On long-term grief...

I have a big anniversary coming up...

(a picture of crocuses I took one anniversary)

I don’t know how I’m going to feel next week. I don’t know how I feel now. Yet here I am, typing, trying to extract the words circulating my brain and place them down here, on this blank sheet of paper.

Why? Because it’s what I always do. What I’ve always done. When I need to untangle something complicated, something niggling, I write. And now, it seems, I write to you.

This coming Saturday, the 24^th February, it will be nineteen years since we lost mum. 19 years. I’ve had to figure out the maths on that one, multiple times, to make sure I’m correct. It’s a simple equation. She died in 2005, it’s now 2024. 19 years. But it feels impossible to me, is it that I can’t figure it out? Or is that I don’t believe it?

Is it that I really don’t want the day to come?

The icons on my desk top are distracting me. The PDFs, the word documents, perhaps I should open them, do some work. Do some safer work. I could go dye my hair. I need to dye my hair.

You might be wondering why I’m finding this number of years so hard to comprehend. After all, it’s an odd number. It’s not ten, it’s not twenty, it’s not fifty. See how hard I am trying to not write this next part? I don’t even know how to phrase it, in a way that expresses it correctly. Accurately.

Maybe because I don’t know how I feel about it.

I was 19-years-old when my mum died. Which means, perhaps not exactly on this upcoming anniversary of her death, as I don’t know the months, the days, the hours, the seconds, but… soon.

Soon, I’ll have not known her for as long as I knew her. I’ll have lived without her for longer than I lived with her.

I find myself crying as I type those words. So, I do know how I feel about it. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

But what can I do about that? About this feeling of unease, about this approaching day? I don’t want to cry. I really am very tired of that.

I want to dye my hair. I want to get in the bath. I want to stream the Eras tour, and thread colourful beads onto friendship bracelets.

What I don’t want to do is sit here, writing this and confronting this feeling that I so, so desperately want to ignore.

I want to type something about the crocuses I saw yesterday, their purple heads gathered, in lilac gangs, across the church grass. This time of year, it always begins with the crocuses. They’re what I saw, the day before she died, out her hospice window, the only colour in a sheet of white.

I can remember everything about that day. I can remember nothing about that day.

But they were there, surviving brightly under a thick blanket of snow. That’s what I’ve written here, you see? Why I named this newsletter, Crocuses In The Snow.

I want us all, to survive brightly, together.

I don’t feel very bright.

And I’m sorry for that.

It’s not that I feel miserable, actually. Despite, the very obvious displays of it, what with me, crying in the window seat, hoping that the people on the street below can’t see my puffy face. (Isn’t it funny, how we often we hide our grief?)

I had a nice day yesterday, I hadn’t actually noticed the crocuses at first. Then, one of our guests pointed them out, and I thought, ‘that’s nice, that they’re here, that she’s here, seeing this project.’

I don’t know when the crocuses began to represent her. What she sees, what she feels. But I know I felt warmth that the crocuses were there - amidst the discarded whisky bottles and the paper cups – and that she was a part of my volunteering, watching this project that makes me so happy, that means so much to me.

Maybe I do feel bright.

I told you, at the beginning, I don’t know I feel.

I guess it’s because, when I write, I want there to be an ending. Not just for you, but for me. Something to tie everything up, some wisdom I’ve gifted myself. Everyone loves a little positive spin, don’t they?

I’m scared I won’t be able to give you that this week. That I won’t be able to give you that next week.

As, all I want, is to be able to pause time, stop that day from arriving.

There were days I couldn’t get out of bed. When the crying felt as if it would destroy me. I’d be gasping for air, my body suddenly spasming, a feeling completely and utterly out of my control.

I haven’t felt that way in so long.

I’m terrified of feeling that way again.

19 years. 19 years. 19 years.

I’m building who I am without her. To carry that work on, longer than what she’s ever known of me… It feels like a betrayal. Isn’t that silly? I didn’t choose for her to die. For her to not be my side. I want her here. I’ve wanted her here.

Yet… I have carried on. And this life, it’s good.

This week, alone, I’ve danced in neon lights, my body flailing, best friend by my side. I went back to my old university, spoke to students there about my career, students who, just like I did, wanted to work in magazines. I told them how I did it. I’ve had feather-duvet lie-ins with my husband and I’ve drank pink champagne. I’ve had pasta, I’ve listened to voicenotes, I’ve fed my cat.

Now? I’m going to dye my hair, take a bath, weave beads onto elastic cords…

I’m going to keep going. I always keep going. In this time. 19 years…

The brightness it has come with the darkness.

Underneath the snow, below the yellow and lilac petals, was dirt.

I’m so lucky to miss her. I’m so lucky to have known her.

I don’t want this Saturday to come. But it’s going to. It has to.

And…

There will be crocuses.

However I feel, there will be crocuses.

The brightness will come.

The brightness is already here.

Yesterday on my volunteering shift (we provide showers for those experiencing homelessness, as well as other hygiene essentials)