Sometimes shit just hits me unbelievably hard. Like I can somehow go through and organise so many photos and add all their meta data and I’ll be fine, but I find a little gift bag from a Christmas present she gave me that she then used again for a gift to my cat and it all hits me. Her handwriting feels so precious. Everything she touched. Everything she has.
Sure, she spelt my name wrong, but I don’t even care (dyslexic queen). She’d constantly make typos too (rather than actual spelling errors) and I found it so frustrating, especially when it autocorrected to something else and I had no idea what she was saying. Now she’s gone, they feel almost as precious as her handwriting. My brother showed me a recipe she typed up for him. I never thought I’d find so much comfort in her typos and lack of punctuation, but now they are like an essence of her that remains even though she is gone. That said, it lacks the physical presence handwritten notes and objects have. There isn’t anything to hold on to.
She bought me some colour catchers for my flat and the packet is running out so I bought a new one and now I have such an urge to just use the new ones so I can save the last of the ones she gave me.
It feels like nothing else that happened in my life matters and nothing else that will happen matters and the only thing that matters is her.
So many of the sentimental items I hoard feel like nothing in comparison to anything to do with her. All the storage in my ottoman bed is dedicated to memories of the past 10 years or so. I am already a bit of a hoarder by nature, but I feel like it would be easy to throw it all out if it was to make space for her things. My things that were hers. Anything like that. It feels like nothing else that happened in my life matters and nothing else that will happen matters and the only thing that matters is her. The only thing that stops me is knowing that other people will die and I don’t want to feel guilty if I don’t hoard everything they’ve touched like I do things she did. In my head I know she is my mum and there will never be another relationship in my life like that, but inside I feel terribly guilty for valuing it over everyone else, for valuing it so much now when I failed to then.
It’s those little things, those handwritten gift bag tags, that remind me of all the good things – and sometimes those are what hurt the most. Other times it’s the reminder of what we had before our relationship broke down. Sometimes I feel like it would be so much more simple if she was a bad mum, but she wasn’t. I knew that when she was alive. I told her too at times, but I’m not sure if she believed me or that I thought that. She probably thought I hated her; I fear she thought I hated her. Looking back, every little argument seems so trivial, but at the time it felt so important to raise my issue, to unbottle that which was bottled up within me. Sure, I didn’t know she was going to die but I deliberately tried to address things in case she did. I felt such an urgency to show her how hurt I was so that we could mend things and have a happy ending that I didn’t even see how hurt she was. I didn’t see how much she bottled up, and I sometimes ignored what she poured out. It just goes to show you don’t know when being there, or not being there, is going to drastically change how things turn out. Death puts so much into perspective, but without it I’m not sure I’d receive these flashbacks of love I come across the same way I do now.
If guilt is a side of fries with the average grief burger, then suicide grief is a burger of fries.
I think the guilt adds to it too. There was so much guilt from the start, even when I didn’t know how she died. Just the fact my mother died and she probably thought I hated her. She died and my last years of my relationship with her were focused on me. That guilt only grew when I learnt it was suicide. What else can be expected? Grief is complex and often comes with guilt. If guilt is a side of fries with the average grief burger, then suicide grief is a burger of fries. It’s inherently loaded with it. It’s an integral ingredient. Sometimes it feels like my mother killed herself because I made her life so miserable. I know cognitively that’s not the case, but there are many things I know cognitively that don’t match how I feel. I also don’t want to completely dismiss my contribution to her circumstances. I often think about whether I’d still be here mourning my mum if our relationship had never become strained. It might not have changed any of the circumstances that lead to her decision, but might it have changed what decision she made? Sometimes just having someone to confide in makes a world of difference. Sometimes knowing someone cares can be enough to keep you. I don’t know if my mum knew I cared, and that makes me the saddest. I can handle knowing I wasn’t her favourite person when she died, but I can’t handle the fact she didn’t know how much we cared. It feels like the ultimate failing, for my mother – who gave me life and did so much for me – to not know I cared at the end of hers. For her to believe that she really was making life easier for us. I can handle the outcome to an extent – I understand it more than I understand so many things she did – but I cannot handle the emotional context around it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t bring her back if I could, or I wouldn’t stop her if I knew, but as far as I’m concerned I see my mum’s suicide as a sort of self-inflicted euthanasia. I don’t think it was a hopeless moment for her, I think it was a hopeless life at that point. But before there had always been other things to give her hope, even if not for herself. I think what hurts is feeling like if our relationships with her had been better maybe she would have felt like it would hurt us because she’d know we care or maybe she’d still have hope of some kind. Maybe she’d have the feeling of community and the safety that comes with it. Maybe she would know that she won’t get left behind or struggling because she’d know she mattered. Maybe that would make the feeling of having no hope easier to deal with. Maybe.
