loss

Silence is Noisy

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

We’ve passed the seven month mark. Seven months since Mum died. I’m not sure when I’ll stop counting these milestones. Maybe it’ll happen when things get easier. I’m not sure it’s getting any easier yet, in some ways it’s getting harder. The day Mum died was hard, but every day since, there’s been a nagging voice in my head saying: “The longer she’s dead, the more she misses.”

I moved house again last week. A few months ago I had to move out of halls very quickly due to taking a Leave of Absence from uni, so I lodged with someone for a couple of months. But last week I moved out, into a flat which I’m sharing with a friend. I’ve also got a new job – I’m still waiting for a start date, but it’s another life change. They’re both really positive life changes, but changes nonetheless.

My Dad has been incredibly helpful in all this, as have a couple of friends. They’ve helped me make decisions, taught me valuable life lessons, and in Dad’s case, helped me move everything I own from one house to another.

I have noticed Mum’s absence, though. When you get a new job, one of the first things you usually do is tell your parents. When moving house, your parents (with any luck!) provide a vehicle of some kind and some extra arms and legs for carrying things up and down stairs. Mums, in particular, are good at remembering things you forget (such as cleaning products – a quick trip to the shop now means we have the best-stocked cleaning cupboard in York, but it’s something I hadn’t factored into the big move).

There wasn’t really anything that she would have done that didn’t get done anyway. In fact, I can’t think of anything in particular that would have been her ‘job’. At one point I did consider she may have helped me buy some new work clothes, but then I remembered she used to practically pay people to take me shopping, so maybe not!

A lack of significant ‘role’ for her doesn’t mean I’ve felt her absence any less, though. I didn’t miss her too much during the actual house-move (another pair of hands would have been useful but we can blame my brother’s man-flu for that!), but I missed her that first night. I don’t know why I missed her then – even if she was alive she’d have been at her house, not mine – but I did.

Before Mum died, I never knew how much space an absence could take up. I didn’t realise how noisy silence could be. I don’t really know how to describe it, and perhaps it’s something you never really come across until someone close to you dies, but absence can seep into every aspect of your life and can grow at an alarming rate.

It goes deeper than a simple nothing. “Nothing” can easily be masked by white noise; the radio, TV, a trip with some friends, tasteful home furnishings, or a chat on the phone. “Nothing” is easy to cover up. But absence is deeper. No amount of noise can stifle it, no amount of talking can deplete it, no amount of looking-after-yourself, being sociable or distracting yourself can make it go away. It demands to be noticed.

Time is moving forward, life is changing, and good things are happening. None of it makes the absence disappear, and sometimes it makes the absence even more noticeable, but it’s also essential. My life can’t remain in 2015, it can’t get stuck in a time when Mum was still alive – it’s got to carry on, and that means that I’ve got to keep on doing what I can to live in the present.

Homesick

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

I want to go home and to pull into the drive and see my mum busy in the kitchen cooking tea. I want the kitchen to smell of baking and cooking. I want her to welcome me with a hug. I want to help her finish tea while chatting about what I’m up to and what she’s doing at work. I want to sit down with my family and eat with them. Then after I want to go and sit in the lounge with all of them, with mum, and watch tv or a film or something (but spend so much time talking over it that we hardly know what’s going on). And I want my Mum to offer me chocolate and offer me 1000 reasons why chocolate is 100% necessary for human survival. And I want to be able to put my head in her lap or sit on her knee when things get hard. And to take selfies with her. I want to hear her laugh. I want to be able to go into her bed at night again when things get too unbearable and I’m not sure I can make it as far as morning. I want her to ask but not expect an answer and just be there. I just want somewhere to feel like home.

6 Months

~ Naomi ~ 7 Comments

It’s 6 months today since Mum died. There aren’t really any words to put to it. It’s just a fact.

A lot has changed in the past 6 months. I live somewhere new, I’ve made new friends, I’ve lost a few friends, I stopped going to uni and started volunteering at a few places and doing a course at Mind, I started a new job, and I’m slowly trying to develop some sort of a social life.

There have been some great things and some not-so-great things.

I thought maybe I’d start to miss Mum a little less, but at the moment I seem to be missing her more and more. I’m not sure why, perhaps it’s the weather, who knows. 6 months-post death and people stop asking. Not a criticism on anyone, life moves on, people move on, and there’s not a lot you can update when it comes to grief (as opposed to illness where something happens all the time). Sometimes I just want a Mum hug though, they’re different to other hugs. It can feel like all I need is one hug and I’ll be on my way. I didn’t live with Mum in her final years so it’s not like I saw her every day, but we did text often and I knew where she was if I needed her – I suppose I always took that for granted. She wasn’t meant to die.

