The importance of anniversaries...

It's been 18 years since I lost mum, I've learned it's important to mark the day...

Every year she comes with the crocuses.

Time constantly confuses me. I know it’s boring small-talk fodder but really, how is it almost March? But it is. It’s almost March. It’s that time of year where people are both hopeful, and wary. It’s Fool’s Spring. Don’t trust the sunshine, a beast is on its way.

It’s the time of year she died.

Except, back then, in 2005, we were in the beast. I don’t mean that metaphorically. Maybe I do. The day I went to view her body The Meadows were covered in a thick white sheet; a bunch of children pelted snowballs at me. I wondered what would happen if I turned around and yelled, “my mum has just died.” They’d probably have just laughed.

I had begun to notice the flowers. The crocuses. I’d first spotted them the day before, staring out the hospice window – sunshine yellow and fighting through the snow. They soothed me. And there they were again, clustered around trees, the harsh weather no match for them.

A year later I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t know why. It was so confusing. I wasn’t sick, yet every time I swung my legs out of the duvet to try, I felt consumed by the urge to pull them back in. I was being held in bed, something invisible holding me down. I cried all day and it was only later that I considered the date. Her anniversary.

One year - and I cannot remember why, - I laid flowers for her in the middle of Hyde Park roundabout. I think I had got stuck on that terrifyingly confusing intersection and I had wanted to place them elsewhere but I was too exhausted. I needed to do it right that very second. What I can remember is the cars whizzing around, the navy blue sky, my husband’s solid chest as he held me.

I used to think it was silly. How much this day meant. But eventually I began to sink into it. I thought, if I’m going to feel miserable then I may as well make something of it. Use it wisely. It began, at first, as my day where I “allowed” myself to feel sad. I was running away from grief, and the 24^th of February, was my rest day. I’d throw myself into all the things I had been avoiding – I’d read her obituary, I’d look at photos of her, I’d sit and try to conjure up memories of her, finding so often that I couldn’t.

Over time, I became more comfortable in the longitude of grief. I began to learn that missing her, years on, didn’t make me weak. That my natural emotions didn’t need to be hidden away, displayed only in secret once a year. Then, the day became something else – a chance to celebrate her. Recently I’ve enjoyed going on long walks, looking at all the springtime flowers – yes, the crocuses but also the daffodils, the snow drops… The ones she loved.

Yet it’s the crocuses that have begun to represent so much. The way they fling out a blanket of joy, over an otherwise unremarkable piece of grass. It doesn’t matter if we’re in Fool’s Spring, or grasped in the arms of a Beast they’ll show their heads. They are bright warriors and they remind me, not only of her strength, but of my own. Of all I’ve been through, all I’ll go through, how I’ll survive.

This year I wasn’t able to see them. I was stuck in bed, much like that very first year. Only this time, it wasn’t an invisible sadness holding me in place, but day 15 of COVID (this strain has hit me badly). I wasn’t able to go for my walk, I wasn’t able to do very much at all. It wasn’t a good day.

But, between the coughs and the crying, tiny doses of joy were being delivered to me. I’d asked on Instagram if people could send me pictures of the Spring flowers they’d seen, and soon, my phone was filled with her. She was blooming beside a Loch, far up North Scotland, she was in all the London parks... She was alive in my mind, and she was alive in the minds of others. Even those who had never met her.

I can’t quite capture how much all these photographs meant to me. I’m still foggy, floating within my virus mind. Microsoft AutoCorrect keeps telling me off and everything I type sounds glib. I’m also slightly worried I’ve just swallowed a spider… but that could be my cough telling tall tales.

The point I want to make is that, I know anniversaries are hard. Sometimes all you can do is just push through the day, make it to the other side. But, if you can, try and do something to remember them. Even something small. I used to just order a Domino’s and get a lottery ticket, as that was something we did together when dad was away.

It turns out, I wasn’t doing something silly (I’m beginning to learn that whenever I tell myself I’m being silly… I’m normally being sensible) but I was actually ENGAGING IN HEALTHY GRIEVING PRACTICE! I recently spoke to a whole load of grief experts for an article in Women’s Health (I think it’s the one out now, with P!nk on the cover but I’ve been too ill to check) and through that I learned that doing little rituals, whether on an anniversary or not, helps give some control back to us, the grievers, and that helps us process it in a healthier way. (I wrote about that more here)

I really love that, all this time, my brain was guiding me towards something healthy. Even if I didn’t realise it. Even when I told myself it was silly.

I’m going to stop typing this now, as it feels like about a million pieces in one and the editor within me is screaming at me to tidy it up. But the deep inner voice within me, the one that also told me each year to mark her somehow, even when I didn’t know the date, is also telling me to go back to sleep. I better listen to it. As it seems it’s never been wrong before…

Thank you so much to everyone who sent pictures. I love them so much and am going to include some of them below. Hopefully you don’t come after me for photographer’s rights, or money! As I don’t have any! But if you’d like me to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, I have some fun benefits coming up for paid subscribers. Thank you! Wow, turns out being ill makes it slightly easier to ask people to become paid. I normally just pop the button in.