What happens when you die
Notes on how to deal with loss
20 months ago, my mother died.
It is very difficult to write those words.
Writing it down brings about a jolt to the chest, an accelerated heart beat, my stomach turns. It feels like a horrible form of excitement. I’m a bit dizzy. I feel sick and faint and cold. My substance is shaking.
I started writing this over a year ago, when the wound was throbbing and fresh. I found that organising my thoughts in writing helped me grow some scar tissue.
This is not looking for sympathy, not even for kind words or support from people I haven’t told yet. This is not a cry for attention or for recognition. This is not self-pity. This isn’t for view-counts or likes. This is not poetry, and it certainly isn’t art. Frankly I feel quite sick about the whole thing.
This is an attempt to transcribe monumental feelings into words.
There are many words in English that exist to describe some part of grief: sadness, anguish, nausea, depression, bereavement, loss, pain, hurt, sorrow, emptiness, torment, tragedy. “Fine” isn’t really one of them, but of course, it’s the one you use whenever anyone asks you how you are. Because there aren’t really any words in your language that know how you feel. You don’t know yourself.
I want to be a writer, and writers write things. People should know how this feels. Perhaps it will help them to understand why I am the way I am — some might even find a glimpse of solace. Most likely it will be ignored.
There is something very egocentric about writing about your own feelings. But we all do it. And perhaps this will be cathartic. I am very aware of the privilege that I have to write this and to wallow, and to not have to worry about anything else. The remnants of my family have been bastions of support, and even though I don’t show it, I am very grateful for this.
A person should not be a mystery. So I am launching this, unfettered, into the digital public.
They say you never really get over the loss of a loved one. Which is good, because I still haven’t reached whatever the first stage of grief is yet.
I am so not ready for this.
You never actually fully comprehend the idea that they’re gone. She can’t be gone. Such a thought is impossible. Even now. It’s a gaping chasm of pain that can wait another few decades before exploration.
I remember vague thoughts, when leaving the hospital, looking around at all the old people, resenting them for living so long. Why do they deserve to be alive and she doesn’t?*
*I’m sorry to all the strangers I looked at and thought that you didn’t deserve to be around. Of course you do. And sorry to all the friends I resented for not having gone through such a loss. You will one day. And it’ll be horrible.
Thinking about the time soon after she died is like trying to remember what happened when you were very drunk.
My brain didn’t really work in the same way anymore. I’m no neurologist but it felt like pieces had fallen out. I couldn’t think quickly. Memories were dropping out of it like rain, even the new ones. They got jumbled.
I don’t understand how I managed to eat or get dressed or get on a plane or talk. Concentrating on anything was impossible. I still get names wrong and I don’t care. I’m constantly half asleep. I forget what happens in the mornings.
This is trauma.
I don’t understand how I can be writing this with dry eyes, 20 months later.
For a while it seems like all anyone can talk about is money and probates and wills lost in ancient filing cabinets. And you don’t notice that the house is getting colder and dustier, and the plants in the garden are growing wilder. There are still some cereals in the cupboard under the stairs. Her shoes are ordered on the floor, waiting for her feet.
Nothing moves in that old house. It belongs to the spiders now. The sinks have gone calcium white with hard water. There are still bits of grass in the corridor from when my brother mowed the lawn last summer. The smell has changed. Or maybe I’m just noticing it now.
The legacy of a life in storage options and inheritance tax.
I haven’t seen the death certificate. I doubt I ever will. Talk of headstones hurts my head. Is it my job to make sure she’s remembered? Should I get a bench with her name on it? Rabbits eat whatever flowers we put on her grave. I stand there and try and talk to the earth that covers her body.
I have to make a conscious effort to speak about her in the past tense. “My mother was Finnish.” No-one takes note. This is fine.
I remember getting pissy when people’s responses to “my mother just died” are not adequately sincere. Like the credit card customer service representative who just said “you can’t use it anymore then” and left me crying on a South African floor. Or the woman from the water company who said, “I’m sorry to hear that,” to which I responded, “yeah, I was too.”
What do I do with all the sympathy cards? Some genuinely heartfelt, some clearly just a use of resources to meet a social obligation. They’re in a shoebox under a desk. I probably won’t look at them again before I throw them away.
Sometimes your own sadness gets to be too much so you focus on others’. My brother lost his mother last year. I feel so bad for him. You feel a strange kinship to anyone else whose parents died young, like somehow they understand. Sometimes I feel sorry for her because she’s not around anymore — as if she knows. She had just started to feel like a real person to me - an equal.
For a long time, I couldn’t be left alone for longer than a few hours.
