Grief

The absolute worst thing happened to me on the 24th July this year.  My mum died.  

She was in hospital for just over a week and then she was...gone.  She passed peacefully at 6am.  It was sunny, she was in no pain and no distress.  I would have wanted it no other way, of course.  She'd gone into hospital for IV antibiotics and was fully expected to return home within four days but she stopped responding to them for some reason.  

This is not my first experience of grief.  I have no grandparents, haven't for a long time, and each of their deaths hit me hard.  Losing my mother though, well it's taking all the grief I had with all my grandparents rolled into one and multiplying it by a million - that's how it feels.

In reality though, I have no idea how to feel.  I don't appear to be doing the stages of grief properly.  Some days I have all of then one after the other and in no particular order.  Other days I have some of the stages.  

For example.  The other day I was outrageously angry.  I can't pin point what I was angry at exactly, just that I knew if someone even looked at me the wrong way they'd be likely to get a tongue lashing. 

Two evenings in a row, after two good days, I went to bed and would remember me visiting my mum in hospital.  She'd only been in for two days at that point and was responding to the antibiotics then.  We were doing a crossword together.  Mum flicked through the newspapers like she always did at home.  I was fixated on that memory and would end up in floods of tears because now she's not like that, she's gone.

I don't know how far I've dipped into denial because I don't deny that she is gone - she is.  I'm realistic about that.  I do have feelings of disbelief but I wouldn't call that denial.  I sometimes walk into a room and can't believe she's not there doing a cross-stitch or doing some knitting.  Sometimes I pick up my phone to text her and then I remember.  

I've done no bargaining (not to say I won't in the future) because I know she's gone.  I could have everything to bargain with but nothing will bring her back.  I do understand that.  I'm also not sure that had anything been done differently it would have made a difference.  Our GP practice was top notch the day she had initially taken ill.  A doctor came to the house, he was thorough and he ordered an ambulance which turned up less than an hour later despite it not being a blue light emergency.  The NHS, its paramedics and nurses and doctors on the ward would not have been better throughout that whole week.  

It was her time.  I've read about acceptance and some would say that I have accepted her death but I haven't and I never will.  She has died, she is not coming back, but I won't accept that she's not here.  When I see my dad sitting lonely at night, I can't accept that she isn't here because she needs to be.  If she was then she'd be knitting up a storm and getting annoyed with my dad if he interrupted her counting stitches just to ask where the remote was.  'I've lost count now' she would hiss.  Mum was a huge Liverpool fan and when they were in a tight or tense game her knitting speed would increase and I swear I saw sparks coming off her knitting needles once.  Then she would make a mistake and have to rip it back, curse words being muttered under her breath as she did so.  So no, I'll never accept she's gone because she should be here still doing those things and making my dad and I laugh.

The last thing I said to my mum was 'I Love You.'  And I am so glad I did.