I Miss You

To grieve is to be human.

We all love. We all lose people we love. It never feels timely. It never feels right. There is a grave injustice implicit in loss. There could always have been one more day. One more perfect day, spent well in good company. There is so much regret. There is so much to miss.

Grief is so lonely. For such a collective experience, there is isolation in grief.  Those who know grief understand. Those who have not yet experienced it are wary, struck dumb by not wanting to say the wrong thing or full of platitudes. Lord knows, it is hard to say the right thing.

For the one grieving, there aren't words. There aren't words invented to express the spectrum and depth and breadth of grief. There aren't words to describe the cold-water shock of the world without them, the torrent that sneaks up to engulf you when you don't expect it. Metaphor and simile are a poor substitute for the silent, numbing, screaming agony of loss.

It was my third wedding anniversary last week. On my first wedding anniversary, I had a month old baby. My mum made me and Tom a three course, takeaway meal and looked after the baby for an hour so we could nip to the pub where we had our wedding anniversary for a drink, and the kids for a bit longer so we could eat our takeaway meal in peace. On my second wedding anniversary, I held her hand in hospital. This year, we went out for lunch and as we were leaving, I went to grab her a menu*. And then I remembered.

The slings and arrows of grief come suddenly, from nowhere. It has been nine months and nineteen days since I saw Mum breathe. I have not recovered from the shock of a loss we knew was coming for three months. I have tucked my pain away in a pocket called "later", holding it at bay for a time when I have time to consciously grieve. But there will never be time, so instead it lies beneath the surface and comes spilling from the blue, particularly at this time of anniversaries. The anniversary of her initial illness has passed, so has the anniversary of her diagnosis, and her hospital discharge. But the next few months are chequered with memories of the same days of last year, those nightmarish, weird, unreal days of happiness and fear, joy and pain.

I wrote last year how I might not get to taste my mum's roast dinner again. And I never did. She taught my dad how to do it, but it's not the same. Such a tiny thing to pierce the soul. There are millions of tiny needles, just piercing the skin, each one labelled with something she did that she doesn't anymore, and sometimes they don't hurt at all. Sometimes they dig deep.

This is nothing unique. This is nothing special. This is universal. So why does it feel so lonely?

I miss you Mum.
In every single thing. In every phonecall I would have made. In every word I write. In every book I read. In every photo that you're not in.  In every photo that you are in. In every conversation I have. In every meal I cook. In every meal I eat. In every news story, in every tennis match, in every gathering.
And every time I go to bed, and every time I wake. And in everything the children do, and say. In everything I do and say. And everywhere I go.
In every sunset, in every sunrise. With every tide. On every single wave. In every shooting star. In every breath of late summer breeze.
I miss you. The world is not the world without you.




* Mum collected menus. She had hundreds, stolen from such diverse places as Spanish kebab shops and Rick Stein's restaurant in Padstow. The rules of eating out for us children were simple: nick a menu or memorise what you ate, because there will be questions.