Time was where I would cry every night for about two minutes. I would stop, self-consciously, like that was my quota for the day and then I’d be fine again. It always happened in short bouts, as if I didn’t have enough tears stored away to use them so liberally.
At points I start to believe that the universe is deliberately being nice to me because it knows I’ve suffered. Things happen almost too easily. Like it’s trying to make up for having done this to me by making it easy to find a fully furnished flat in Berlin.
Running away helps for a while.
The memory of the moment we were told two weeks. A sickening gut wrench, a hard punch to the solar plexus. She didn’t cry. Not once. But her face changed.
I wish I could forget it.
The acrid smell of hospital beds. Sunlight in cold white corridors. Plastic cups of jelly.
These are the worst memories that it is possible to have. I wish they weren’t there.
I sleep a lot. Dreams are dangerous, but can be entertaining distractions. Sometimes she shows up in them. And so you ask her questions about gardening and desperately tell her you love her and dream-mother looks confused and embarrassed, just like she would in real life.
There was one dream where I wrote her a letter telling her that I didn’t understand why I hadn’t spoken to her for so long. And then I woke up. And remembered.
Remember. And then the world in front of you fades and all you can hear is a ringing in your ears.
Forget. Bring yourself back. Think about if you have enough garlic left to make something for dinner.
And then you take a shower and it’s been six months. A year. 18 months. 20. Without her.
Some days are fine. Some days are not so fine.
I am sometimes afraid of leaving the house. Anxiety is bad. Small failures obviously push you into more of self loathing and misery. My upper back constantly hurts. I start seeing a therapist.
Books, music, TV, articles; they should come with a trigger warning for people who can’t deal with hospital scenes because of traumatic memories. Don’t ever mention mums to me.
It hits in waves. There are stretches of blissful, wilful ignorance where it lies dormant in the back of your overcrowded mind. These days are lasting longer and longer with time. But then a dream or a memory hits like a freight train.
To date, there have been two major blow outs. Both times I politely excuse myself and lock myself in the nearest bathroom. And in there I wail, thrash and scream, collapse and gasp for breath. I hope no-one hears. I wash my face. And think about soap.
Boredom turns into sadness. Sadness turns into exhaustion. That constant creeping sense of darkness; that everything in the world is terrible and nothing, nothing is going right and it must be your fault and now you’re drowning and you can’t think properly anymore.
I’m so scared of The Feeling. I’m terrified of it most of the time. Avoid, avoid at all costs. Distract yourself with nail biting, food, bad American sitcoms and Facebook. Just don’t be alone with your thoughts. Never close your eyes, it’s too much, it’s too much.
There’s no escape and you have to confront it. And when it comes. It’s such an overwhelming feeling. Bigger than anything.
Am I tired or sad or both? Everything is wrong. My arms feel light; is this a panic attack? I can’t concentrate or focus with my eyes and I’m tired even though I slept for 10 hours and my heart is beating too hard. I feel sick. I can’t move my face into an acceptable expression. Trying to breathe but nothing’s coming.
What if I start crying and never stop?
Happy memories become tainted grey and I forget what’s real and I forget what joy is.
“One must discover everything oneself… and get over it all alone”
~ Moominland Midwinter, Tove Jansson
This too shall pass.
But it never goes away. It never will.
I want my mother back. I miss her. I miss her horribly. Beyond anything else I miss her. Maybe if I count to seven enough times, if I bite my nails enough, if I wish hard enough — everything would be better if she was here.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s nice to pretend she’s still around. So I’ve made up my own religion. An idea for the afterlife so I can feel less alone. It’s a nice place, and everyone you’ve lost is there, and they’re fine and they look out for you and talk about their memories together and watch you live your life and they’ll be there waiting for you at the end.
Sometimes I try to look for messages that she’s trying to send. As though she’s there but can’t quite get through. Maybe a leaf or a bird does something, and I think, mum?
I can’t remember her properly anymore. What if I forget her? The idea that she only exists as a memory now is too hard. Memories are so easy to lose.
A photo, or seeing her name on Skype (status: Away) brings about a jolt of sadness, recognition, happiness, yearning, fear, sadness. I haven’t deleted her phone number. Sometimes I think about looking at the emails she sent me. It’s easier to look at older photos, from when I was really young, than more recent ones.
If I’d have known then I never would have called you stupid. If I’d have known then I never would said I couldn’t cope with this. If I’d have known then I never would have left your side. But I did. If I’d have known then neither of us would have survived.
Memories that don’t even involve her are made sadder by remembering that she was alive at the time. Time becomes measured in A.D. — After Death, and B.C. Before Cancer.
With time, I’m feeling her presence less.
Please just come back.
This is very hard for me to write. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing it.