In a way I think someone not knowing you care is worse than if you didn’t care at all.
The fact my mum killed herself and cited her chronic neuropathic pain as the reason makes me feel like I can’t wish her back without feeling guilty about that too, but I do wish I could wish her back to let her know she was loved, and just how loved she was under all the damn dysfunction, even if she was just going to do the same again. I’d live this loss a thousand times over if it meant at the end of it I’d know she knew she was loved. I don’t want to hope it. I don’t want to assume. I don’t want to say the things she wrote in that note are products of the moment she was in and not how she felt all the time unless I know that. I don’t want to comfort and reassure myself of things for which I have no assurance, I want to comfort and reassure her. I want her to know I love her, how important she is and how grateful I am for all the things she does, all the things I don’t bring up in therapy. I want her to know I’m sorry for being a being another pain in her arse (spinal neuropathy joke), but she never will. I don’t even want to tell myself she loved me half the time, either because I can’t be sure she did at that point in time or because I don’t think I deserved it (her love more than me telling myself about it). I don’t even think hearing it from her in her dying breath would change the urge to torture myself. Her forgiveness will never change my sin. Letting her die and not even knowing if she knew I cared feels like a big one among many. In a way I think someone not knowing you care is worse than if you didn’t care at all. I don’t want to assume that out of the moment she knew all the things I hope she did. If I did, if I convince myself she did, there would be no real reason to make sure the people around me know I love and care for them now and I might end up back in this situation down the line.
I remember how just last summer she was still here and I had no idea that one day soon she wouldn’t be.
Maybe now I think the only way to show her I care is to hold on to all I can. Maybe it’s a normal reaction to death, but everything she’s touched seems precious. Sometimes even things she hasn’t touched. One of the most ridiculous things I can’t let go of is a receipt for a notebook I bought last summer on the same day I saw her. She didn’t come with me to buy the notebook. She didn’t even touch the notebook, yet I keep this receipt as if it’s for her time itself. I look at it and see a glimpse of how we sat. I don’t remember much else about that day itself, but from there I remember how many years earlier we bonded over my love of stationery. I remember a time she took me to Staples and another where she helped me make stickers. I remember her laughing at my obsession with planners before either of us knew it was a continuously failed attempt to manage my ADHD (“just get a planner” they said). I remember last summer and all the other times I saw her that season. I remember the drawings I drew in my new notebook and I think about the drawings she did for me as a kid. I remember how just last summer she was still here and I had no idea that one day soon she wouldn’t be. The memory feels warm, like a seat she’s just vacated.
