As Mother’s Day draws near, you come into my mind more often.
It has been 8 years, since we got the call and rushed to be at your hospital bedside whilst you lay in a coma for days, eventually drifting away from us. The past few years, Mother’s Day has gradually become easier, to bear all the gushing messages on social media and the marketing in all the shops, bombarding you like a slap in the face. I think about how difficult it was in those early years, and how I sympathise with those only starting out new, on the grieving journey, with the long road ahead before they will eventually come out on the other side.
For me, the sadness, hurt and anger has now dissipated and been replaced, by softer emotions that provoke a smile rather than tears. I also see you more as a person now, rather than as just my mother and recognise just how difficult your life had been, in its entirety. Over time, I remember more and more of the nuggets of life advice that were spread out throughout my childhood and young adulthood before you left us.
I remember you used to constantly say to me that I was the only person you knew who ‘totally beat to the sound of my own drum’. At the time, I always thought you were mocking me, teasing the fact that I refused to comply and did not bow down to peer pressure growing up. In hindsight, I now look back and realise you recognised in me, the strong sense of justice and staying true to myself, which has always permeated my approach to life. As I have gotten older, I sometimes feel I have lost a little of that, some of my courage and my voice, in the way that ageing makes you less likely to challenge the status quo, and more likely to settle or compromise for an easier life.
Something which you used to get annoyed about was the fact that I always had my head permanently stuck in books. I know you used to worry that I was so obsessively concerned about doing well, that I was lonely, not really living and always moving too fast. Slow down, slow down you always used to say. This is something which I guess I will always struggle with. Nowadays though, I have found joy in the most unusual and surprising of places – in art, walking, creative writing, nature and cooking. Everything that involves being slower and relishing in the delight of the moment.
It just goes to show, how much people can change. I think that’s all part of the journey of life and finding yourself, in realising that each of us evolves continually over time and what once made us happy, can change entirely. I think it also shows that the stories we tell ourselves, in our heads, can often be completely imagined – as I always thought I did not have a creative bone in my body and I could not have been more wrong!
Since you have passed, I feel much closer to you now, than I did when you were alive. I feel your presence surrounding me, comforting and protecting me. When I have experienced danger, I felt you there, such as when I was mysteriously rescued by a stranger a few years ago in London, when another person with bad intent took me away from a work event after slipping a date-rape drug into my drink. It is inexplicable to rationalise, but I know that it was your intervention which saved me on that occasion as your presence was so enveloping in the days afterwards. At times when I have difficult decisions to make, such as when I had to break up with the boyfriend who was all wrong for me, I knew that you were there, guiding me towards my ultimate decision. When I have been most scared, lying on a theatre operating table petrified last year, you got me through it and in the weeks afterwards when I was recovering.
The closer I have felt to you in recent years, the more that I have seen the signs from you which were glaringly obvious, once I started paying attention. Last Sunday on your anniversary for example, I decided to watch a movie. So I put on the first random one on Netflix, without reading the synopsis or anything about it, in advance. This was totally out of character, as normally I google the entire plot of any book or film before tackling them. I like the certainty of knowing where I am going with a story, so that I can enjoy the details! It turned out the random movie was about a girl who was receiving messages from her dead mother, who was sorting out her life for her, from the other side. I then turned on the radio, and your favourite song, a Crowded House classic just happened to be playing on the radio. I like to think of these, as little gifts from you, from the other side – rightly or wrongly, real or imagined. I guess I’ll never know for sure.
Mainly though, I know in my soul, that you are happy now, wherever you are.
Happy Mother’s Day.
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