I remember I was awake at dawn on the day after she passed. I remember thinking how wrong it was for the sun to rise – unscathed, as if nothing had happened, as if my whole world didn’t just plummet into darkness. Even now, I despise sunrises with a passion.
After the funeral, we had to return to our ‘normal’ lives. The only thing that motivated me to keep going was the thought that ‘Mum would have wanted you to live a full life – do it for her’.
Over the next decade or so, that sharp pain slowly faded. I still missed her and thought about her at every birthday, every holiday, every Mother’s Day, every milestone… but somehow I got used to her not being there in person. In the back of my mind, I thought I had ‘dealt with’ my grief.
Then I became a mother myself and the grief hit me like a ton of bricks. It resurfaced so unexpectedly that it completely caught me off guard. When my husband went back to work a few weeks after childbirth, I was left alone in the house with my baby and I was petrified. Suddenly I was missing Mum so much, I wished I could call and ask her to come over to keep me company. I had so many questions for her – ‘Is it meant to be this hard? Why am I so anxious and scared? How the heck did you cope when you had me?’ I wanted to know about myself as a baby – ‘What was I like when I was a baby? How did you comfort me when I cried? When did I start sleeping through the night?’
I thought about Mum all the time during that first year with my baby, wishing she could be there to guide me on this new motherhood journey. It made my heart ache so much picturing her as a grandmother and knowing how much she would have loved my baby girl.
With each baby milestone, things got easier and I started thinking about Mum in a different light. I realised that even though she couldn’t be with me in person, Mum will always be a part of me and my life. Her essence, her spirit and mother heart are always with me and within me. She had already taught me everything I needed to know about being a mother – with the unwavering strength, courage, integrity and selflessness that I have witnessed throughout her life. I feel blessed and grateful for her love and for our memories together, because now I can pass that love onto my daughter. My daughter will grow up knowing Grandma, through the stories I will tell her and through my love.
I recently heard this saying – grief is simply love with no place to go. I have come to terms with the fact that my grief will always be with me because my love for Mum will always be there.
