Anniversary.

Today is a sad day for me. It’s an anniversary. Ten years ago today, my mum died.

She went to sleep on the sofa, and simply didn’t wake up.

What followed was… Tough. We had a house to clear through and pack. My mum hadn’t expected to die at 59, so nothing had been planned. My sister had had her son ten days before, so we had to break the news to her.

I can’t talk for the rest of the family, only my experiences, but I basically spent two weeks starting at my mum’s house at 8am, and finishing around 8pm. I’d come home, soak in the bath and cry, and go to bed. Even my husband wondered how I was grieving because I totally retracted into myself. It’s how I cope.

Clearing the house was hard but important. I saved silly things. One of the last pieces of knitting she did. Notebooks and bits of paper with her handwriting on them. I had to do things I’d never thought about before. Gather together clothes for her to be cremated in.

I had to select knickers for my dead mother’s body. It was near Christmas, so she wore the new shoes I’d bought her.

The funeral was in turns achingly sad, funny, and fun. Alongside listening to people talk about her and her life, and our love for her, we caught up with family, cuddled my new nephew, hugged and laughed. The final song was ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ by Queen. A song we had sung countless times in the car to/from my grandparents. We all snort/laugh/cried when it came on.

We got through, and we still do, but grief is a funny thing. It stays with you. I once heard it described as a ball inside a box. Most of the time that ball sits there quietly, unmoving, still. It’s there, you’re aware of it. But it’s OK. Until something knocks the box. When the box is moved, the ball bounces around. A little tap. A big hit. A word, a voice, a piece of writing, a conversation with someone in the family reminiscing.

I still have issues with two things, both auditory, both very different.

I cannot, ever, listen to Radio 4, when Jenny Murray is on. Her voice sounds like my mums in such a way that it makes my heart ache.

And secondly, the Take That Song, Rule the World, is ruined for me. It was my nephew’s lullaby, and for months, years after my mum’s death, just hearing it would break me. When people talk about being triggered, truly triggered, they’re not talking about finding something uncomfortable, or difficult. They’re talking about a feeling of fear, of anguish, of breaking down. Of melting into a puddle of tears, hands clutching at your heart. I can still recall the feeling of sheer panic, absolute desperation when it started playing as I was trying to pay a bill at a restaurant. How the fuck I held it together, I don’t know, what on earth the staff thought was going on I don’t know. And the time the DJ played it at my brother’s wedding when they went to cut the cake. I had to walk out. I missed the damn thing.

It’s rarer now that it happens, but much like that ball in a box, if something taps hard, if I’m already tired, or emotional, the opening bars are enough to send me rushing off to hide.

Now ten years on, it still hurts. I’d still give anything to hear her voice. Feel her arms around me. But I can’t. So instead, today I’ll be spending time with family, talking to them. Doing stuff she’d have loved to do too.

And I’ll be hugging my loved ones just a little tighter. x