A lot has happened since that last post. A lot.
The thing that is inescapable and pervading, despite my attempts to block it out, is that my mum died. Suddenly, yes; yet, it seems that we had been dodging it for years - the blood poisoning after an emergency hysterectomy, the breast cancer, the triple bypass. It seems that it only just happened and forever ago, as if it always has been; sometimes it feels as if I cannot grasp the life I had with her, it was so lacking in reality, and that is one of the most terrifying parts of this.
Grief is so deeply personal, and so hard to fathom when you are not experiencing it, I do not plan to spend much time on it specifically. But it is everywhere, at all times, with me in differing intensities, and always with the capacity to wind me, suddenly, in its sharpness - the episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour on Yesterday, which I could not get through; the fiftieth reading of Where the Wild Things Are with the peanut which suddenly cut through me; the start of a football season without her.
I have a lot to work through, frankly. I do not want this to be the space for that, but it will seep in, inevitably. But what I do want to use this for is thinking about the good in my life, the things that I cannot share with her but want to, desperately.
I am not quite sure why I am doing this but putting it out in the world feels peaceful and calming. A way to somehow make solid everything that feels so shaky and insubstantial otherwise.
The thing that is inescapable and pervading, despite my attempts to block it out, is that my mum died. Suddenly, yes; yet, it seems that we had been dodging it for years - the blood poisoning after an emergency hysterectomy, the breast cancer, the triple bypass. It seems that it only just happened and forever ago, as if it always has been; sometimes it feels as if I cannot grasp the life I had with her, it was so lacking in reality, and that is one of the most terrifying parts of this.
Grief is so deeply personal, and so hard to fathom when you are not experiencing it, I do not plan to spend much time on it specifically. But it is everywhere, at all times, with me in differing intensities, and always with the capacity to wind me, suddenly, in its sharpness - the episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour on Yesterday, which I could not get through; the fiftieth reading of Where the Wild Things Are with the peanut which suddenly cut through me; the start of a football season without her.
I have a lot to work through, frankly. I do not want this to be the space for that, but it will seep in, inevitably. But what I do want to use this for is thinking about the good in my life, the things that I cannot share with her but want to, desperately.
I am not quite sure why I am doing this but putting it out in the world feels peaceful and calming. A way to somehow make solid everything that feels so shaky and insubstantial otherwise.
