A year out

Two days after Mum died, I deleted all of our messages. The image of me lying on my bed, sobbing and woefully scrolling through every text conversation we ever had made me feel sick. It felt like the worst possible torture to be able to access something that gave a sense of immediacy and ‘reply’ but was now just another acknowledgement of a definite end to a conversation. It was also disorientating to think that I could still ring Mum’s phone or send her a text. That even though Mum no longer existed, her phone and that virtual space for conversation did. When I swiped my finger across the screen and hit the red delete button, I had a feeling I suppose someone might have if they dismantle a bomb…extreme example I know but I really believed I had identified a dangerous, sob-inducing, painful trigger and successfully eliminated it. It was one of the first things I did in a bid to control the uncontrollable. Grief 0, Ella 1. 

Step two in my master plan to overcome grief was to figure out how to grieve well. Like an exam that could be prepared for, I wanted to make sure I was on top of whatever ‘grief’ meant. Along with deleting all of our messages, I wrote a detailed to-do list. I needed to talk to my tutor about all the uni I had missed. I needed to reply to the lovely messages that I had received. I needed to buy some books on grief… I thought they could help send me in the right direction of what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I just needed to figure out what it meant to grieve (something I thought google could help me with), find a way not to miss Mum and then not have to be sad. When I put it like that and reasoned with myself in that ridiculous way we are all capable of, it seemed completely do-able. I didn’t think Mum would actually ever die and that happened, so my sense of what was possible and impossible was all a bit blurred.

This attempt to try and control grief characterised a lot of the first year after Mum died. It was a mentality that was very much shaped around trying to keep everything just as it was before. Even seeking counselling in my third year of uni gave me a sense of control.  Five months of counselling gave me five months of structured crying. It became the one hour a week I would properly cry for Mum, tearing up as soon as I walked through the door into the wonderfully snug room with discreetly hidden tissues and a sofa that swallowed you up when you sat down. It became a space where someone would ‘hold my hand’ while I ventured into the depths of emotion I was teetering around but too scared to feel alone. It also had the added benefit of giving the impression (to myself more than anyone) of ‘doing the right thing’. In my head, I could neatly box what it means to grieve into my one hour a week of counselling and feel pleased that as much as everything else was out of my control, at least I would know when I’d be bursting into tears and where exactly I would be. This made my completely helpless situation a bit less helpless. I think for a while I thought I had cracked it.

Mum graduating from cambridge… i wish i had asked more about this period of her life but i didn’t know that would be a question i would have until i graduated

Mum graduating from cambridge… i wish i had asked more about this period of her life but i didn’t know that would be a question i would have until i graduated

But then uni was going to finish and I would no longer have the structure it bought to try and slot grief in. I couldn’t use my dingy Camden basement room and the snuggly warm counselling sofa as my ‘crying space’, and exam halls and libraries as places I knew wouldn’t make me cry. I couldn’t distract myself with essays and revision and use them as quantifiable markers to prove that life was going on as it should, and that I was grieving well (because surely if I managed to get good marks that meant I was grieving incredibly well?) But I also felt completely unsettled at the thought of trying to find a graduate job and then having a rigid amount of holiday, making that formal transition into adulthood where I most definitely would have to work on my birthday. I had a feeling I can only describe as similar to the one you get when you are not sure if you left the oven on, and you can’t fully engage in the present because your mind is partly preoccupied with a potential fire at home.

So, I decided to take a year off and it was quite a relief to have an excuse not to have a definite plan for the year. In your third year at uni you are often confronted with the question ‘So, what will you do after uni?’ Instead of having to fumble around for an answer that sounded legitimate, I could just say I was taking some time off to process the past few years.

Mum in her early twenties looking beautiful

Mum in her early twenties looking beautiful

I particularly liked the word ‘processing’ because it sounded quite purposeful and what you should be doing if you were in my position. It was also met with great understanding, like everyone else agreed that ‘processing’ was exactly the thing to do. There were many conversations with sympathetic nods and tuts of approval at this decision to essentially stop what I might otherwise have been doing, and consciously pause for a year.

I occasionally felt indulgent at the thought of going back home and actively avoiding any job that required a university degree and had the word ‘graduate’ in. I couldn’t tease apart whether this was a plan taken because it was something I should be doing or actively wanted to do. I also wasn’t too sure if I completely needed it (which I think came back to always wanting to appear completely able). I would enviably listen to friends plans that fit the description of post uni life (as if there is such a thing) and wonder what it would be like to not have a huge gaping hole in your life where your Mum should be. What a relief it would be to not have anything unbearably painful to cry about all the time. Taking a year off for the main purpose of giving myself ‘space to grieve’ was a big acknowledgement that life had changed. If Mum were alive, she would have helped me figure out what to do next and even if it involved moving back home, she would be there with me. It was all a bit daunting.

