I think my Mum would be strangely happy that I almost forgot to write this post today.
And I did … only realizing last weekend today was the 11th anniversary of my Mum dying.
It’s not even the first time this has happened …
So how come I nearly forgot today – one of the worst days of my entire life – and why do I think Mum be happy about it?
Well, let’s do the practical reasons first …
I write this blog weeks in advance and so sometimes I don’t even think about the date they will appear, I just load them up to be automatically put out. That said, I’ve never nearly forgotten when it is Dad’s anniversary … however that’s a bit different to Mum’s in so much as he died in mid-January and so that tends to be one of the first posts I write every year, coming out the festive holiday season.
But that’s more of an assumptive rationale …
The fact is both my parents blessed me with an amazing childhood and upbringing. I’ve written so much about them over the years – from their endless encouragement to their demonstration of what love really means – and the loss of them was, without doubt, the hardest and biggest challenges I’ve ever had to face and deal with in my life.
But Dad died first – 16 years before Mum – and while I’d experienced the death of people close to me before, that was the one that was the most direct in terms of impact, importance and shock. It meant it took me years before I could think of Dad as the Dad I grew up with … rather than the person he became after his stroke robbed him of who he was and how he was.
But Dad’s passing opened up the ability for Mum and I to talk about death … and we did. A lot.
Not in an ‘impending doom’ kind-of-way … more in terms of the reality of what we’d faced and had to accept and learn.
It meant this was very much top of mind when Mum was going in for her operation. Maybe not spoken about openly, but definitely something that was in eachother’s minds. In fact, it was only after Mum had died – when the operation to extend her life, sadly failed due to a childhood issue that had gone undiagnosed – that I discovered just how much Mum had been thinking about it.
That she had written me ‘notes’ in case the worst happened – featuring information I’d need to make organizing her estate easier – is still one of the most powerful demonstrations of unconditional love I’ve ever seen. Though it still breaks my heart how she must have felt writing them – knowing that she was having to face her own mortality, on her own, while I was on the other side of the planet.
That said – as I wrote the morning she died – we’d found a lovely rhythm in the final few years.
We’d always had a wonderful relationship but there was a period where a few niggles had entered our interactions … nothing much, just a little tension caused by me wanting to take care of her and her wanting to fiercely protect her independence and have me look after myself and my future more. But we’d got past that by realizing both us were coming from a place of love … so we made allowances for each others needs, which meant she let me put money in her bank account every month and I didn’t mind that she never spent a penny of it. Haha.
And while the days leading up to her death will be forever burned in my mind, my memory of Mum has never been stuck in that period, like it was for Dad for all those years. I don’t know why but I’m grateful for it.
Maybe it’s because I became better equipped emotionally after Dad died?
Maybe it’s because Otis was born 3 months before Mum passed and so that period was consumed with happy thoughts throughout that time?
Or maybe it’s because I’d seen Mum a lot before she died – every month for 6 months or so – and so saw the impact of her heart condition on her health – meaning it was less of a surprise to me, even though I thought the operation was going to make things better?
Who knows … but while today will always be significant in my mind, it’s not the main thing that immediately comes to mind. Instead I think of the conversations we had when I came to visit … the pasta she would lovingly make for me … the look of happy surprise on her face when I turned up unannounced from Australia … the tennis she’d play with me on the patio in the back garden in summer when I was a small kid … the joy on her face when she learned she was going to be a Grandma … the stories she would tell me of the films or comedians or concerts she’d gone to see … the quiet contentment we felt when we were in the same room together, even if nothing was being said.
I think of those things WELL before anything to do with her dying.
I think of her grace, her kindness, her love, her curiosity, and her compassion.
I think of how much I wish she could see the grandson she never met, but adored.
I think of how she will never know I lived in America and back in England and now NZ.
I think of how she would react to Bonnie. [And the news of Rosie]
I think of how she would react to ‘healthy me’.
I think of how lucky I was – and am – to be able to call her my Mum.
And that’s why, I am sure Mum would be happy that I almost forgot to write this post …
Because it means her memory is alive and present in my life and that means she achieved what she hoped for most in her life.
That she was a good Mum.
And she was. And still is.
I miss you Mum. I hope you’re with Dad, holding hands.
I love you.
