to hide from it, if I’m honest. It reminds me of Mum and I don’t feel strong enough for that at the moment. We’re going to a family friend’s house. We’ve known them since I was six weeks old and they’re practically family, but we’ve never been to their house on Christmas day before so it’s a new kind of Christmas for us.

Perhaps we’ll make some new traditions this year – I don’t know. I know we will laugh. I expect we will play cards and probably some board games. I imagine we’ll watch a Christmas film or two. We will definitely eat some turkey. We will probably be happy (I hope so!). The room will be filled with sounds of family and friends sharing good times together and genuinely appreciating one another.

Mum won’t be there in physical form, but I hope she’s there in her own little ways. When I eat a sprout and remember how every year Dad tried to get her to ‘try’ one (“if the children have to try things, you should too!”), and every year she put it back on his plate because she hated them with a passion. When I’m too full for pudding, I’ll remember how before she got sick, however full she might have been there was always room for chocolate. When we play Articulate, I’ll remember how whenever her and Viv teamed up to play that or Pictionary, the rest of us wouldn’t stand a chance.

Mum will be around on Christmas, I just wish she was around in person so that I could well and truly beat her at Gin Rummy.

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So Many Charities, So Little Money.

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Every time I watch TV at the moment, I see an advert asking me to give money to save some animals. Listening to Spotify, I often hear someone asking me to give money to bring music to war-torn countries. Cycling down the road, I see billboards asking me to give money to feed starving children.

It’s the time of year where charities everywhere are ploughing their marketing budgets into as many adverts as they can muster, over as many different media platforms as possible. There’s an advert at every turn and you simply can’t escape them. They’re counting on your Christmas cheer, hoping that once you’ve had a little too much brandy and one too many mince pies, you might be feeling jovial enough to throw some pennies their way.

Donating is really important. Charities need money to run, and I don’t know how much of their annual income they generate at Christmas but I would guess it’s a fair sum. I really do think it’s great that people are giving to charities, and it is vital that they receive money to carry out their work.

However, what happens when you just don’t have the money to give? Life can be expensive at the best of times but Christmas is notoriously expensive. Whether you’re hosting a big family Christmas, travelling to see friends and relatives, or just having a quiet one at home – there’s no denying that it’s probably the most expensive time of year.

Like many people, I can relate to this. Our family are by no means deprived, but my bank account is definitely crying a little as a result of Christmas shopping. I hate seeing these adverts knowing that I can’t give them money. It can make me feel incredibly guilty and I know I’m not the only one in this position because others have mentioned it to me, too.

One thing you could give, if you don’t have spare cash floating about, is time. Time is so valuable and so precious. With Mum dying this year, I have learned to appreciate time in a way that I never have done before. I remember having a conversation with Mum around the start of uni when I was racking up the volunteering hours like nobody’s business. It started with a chat about how much I should donate to charity each month and we ended up chatting about other ways to help charities. We concluded that I might not give much money right now, and donate my time instead (I had spare time but not really any spare money at the time). Then when I’m older and employed in a more stable job, I’d be likely to have spare money but not so much spare time, so at that point I might give more money but not give as much time.

BBC Radio 1 are currently running a campaign called #1MillionHours. They’re trying to encourage young people to pledge their time to Cancer Research UK, Barnardos, Age UK and/or Oxfam. You can also pledge your time to another charity, then tweet them using the hashtag #1millionhours to make sure your hours are added to the campaign. They want to get 1 million hours of volunteering pledged which will then be carried out over the course of 2016.

Personally, I’ve pledged to Cancer Research UK. If volunteering for them means I can help them to raise money which supports their research, then I’m up for it. Their research could make sure that another 21 year old in 5 years time isn’t facing a Christmas without their Mum. (Side note: I’ve also started putting together a Race for Life team in Mum’s memory and you should absolutely do that if you’re able to – it’s so much fun, especially the Pretty Muddy ones!).

My challenge to you this Christmas is that if you’re like me and have the time but not much money, rather than seeing these adverts and feeling guilty that you can’t help, or just brushing them off: pledge some hours to them. Join #1millionhours, and give the gift of time to those that need it most.