So 6 months have passed. Soon there will be another 6 months, and then another. I just hope that with each passing 6 months, things get a little easier.

The Great Grief Identity Crisis

~ Naomi ~ 4 Comments

I’m having a bit of an identity crisis. I’ve always defined myself by what I do, or how I relate to others, but it all seems to be a bit mixed up right now.

I’m not at uni, so I’m not a student. I am working, so I am employed, but only one day a week, so that always leads to questions about what I do with the other six days… I am a daughter, though one without a Mum. I am a niece, sister, cousin and granddaughter, but none of these are really talking points.

People keep telling me I’m like Mum. That they can see Mum in me; in my looks, my personality, my values. But I am not Mum. I am not and never will be Mum. I do not have the same ambitions as Mum had. I do not have the same desire to be surrounded by people that Mum had. I do not have the same level of intelligence that Mum had.

Mum was incredible at her job. She achieved a huge amount in her career including developing a department in the hospital, working with Marie Curie, contributing to several publications, doing some bits and bobs down in London to advise panels about her job from a national standpoint, and being a trustee at the local children’s hospice. She was a well-known figure in palliative medicine and well-liked by colleagues. Every time I ‘Google’ her career, something else comes up. When she wasn’t working, she was active in the community and the church.

I doubt I will ever have a career as successful as Mum’s. I doubt I will ever make as much of a difference in people’s lives as she did. I don’t have the single-minded ambition that she held and don’t have the same love of academia that she did. I like to be doing things, practical things, on my feet and out and about.

Mum’s illness caused me to lose bits of my identity. Her illness resulted in my time being split between uni work and heading back to visit my family. The more ill she got, the more any ‘free’ time disappeared, and with that any ‘me’ time, any time to follow non-academic pursuits and any time to pick up hobbies. Life became uni-Mum-sleep-uni-Mum-sleep very quickly and in all that I lost myself a bit.

Building my life back up is hard… really hard. I’m having to rebuild myself, almost – or make a new self – but I don’t really know who it is I want to make, so I’m sort of blindly following things that come up and cobbling together some sort of life, whilst also attempting to deal with grief for Mum and my old life. Mum always said she just wanted me to be happy, but it’s hard to be happy when every day is another day she’s not there to talk to. I don’t know who I’m making, I don’t know who I am or who I will be next week.

I don’t want to live my life as “Fiona’s daughter”. There are a few people I know at the moment who think of me this way, and it feels like such a burden. It also doesn’t do justice either to me or to Mum. Mum wasn’t just a mother: she was so much more than that. And I may be her daughter, but I am so much more than that, too. The values that both Mum and Dad instilled in all three of us lay the groundwork for us to build our lives on. I only hope that, in time, I can start to use these things – the wisdom, advice, baking skills, work ethic, and countless other things about them that inspire me – to build myself into someone very different to Mum, but hopefully someone they’re proud of.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/grief-identity-crisis_b_9629476.html

Slow Down, Your Mum Died Last Week

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

Mum had terminal cancer for 20 months, and the more ill she got, the more my life changed. I went from changing pretty much nothing in my life (other than implementing a little extra support), to dropping almost everything, attending lectures sporadically, accessing a lot of extra support, and going home every night to visit Mum and the rest of my family.

Perhaps naively, I assumed that once Mum died, things would go back to normal, whatever normal may be. That’s not exactly how things have gone, though.

For one, I’d forgotten to factor in emotions. Emotions are often useful, but since Mum died the majority of the time they’ve been a nuisance. They’ve left me lying in bed on a morning trying to remember how to get dressed and what I’m doing that day. They’ve made it difficult to get to lectures or to engage in social commitments. Sometimes they make it hard to get to sleep, to write, to see people or to speak.

I keep getting really annoyed at myself for feeling unable to do things that I could do two or three years ago. I used to be super busy, incredibly active and fairly extroverted. I wouldn’t have a spare five minutes in the day – always on the go seeing someone or doing something. Some days at the moment, it’s an achievement to get up, showered, and dressed.

I hate letting my friends down. They’ve put up with so much over the past months and years when I’ve been unable to plan anything or had to cancel last minute. When I’ve fallen off the radar and stopped replying to texts and other messages, they’ve kept contacting me and inviting me to things. I want to see them all again and do fun things with them. I want to be going out on an evening, going on day trips, chilling at home and watching a film, all of the things people my age usually do. All of the things I used to do.