A boxing day walk

A boxing day walk

The biggest worry about taking a year off with no definite plan and for the purpose of ‘grieving’, was I had no designated checks to make sure I was where I was supposed to be, given the circumstances. I almost wanted a manual where I could tick off grief milestones. Was crying more a good sign? Getting upset near Christmas felt more grief-like so maybe that was a positive sign. How about spending a day lounging at home, reading the papers and then getting into bed about 5pm to watch a new series… was that a part of the processing? I knew organising Mum’s clothes probably counted on the higher part of the processing scale but that seemed too big a task and so I just told myself I’d get onto that later.  On the other hand, long walks in the countryside seemed pretty process-like and do-able, and films always did a good job of making the characters look wistful and like they were properly mourning the loss of their loved one. But my long walks with the dogs often involved making sure the younger of the two (Melka) steered clear of bigger dogs and didn’t get the chance to viciously bark at them. I couldn’t see myself having any life-changing epiphanies about death while holding dog poo bags and scanning the horizon for Labrador sized dogs.

If I’m honest, I half expected the ‘processing’ to be like in films when the main character confronts the perpetrator and says something a bit like ‘come on then, what have you got for me’ (awful screenwriting from me but I hope you get the gist). Or when someone walks straight into the battlefield towards the oncoming army. I wanted to feel all the bad things grief and missing Mum was going to make me feel, but all at once and intensely. I wanted to get it over with and make the most of the space I had carved out to grieve. I think by this point, rather than completely avoiding it, I was aiming for ‘efficient grief’. I longed for immediate and obvious results and wanted to end the year having figured out a way to grieve that was reflective of the intense love I have for Mum but wasn’t too intense that it inhibited functioning ok and moving forward with life. This seemed a completely impossible and contradictory task.

Upon reflection, I was completely overthinking how to grieve. But I don’t think that was entirely unexpected as I have a tendency to overthink lots of things so of course it would apply to this as well. Facing my second scariest childhood fear (the first fear was both parents dying) was terrifying. What on earth are you meant to do when your Mum dies? How do you live without someone you have only ever been alive with? It’s a nauseating, disorientating and completely helpless situation to be facing. To compound this, normally if I was ever in an unsettling and stressful situation I would talk to my Mum and have her guide me through it. Now I didn’t even have that. It was like learning to walk again with a completely different pair of legs; foreign, unnatural and only comfortable in certain positions.

I wanted someone to tell me the order of what happens because I was exhausted at the thought of facing years of figuring it out myself. I longed for a rough timeline of grief so I could at least know what to expect and not have to contend with dreaded unpredictability. I wanted someone to tell me with complete certainty that it will get better. But what does it even mean to get better? There are so many aspects to it so while some things feel better, other things can feel worse… and then those things that felt worse feel better again and vice versa... there is nothing clear cut and linear about it.  

Maybe grief is a bit like the deep cold river

Maybe grief is a bit like the deep cold river

I already recognise that I’m understanding my grief more (and I use the word ‘my’ because it is so completely personal and unique). It doesn’t change that it hurts; it just means I’m better at dealing with it. I know that when I’m tired it hurts more. I know if I’ve been too busy to think about how it’s there it can become an unbearable hurt. I know if I’m a bit hungover, my hurt can become irrational and focused on other things. I know that the hurt warps my other emotions and sometimes I can’t distinguish between them very well. But I also know that by some miraculous feat of human nature, I can feel the hurt and be ok. I won’t ever not be sad about Mum not being here. That impossible task still remains impossible (and rightly so). My power lies in learning to recognise how the sadness feels, how it manifests, and how I can try and be ok with not always being ok.

I only thought about the fact I had deleted all my messages to Mum the other day. I had never had the urge to scroll through our old texts and never thought twice about it. It was an action I couldn’t undo and like the permanency of death I couldn’t hope to change it. The completeness of it was comforting. But now the image of a gut-wrenching cry on my bed doesn’t seem so bad at all. Sometimes it is nice to not always be in control and ultimately grief has its own course. It’s like the children’s book ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. I can’t go under it, I can’t get over it, I’ve just got to go through it.

I’ve written a list of ways in which I grieve (which might not even count as grieving) that I will post, but for the moment this is very long blog so I will leave it here. Thanks for reading till the end (!)