One Month Without Mum

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

It’s been a month since Mum died. Thirty-one days. Seven hundred and seventy-four hours. Four thousand, four hundred and 60 minutes.

It feels like a long time, as though it’s been years, but also feels as though she could have died yesterday or last week. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from grief it’s that time stops making sense and you just have to roll with it. Sometimes hours can feel like days and other times days can seem like hours, but as long as you’re moving forward it doesn’t really matter.

I miss Mum more than ever. Christmas is beginning to enter the shops and it’s always been such a special time of year for us. Mum made the cake in October, and we’d start making mince pies around then, too, most of which were frozen until Christmas. As Christmas got nearer we’d make a shortbread Christmas tree and a gingerbread house. We’d always planned for her to visit me at uni and go Christmas shopping together, in York, but it never happened. The Christmas market is being constructed at the moment, and I remember going around Leeds Christmas market with Mum during cancer round one. We wrapped up in our woollies, ate caramelised nuts and browsed the stalls assigning presents to people.

I’ve encountered a few situations over the past month where I’ve really, really, needed Mum. I’ve gone to Dad or older female friends for advice and though they have been fantastic and incredibly helpful, it’s not the same. I still often find myself going to text Mum or drop her a Facebook message only to remember that she can’t reply. The one thing that sticks with me, whatever the situation, is the message ‘be kind to yourself’, because that’s what Mum always used to say to me, and it’s pretty good advice for most situations.

I didn’t realise how often I spoke to Mum. The first time she was diagnosed, I was on my gap year, so when Mum was on a chemo week and I wasn’t at work, we’d spend time together knitting and watching TV. We grew a lot closer over that time. I think when your Mum has a brush with cancer you appreciate her a lot more. I would text her most days and if I didn’t we’d normally end up in a Facebook conversation later on in the evening. In February we thought she was going to die and since then our communications have only intensified, I would speak to her about even more things and we’d wish each other goodnight most days. I miss her wishing me goodnight.

But it’s the hangover from Mum’s illness and death which surprises me the most. For months I have had my phone on me at all times, waiting for a text or call to say that she’d died, or was about to die. Now I jump when I get a phone call. I panic if I can’t find my phone. I am more anxious and jittery then I ever was before Mum’s illness. I rarely have a full night of sleep, I often dream of Mum, or of her dying again, or of Dad being diagnosed with something. Often when a family member contacts me I expect it to be them telling me that somebody else is poorly or has died. Some days I struggle to leave the house for fear of someone asking me how Mum is, because that’s something which happened for a long time. I’m struggling to go out with people my age because I can’t remember how to do it, it feels like it’s been such a long time. I’m slowly building my life back up, but part of that is realising how far things have slipped from where they were, and that’s something I learn more about every day.

One month has passed. We’ve survived the funeral. Things are beginning to settle and everybody has gone back to work, school, and wherever else they might go. One month of questions for Mum float around my head. One month of things I want to tell her. One month of smiles she hasn’t seen. One month of problems she hasn’t solved. One month of moments she hasn’t shared. One month of conversations from which she’s been absent.

Some days are okay; I can smile, laugh, work, see people and generally live life. Other days are hard and I have to just be patient with myself. I miss her. I miss her so much. But I can live my life alongside missing her. Most importantly, despite missing her, I can still be kind to myself.

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I Miss You

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

You never cry as freely as when wrapped in a Mum’s hug. I keep lying there imagining you next to me, warm. Perhaps my head on your stomach, maybe our feet touching. It’s safe, though. Then I realise my head is on a cushion and my feet are cold only because they’re outside of the cover, not because they’re touching yours, and a fresh wave of grief hits me. I keep dreaming of your hugs, both the ones I wanted and the ones I wanted but tried to tell you I didn’t… even the ones I didn’t want at all. I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. There are salt lines down my face. I miss your hugs. I miss sleeping through the night. I wish I never knew what my face looked like with eyeliner and mascara streaks decorating my cheeks – the only visible sign of grief. I miss being able to tell you when I had a good day, a bad day, a nothing day. I miss you.