Since Mum got ill, I’ve had increased anxiety, too. It’s not surprising really when you’ve been through what we have over the past few years. I’ve had to adapt to Mum’s changing health and the changes that it has brought for my family. I’ve had times when any moment my phone could have rung telling me that Mum was in hospital again. When walking around the village, there was a period of time when I couldn’t leave the house without someone asking me how Mum was – all because people care, but nonetheless catching me off guard as I went about my daily life.

I’d half thought that when Mum died this would disappear, because I’d no longer be waiting on a call to hear about her health, and nobody in the village would ask me how she was because she’d be dead. It’s not quite worked out like that though, I still find myself getting anxious about things and it makes it incredibly difficult to do the things I’ve always done.

I’m getting frustrated. I feel like I shouldn’t be accessing the help I’ve needed before because Mum’s died now and I should just move on with my life. I feel like I should just be able to dive back into my degree, attend all my lectures and engage with them fully. I feel like I should be jumping back into my social life and my volunteer work and everything I did and was before Mum got diagnosed again.

Last week, I sat down with someone and was airing some of my frustrations, they looked at me and basically said “Naomi, your Mum died last week”. Mum died and my body is grieving. It’s why some days feel like sludge. It’s why I’m so tired all the time no matter how much I sleep. It’s frustrating and annoying but it’s how my life is.

I expected to feel a lot of things when Mum died. Low, sad, upset, angry, tearful, yep, but frustration was not something I expected to feel. I’m probably expecting too much too soon, in fact I expect nearly everyone around me would tell me that I’m expecting too much too soon and that I need to be kind to myself (as my Mum would say) and be patient with myself. I can see where they’re coming from and the more I try and do things and can’t, the more I realise that they’re right. I just so desperately want to be a ‘normal’ 21 year old again, and some days it can feel like that’s never going to happen.

We’re currently collecting for Yorkshire Cancer Research in Mum’s memory. If you would like to donate, please do so here.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/grief-bereavement_b_8463826.html

Terminal Cancer Might Be Taking My Mum’s Body, But It Will Never Take My Mum

~ Naomi ~ 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, I was pottering around York, as I often do. I went into a gift-type shop (there are loads of them in York – you know the type I mean). I was looking for something specific , so was taking my time looking at each display when I saw a sign which read ‘the best Mums make the best Grandmas’.

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It hit me like a punch to the stomach and I had to leave the shop before I melted into a puddle of tears on the floor. As I paced around town, attempting not to cry, I couldn’t help feeling angry at the injustice of cancer in general, and Mum’s in particular. My Mum is awesome and would make an incredible Grandma. She’d love it, too. In the past few weeks she’s knitted three baby cardigans so that if/when my brothers and I have children, we would each have something for them ‘from Grandma’.

Almost every day at the moment, I see something that Mum’s not going to have, or be able to do, and it makes me want to cry. It could be going on a trip to Tesco and realising she probably won’t do that with us again, seeing graduation photos on Facebook with a parent proudly standing either side of their offspring, or coming out of my driving theory test and thinking about what we’d be doing if Mum was well (going to Starbucks for a Frappuccino and people-watching before heading to Primark for a bit of a splurdge.

People often say that ‘they can’t believe how well you’re handling this’, ‘you’re all doing so well’ or ‘I’d never know from your Facebook posts what’s really going on’. I don’t mind this because on the whole; we are managing well, and my Facebook is not a shrine to my Mum’s illness because I’m still living my life. But it doesn’t mean that I never feel angry at the injustice of it all and just want to punch a wall.

Over summer, I am a nanny to two wonderful boys. They’re seven and five and I’ve looked after them every school holiday for two years – it’s the best job I can imagine having at this stage in my life and is both fun and rewarding in equal measures. We baked a lemon cake yesterday (at their request!), and then today, we cycled to the park, pushed a big swing pretended we were in James’ Bond whilst spinning on a spinny thing, and fell about on the grass. I started thinking about all of this kind of stuff again.

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Knowing the boys as long as I have, and spending so much time with them every school holiday, means that we have a fairly solid relationship. I hug them, they hug me, we play fight, laugh, joke, and enjoy each other’s company. They’re not my children (despite many museum workers calling me ‘Mum’ in the past), but they’re good practice for if I ever have my own.

Baking is something my Mum taught me as a child. She spent hours teaching me how to use a mixer, how to break eggs, and how to remember various recipes. Teaching the boys how to bake is a joy, and they get better each time we do it – they’re pretty good at it now, and love it just as much as I did at their age. Going to the park is something my parents and I did a lot as when I was a child. They must have spent hours pushing me on swings and helping me conquer climbing frames.

