Opening Pandora’s Box in The C Word

We met with the celebrant on Wednesday and planned Mum’s funeral. We’re happy with the decisions we’ve made and the order of service and everything.

The celebrant is lovely, the same age as mum, a woman. Completely got the tone we want to set, warm, positive, a funeral for a young person really. We’re not religious so we didn’t want any of the usual formal, old fashioned stuff. She’s writing words of comfort rather than prayers, we’ve chosen a poem from us three kids, and we’ve written some memories for her to read. She was quite funny too, she asked if we wanted to say any words and my dad said he’d written something but she should read it - she said, there are people who can talk and people who can’t, and you can’t! My dad absolutely loves public speaking and speeches usually, but under these circumstances it’s pressure he doesn’t need to put himself under.

It was emotionally draining. All of the places we’ve not really been we had to go to, we’ve obviously talked about Mum amongst ourselves but when it starts getting emotional we back off. Self preservation I suppose. She asked us about mum and we couldn’t avoid it. I then came home and wrote my memories of mum and ended up crying myself into a migraine.

It’s funny, grief. It doesn’t feel how I thought it would. We’re on a knife edge most of the time, holding it together, it doesn’t take much to tip the edge. But largely you have to just get on with things. Then you’ll be taken completely off guard by something so small. Mostly the things where I’d pick the phone up, V starting nursery and how that’s going, something silly or funny or clever that she did. Some inane piece of celebrity gossip or a recipe I wanted to try. All the hundred thousand reasons we were on the phone several times a day, everything and nothing.

I always missed the time mum and I had together once V was born. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely adore V, and it was one of my mum’s dreams to be a nan, her biggest dream really. But I always missed not being able to have a cup of tea in peace, or finish a conversation, or wander the shops with no time scale or agenda. The things we did before, before V and before mum was ill.

In reality we haven’t been able to do that anyway because of her illness. I wonder sometimes if I’ve been grieving this whole time, her life was so changed, she was so changed. She was so strong and brave and focused, she took every challenge on the chin. The only time I ever saw her down was when they told her her transplant had failed last august. She cried when she told me she knew she would miss out on watching the kids grow up. She cried on Christmas Day when V hugged her and told her she loved her, she knew it would be the last time she saw her, held her, she knew what she was leaving behind.

I just can’t think too deeply about it all or I’d completely fall to pieces. I know that at some point I’ll have to, the funeral is Tuesday. My mother’s funeral. There’s three words you don’t say every day. It still feels surreal, like a bad dream, that she’s even gone. She shouldn’t be gone, she was only 59 and she tried so hard to live.

I’m only 36. How do I live the rest of my life without her? I mean, I have to of course, but how? I guess because I’m single all of the time, and when I haven’t been I’ve been in horrible relationships, she was my significant other. She was the person who gave me reassurance and guidance. If I had a question or worry about V she was there on the end of the phone, first one to ask each day how she’d slept, last one to see if she’d gone to bed ok, to tell me to get some rest, that the housework would still be there tomorrow.

She’s never really seen me in a happy, stable, adult relationship. She saw me engaged to joey, and held my hand through the fallout. She did tell me a few weeks back that my dad asked sometimes if she thought we’d end up back together, and if ever there was a moment we might have had a deep and meaningful conversation it was then. However she just said that she knew that wouldn’t happen and I couldn’t forgive him. She was ‘mum’ to the end, knowing what not to say, when not to say it, and the things that don’t need spelling out. He’s not good for me or V, she knows it and she knows I know it.

I remember her saying to me once that if I did anything in life, apart from choosing something that made me happy, choose something that gave me independence and freedom so I could walk away from anyone who didn’t make me happy or safe. Her and my dad were living abroad, going through a rocky patch. It’s the only time she’s ever mentioned wishing she had a career so she had options. They worked things out and celebrated 39 years of marriage in December but I’ll never forget her saying that to me.