Notes from the end

In that last week before my mum died, I wrote little notes. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a way of working through the horror that was unfolding around me. Maybe it was because writing is all I’ve ever reached for in the most challenging moments of my life. Maybe it was because by writing, I was at least doing something, anything.

I have debated whether I should publish these. Who has the right to a death and the truth of the ending? Is it the person who has died, or is it those who are left behind to navigate the aftermath and the grief they will carry with them from then on? I still don’t know the answer.

I am sharing them. Because I am selfish, because as with all things, I know she would have understood. She was a reader. Stories, even the most painful ones, were a currency in which she traded. If anyone would understand my choice to tell this story it would be her.

Friday

This is the moment it changes.

I call her
and she is tired
in a way I have never been.

And I know
that we will never talk
like we used to.

That I will never
question whether
this is really happening.

Sunday

Eve tells me to come home.

Somehow I know that this time will be different. That this time, I will not return until after she is gone. Somehow, I know that my visit will be to say goodbye, to whisper I love you. Somehow, I know.

And my soul begs for less pain, less grief at the inevitability of this moment. But who was ever granted less pain simply because they wished it?

Monday

There are moments when she is herself. A sarcastic comment that brings a smile to my lips. The obligatory question about my studies.
“They’re good.” A lie.

And then she slips away somewhere I cannot follow. To a place where time and space are uncertain, where the threads of the conversation we are having unravel, leaving her stranded. I would bring her back if I could. I would go there and find a way to lead her out safely. But I cannot. I am powerless.

“We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“We’ll come back.”
“Tomorrow, the same time.”

We say it over and over, hoping that she will remember, that she will know we aren’t leaving her.

Tuesday

“You look high,” Eve tells her. She is a little confused; the drugs have set in and I thank god or just the NHS that she is not in pain.
“High?” She asks.
“It’s all the drugs,” we tell her. I don’t know who says it.
She thinks for a while, contemplating her state of being.
“Morally, I don’t give a shit.”
In that moment I pretend that we are ok. I tell myself that if we just keep laughing, we can’t be pulled into the darkness that lurks so close. I have never been a good liar, not really.

Wednesday

I could count the hours
minute by minute
on a train that seems to go nowhere.

Back and forth
between the city I called home
and the place I am building my new life.

Back and forth
between my childhood
and who I must become.

Not a journey
the soft swinging of a pendulum
that never seems to go anywhere.

Back and forth.

Thursday

“This week.”

I let the words land, like rocks sinking into the ocean. A crack that opens wide in my soul. An endless scream.

How can she only have days? I don’t understand how this is possible. The ceaseless cruelty of the universe takes my breath away and for a moment I have fallen out of time, into the river of grief.

When we see her I notice the changes. A little more tired. A little less to say. And yet still herself.

“This week.”
Two words that circle around in my mind, refusing to let me go.

“This week.”

Friday

Today she sleeps. Words are heavy on her lips, her body fighting to find the strength for them.

I know it will be soon. And yet I still can’t imagine a world without her, one where she isn’t a phone call away.

Saturday

They ask us if we want a drink.
“I can’t have any,” she says as they leave.
These are her last words, though I do not know it then.

12 hours later she will be gone
and there will be silence in her wake.

A silence that no words
can ever fill.

Eleven weeks later

11 weeks pass and we
welcome the new year.
New hopes.

I have crumbled in those weeks
like flowers that are left too long
and begin to dry out in stages.

First the petals fall
One by one.

Until what is left is unrecognisable.

I have forgotten how to be myself
because I was always tied to her
spirit and constant reassurance.

Now what? What do I do without that?

She told me she was not worried
about me.
I have failed her
even now she can’t see me.

I have failed.

374 days later

I’m writing this from my bed, curled up under the covers as I wait for it to be time to leave for a skating lesson. That’s something new. Skating. I needed something to care about and it became skating. It became building strength and moving faster and the cool relief of the ice.

It was unimaginable back then to think that this might be possible. To imagine a version of myself who could do more than claw my way desperately through another day. But I do.

I laugh a lot. I read, not as much as I’d like, but who has the time for that? I hug my friends, also not as much as I’d like, and each time I do I realise that we are alive and this is good. I want to be here, to hold hands and lean in as we laugh, to share every moment we can.

I have realised that I had to break in order to begin to put myself back together again. In those early days I thought that I would return to the life I’d left, that “surviving” grief meant carrying on as you always did. But it does not.

There are things in life that change you. Terrible things that leave a mark on you that will never go away. So you build a new version of yourself around the pain. You carry it with you, until it does not hurt with the same intensity it did then. But it is still there, it will always be there. You learn which days of the year will be easy and which will be awful, and then you learn that you can’t actually predict this and so you arm yourself and fight your way through the ones that are unexpectedly hard. Or you don’t. Sometimes you sit with the pain and let it wash over you like a raging sea, because there is no fighting it. The tide will go out, you know that, and when it does you breathe.

I made it to the end of the first year, and now I am finding my way through the second. I discovered that people will be there to pick you up in those early days, but soon they forget. So now I am figuring out all the ways I will live my life differently now. I am learning who to confide in when I am utterly lost, and when I must accept that my fears and dreams and thoughts are mine alone, because there is nobody who has the time for them anymore, not in the unconditional, complete way she did.

I’m learning how to be alone. I’m learning how to fill my time when there is no family home to go back to. I’m learning how to find comfort in the care I give myself, rather than looking to her when I am in need.

I don’t write every day, but I do write a lot. Some of it I share and some I don’t. I still want to write that book, and I’ve managed to move beyond the hatred I directed at myself in those early days, when I first realised that I would never share it with her. Sometimes, you just aren’t quick enough. You don’t write fast enough. Sometimes, you have to move on.

There are parts of last year, and that last week in particular, that are still too painful to face. There are things that I have worked through and things that I’m actively working on and things that will probably take me years to confront.

I have become the person friends turn to when they face the unimaginable reality that their parent is going to die. When they are too old for anyone to take care of them but too young for it to be expected. I have no answers for them because there are none. I can’t make it hurt any less, nothing can. But I can send messages in the middle of the night and offer some reassurance that there is someone out there who is listening, who knows, who remembers every sleepless night.

It’s not that I’ve become a better person, I haven’t. It’s not that I’m even the right person. But I’m there, and so often there is nobody there when you need them. I know that.

These are the notes from the end. The end of childhood. The end of security. The end of a life that many people did not even notice had ended, because this is a vast world, and we do not care enough about each other. The end of stability. The end of reassurance. The end. The end of what she could give.

The end of me, as I was. A clean cut that separates two distinct parts of my life. But there is also a beginning, isn’t there? The point at which I started whatever comes next. I still don’t know what that is. I can see pieces of it now. But there will be years ahead and I have no idea what might fill them. But something will, it always does.

I won’t stop looking back. I can’t. I shouldn’t. You can’t experience this and dedicate all of your focus to what comes next. You have to hold what you’ve lost and carry it with you. You have to look back at the person who cannot come with you, remembering every single thing they gave you and the way their presence shaped the person you have become.

This is a piece of a story. The end of hers, and yet not, because when we are remembered, there is a part of us that is still here.