My entire attitude towards children and the skills that I pass onto them come from my experiences and upbringing, and especially from my parents. My Mum probably won’t be there in person if I ever have kids – I probably won’t be able to beg her for some childcare favours when I need some sleep. But so much of my Mum is in me, and has shaped who I am, that in some small way she will be there – and that’s something that cancer can never take away.

Each time I let one of the children lick out the mixing bowl, they receive some of my Mum’s baking passion. Whenever they fly high on a swing, they’re experiencing some of Mum’s joy through my own love of parks. Whenever they’re making stuff, I hope they’ll experience some of Mum’s patience for my various crafting endeavours, something I do my best to remember when I have to iron countless Hama bead creations, or make multiple loom band animals.

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Cancer might be taking my Mum’s body, but it will never take my Mum. It will never take all the things she taught me (not to mention other people), the impact she’s leaving in the medical world, or the impression she’s made on everyone she’s ever met. Cancer can’t take her love for me and my brothers, her pride in what we achieve, or her hopes and dreams for our futures. Cancer can’t destroy the memories I have of her and our family, of holidays, hill climbing and funny voices when we read bedtime stories as kids.

Cancer makes no sense on an emotional level, and I don’t think it’s something I will ever truly understand. But, when I find myself on my bum in the middle of a park having lost a play fight with two adorable boys – I know that my Mum, her attitude of always getting ‘stuck in’ and her willingness to do anything with the three of us, however silly it might make her look, will always be with me.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/terminal-cancer_b_7899680.html

Nighttime Thoughts

~ Naomi ~ 12 Comments

I have a hole in my stomach.

It’s horrible, achy, painful and black. It expands and contracts as I breathe. It’s getting bigger and I’m scared it’s going to swallow me whole. I believe it’s called grief, but that seems such a small and insignificant word to describe a feeling so big and all-consuming.

Tonight, I spoke to Dad. I rang him up to discuss a website and various other bits and bobs. My uncle had sent me a photo of the family from the weekend. I enquired who a few people were (I get confused by distant relatives) and asked after Mum – she looked small and tired.

She’s sleeping more. Her bloods are fine. She’s just tired. There’s no point in scans now so we don’t know how the disease is progressing unless there are markers in her blood results. I guess her body is just tired of fighting this crap.

We spoke about summer. We don’t know how well Mum will be then… if she’s still with us then. Once again it hits me in the stomach, ripping me in two. Sometimes I forget for a moment – but never for long. Grief doesn’t allow that. Cancer doesn’t allow that. It doesn’t let you forget. As soon as your drop your guard, even for a second, it will strike again.

I spoke to my brother. I had to explain who the family members in the photograph were, how they fit, who they’re related to. It occurs to me that we might not only lose Mum when she dies.

Nights like these I don’t know what to do. Crying seems so pointless, yet often it just happens and I’m left exhausted when it finally stops. I want to curl up, I want a hug, I want someone to tell me it will be okay; thinking like that reminds me of being younger when Mum or Dad would stroke my hair and tell me it will be okay. But they can’t right now, because they’re not here, and it won’t be okay. I want to run and run; to keep running until I can’t. But realistically, it’s gone midnight, I’m crying – it probably wouldn’t be the safest idea.

So I’m left in a state of confused grief; clinging onto hope that we might have a few more weeks or months whilst attempting to accept that we probably won’t. I feel utterly lost and alone in this strange situation. Imagining a future without Mum seems impossible, I’ve never known a life without her and thinking about it sends me into a state of turmoil, so I don’t.

I wish I had someone to talk to who knew how this felt. My brother has gone to bed. I don’t want to burden my friends – I’ve been banging on about this cancer thing for over a year now and I imagine they’re getting bored of it. They have their own issues too, their own lives. I live with a cancer cloud day in, day out, but they shouldn’t have to, too.

Someone sent me a list of organisations in my area the other day. I look through them. There’s some ‘bereavement support’, but I’m not bereaved (yet) so that’s no good. There’s one for parents, siblings and grandparents. I am none of these. It only serves to make me feel more lost and alone. I know there are no words that can fix this. I know that it has to hurt, but sometimes hurting with someone who understands, instead of hurting alone, can help.

It’s half two, now. I’m hoping to get a night of unbroken sleep but I can’t remember the last time that happened. Lately I’ve been going to sleep with the radio on; it feels less lonely. The darkness can be scary when all you have are your thoughts, sometimes it can feel like you’re the only one in the world.

There’s no grand meaning to this post. No take-home message. It’s just me, speaking to you, whoever you are. Thank you for listening.