My dad has been going through his calendar / diary looking at dates, the when and where of mum’s diagnosis and illness.
I and my brother are trying to look to the future.
Mum said, not to feel guilty when she was “gone”. That was one thing she always emphasised, to go on with my life, our lives.
Dad, he’s looking into the past, trying, I think, and he’s said, sort of, to work out what else he could have done.
Near the end he was up at the Alfred twice a week, taking mum up for blood and platelet transfusions.
The thing that I constantly feel is that is isn’t fair, isn’t fair that mum’s died. That she’s gone. It isn’t fair that there’s people out there smoking, and they’re not dying, but my mum has.
I often, well I used to play the “what if” game in my mind, worry, think, feel guilt, worry some more about the what ifs of life. Think about what I could have done differently, what I wish had happened.
Now I don’t.
Now I’m trying to focus on the future.
It’s in the downtime moments where I’m not thinking that I can’t deal with things.
I guess this is grief.
I am trying to look forward. But it seems each time that I am getting used to it a road block is thrown in the way.
Mum’s memorial / funeral was one of those things.
A weird thing I’ve blogged about previously.
Experiencing it was something else.
Coffin at the front and centre.
The benches in the White Ladies area were stiff though had cushions. The White Ladies themselves were professional.
The celebrant wasn’t, got mum’s maiden name wrong. I feel like I should forgive her for that, but I don’t. She was employed to do a job, the job that she supposedly has been doing for a long time and she messed that up.
I think the whole memorial messes up the grieving process.
There’s still mum’s ashes to deal with.
Though for me she ceased to be “mum” in the hospital, where she died. Anything after that is just...I don’t know. Not.
I sometimes wish I believed in an afterlife, or in psychics or something. That I could pray and think that mum would hear me, or listen to the spirits and talk to her.
None of that’s going to happen though, none of that’s real. I can’t just magic it up.
I knew that from an early age, prayer didn’t work, there was no big higher power. There was just life, we live it and that’s it.
I accepted that when I was quite young, sometimes in early primary school or maybe earlier. I don’t really recall.
Now though, looking out into “real life” I’m...not scared. But this is real life, this is what there is.
I just wish...I don’t know, wish that we’d had more time. Despite knowing that our time was finite, that with mum’s disease it was always finite, even more finite than others, yet still I wish...something. I really don’t know.
I and my brother are trying to look to the future.
Mum said, not to feel guilty when she was “gone”. That was one thing she always emphasised, to go on with my life, our lives.
Dad, he’s looking into the past, trying, I think, and he’s said, sort of, to work out what else he could have done.
Near the end he was up at the Alfred twice a week, taking mum up for blood and platelet transfusions.
The thing that I constantly feel is that is isn’t fair, isn’t fair that mum’s died. That she’s gone. It isn’t fair that there’s people out there smoking, and they’re not dying, but my mum has.
I often, well I used to play the “what if” game in my mind, worry, think, feel guilt, worry some more about the what ifs of life. Think about what I could have done differently, what I wish had happened.
Now I don’t.
Now I’m trying to focus on the future.
It’s in the downtime moments where I’m not thinking that I can’t deal with things.
I guess this is grief.
I am trying to look forward. But it seems each time that I am getting used to it a road block is thrown in the way.
Mum’s memorial / funeral was one of those things.
A weird thing I’ve blogged about previously.
Experiencing it was something else.
Coffin at the front and centre.
The benches in the White Ladies area were stiff though had cushions. The White Ladies themselves were professional.
The celebrant wasn’t, got mum’s maiden name wrong. I feel like I should forgive her for that, but I don’t. She was employed to do a job, the job that she supposedly has been doing for a long time and she messed that up.
I think the whole memorial messes up the grieving process.
There’s still mum’s ashes to deal with.
Though for me she ceased to be “mum” in the hospital, where she died. Anything after that is just...I don’t know. Not.
I sometimes wish I believed in an afterlife, or in psychics or something. That I could pray and think that mum would hear me, or listen to the spirits and talk to her.
None of that’s going to happen though, none of that’s real. I can’t just magic it up.
I knew that from an early age, prayer didn’t work, there was no big higher power. There was just life, we live it and that’s it.
I accepted that when I was quite young, sometimes in early primary school or maybe earlier. I don’t really recall.
Now though, looking out into “real life” I’m...not scared. But this is real life, this is what there is.
I just wish...I don’t know, wish that we’d had more time. Despite knowing that our time was finite, that with mum’s disease it was always finite, even more finite than others, yet still I wish...something. I really don’t know.