The future is beyond uncertain; there’s no anchor, no safety net (save the almost unbearable luck of monetary inheritance) — I drift, not really knowing what I’m doing. And months, an entire year passes like that.
I feel like I’ve aged 50 years.
On my birthday I think that maybe it was all a very elaborate (and sick) prank. That she’ll pop out of a cake.
She doesn’t. And there is no cake.
Christmas is bad. But Mothers’ Day will be the worst.
Months of anniversaries of the date of her death go by — noted — and give a warm sense of distance, achievement that you’ve made it this far, and then crippling emptiness again. Those chasm-like feelings stop happening so frequently with time.
And then one day you stop beside a fountain and think, it’s been over a year. How is that possible? How did I survive this long without her?
I resign myself to a lifetime of this feeling.
I notice when I say things that she would have said. I start obsessing over cleanliness, to try and gain some control over something. She was always painstakingly tidy. I can’t clean as well as she did.
The things that remind me of her: making white sauce, cleaning floors by hand, complaining about mess, watching TV in a blanket, going to the toilet, holding hands, hanging laundry, snow, wholemeal bread, Finnish accents, green, the Archers theme tune, washing up, water filters, plants, neat gardens, my own face, eating an apple loudly, clean towels, folding sheets, birds, evening primrose (and pretty much every flower).
Sometimes I think about the last birthday card she ever wrote (to Dom), the last film she watched (Midnight in Paris), the book she never finished (Crime and Punishment). The last words she ever said.
There are unused face creams in a bag in her wardrobe. I take some home with me.
There is still some of her hair on her hair brush.
How impossible it is that she’s gone.
Trying to reframe my existence in the context of this new story. That sounds like marketing speak.
Trying to contextualise this enormous thing with the smallness of everyday life.
It seems utterly baffling to think that you are the same human that you were when you were 12 and everything was sunny and confusing and safe and you had to make no important decisions and there was alway food and always mum.
All those drunken nights at university which were fine and good because you had nothing sad to repress and you weren’t afraid of ending every night weeping because you’ve drunk your way past that part of your brain that keeps the emotion in check.
We used to call each other every day, to tell each other about our respective days. I always knew where she was, and had a rough idea of what she was doing, even if we were in different countries.
A life gone. No-one to call every day to talk to about what I ate for dinner, no-one to meet in town to buy vegetables, no-one to tell stories to, no-one to plan with, no-one to tell you that it’s a stupid idea, no-one to tell you it’s fine not to take that job, no-one to get souvenirs for, no-one to make a birthday card for, no-one to tell you not to buy that, no-one to teach you how to grow plants, no-one —
You are now the girl whose mother died of cancer.
Do I introduce myself like that now? Half an orphan at 22.
Small questions become enormously difficult. What do I say when people ask about my parents? Do I lie? Do I want their pity? I don’t even know which address to write on certain forms. My home died.
News stories about the NHS and magical cures and people ‘beating cancer’ bother me. Like she failed because she wasn’t strong enough. None of it will bring her back so why should I care about your charity marathon.
Somehow you feel above everyone else who tells you about their problems.
Oh you can’t find a house, I’m so sorry. But my mum just died.
You lost your job? That sucks. Still, my mum died.
Mhmm, someone stole your phone? Right. My mum died.
I’m a horrible person.
You grow tired of efforts to try and impress people. I refused to bother with vacuous things, like a proper job. I’m not going to laugh at your jokes either, because why should I pretend.
Even the most genuine laughter that comes out of my mouth seems false. I’m very aware that I’m laughing, and I don’t feel like I should be, even though fun appears to be happening. Do people know? Can they see sorrow?
I stop trusting new people and grow very cold and distant. Maybe it’s part of the nothing matters side of depression. Or the rather useful realisation that some things, like making people like you, are just not important, and the thing that was actually important is now gone. This makes me furious.
Flashes of memories from the hospital times crop up at the worst times, and sometimes they look worse than just focusing on the loss. With time, they are getting less frequent, and less painful. Survivable.
I have done what seemed impossible and built my world back up, but I’ve forgotten to build myself back up with it. I’m an empty hole in the middle of a satisfying busyness.
Who do I want to be now?
I was selfish, self-centred. I went travelling. I gave myself space. I was kind to myself. Somehow, I built myself into something that can do this.
This wasn’t a solo endeavour. I couldn’t have made it were it not for those closest to me who didn’t give up. And some perfect strangers too. No-one can get through this alone.
I never thought I could. Part of me feels numb to the world, and that gives me a great power.
Nothing that bad can ever happen to you again. Nothing. This is my pain. A testament to how much we loved each other. The beloved death of those wonderful times we had together.
Slowly I started to find that life, much as it always has, goes on.