I’m hurt and I’m hoarding, but I think I’m also hoarding the hurt. I hear from others how they have managed to go through things and be practical about it and I know that is not everyone, but I haven’t even got to my Mum’s stuff yet. Her clothes, her jewellery, her random receipts! I know I am being ridiculous, but at the same time I will never have a receipt for something I bought on the day I saw my Mum again. I don’t want to be someone who wishes I had something connected to her but already got rid of it all. Hoarding gives me the most options in the future – I can continue to keep it or I can throw it away. Letting go of stuff now, even the smaller stuff, feels too soon and irreversible. Hoarding feels like a safety net saving me from future regret. There are outfits she got me, some of which I wouldn’t normally wear (flowery dress), but I kept them for the sentimentality (and some in case the occasion arose) even when she was alive, so it feels unthinkable to get rid of them now – even though my wardrobe is long overdue a declutter. Even the things that feel reasonable to keep, letters she wrote or birthday cards she made, give me anxiety about storing them and making sure they stand up against time. I am overwhelmed with digital photos to the point my iPhone 15 Pro keeps crashing because I feel driven to catalogue all the information I have on her so I never lose or forget anything, even moments I wasn’t born for. Even that makes me feel guilty, like it’s disingenuous because I didn’t show her such love or importance when she was alive. I didn’t even know where she went to school until her funeral. I didn’t know how many interesting things she’d done until I read her CV. And all of it is too little too late. I can’t ask her about any of it.
I guess that’s the thing people say that never really clicks until you’ve lived it: You never know when anyone’s time is so cherish the time you have.
When my relationship with my mum broke down and I moved out at 17, people told me I would miss her when she’s gone. I’m sure it was always going to be true, but back then I just dismissed them. They didn’t know hOw HuRT i wAs. In more recent years I always thought we would be in a whole different interpersonal place when she died. Despite being scared she would die at times, I never really thought it would happen. You never think it will happen, but then it does. I don’t know if it’s the losing my mum before I’m 30 or losing my mum to suicide or a combination of the two, but I am really starting to feel like I should have listened to those people. I am really starting to wish I hadn’t squandered so much time with her thinking I would have so much more. I guess that’s the thing people say that never really clicks until you’ve lived it: You never know when anyone’s time is so cherish the time you have. I don’t think it was my mum’s time to be clear, but she did and I try to accept that. I didn’t cherish the time I had with her as much as I wish I had and now all I can cherish is what she left behind.
I’m hurt and hoarding. I’m grieving and gathering.
I recently finished Burnt Sugar, a book I initially picked up because of the title/cover and carried to the till because my friend (who’d read it) said it was good and about a mother-daughter relationship. From the moment I started reading it I felt very connected with it. It really made me think about mother-daughter dynamics and confront things about my own. I don’t shy away from thinking about my relationship with my mother if I do, but I am often reluctant to actively think about it in such an in my face way. It was hard to read at times, but the book was beautifully written in a way I can’t quite describe which made it easier to keep going. It felt like it scratched an itch I couldn’t reach myself. It is also set in India and has themes of grief which made it feel like the perfect book for me. Since finishing the book I’ve felt a different kind of mourning. I haven’t stopped thinking about it or put it back on the shelf. I am kicking myself for not taking a pencil to it from the beginning to I could underline the bits that give me BIG FEELS or literary flutters. I feel like I’m yearning for the understanding it had for me, or maybe it was the understanding I had for it. It’s not that the mum is much like my mum, but the daughter is not unlike me and her feelings are not unlike mine. And did I mention it’s beautifully written? I really don’t say that lightly.
“I love her, my mother. I love her to death. I don’t know where I would be without her. I don’t know who I would be.”
“I don’t want her to die. Sometimes I think that, when she goes, I will just float away.”
“I wish I wasn’t such a hoarder, with objects and people.”
– Antara, Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
One year ago today is the last time I saw my mum alive (29/10/23). I saw her on three separate visits that week and every day has been leading up to this one. In the first year of grief I think there’s some comfort in being able to think back to that time last year and what she was doing. It makes it feel like it wasn’t that long ago that she was here. It’s a past that feels reachable, both in my mind and the calendar. Sometimes it’s horrible thinking oh if only I’d known then, but there is more room to remember those moments with love than there was when she first died. There’s still guilt and grief, but they make more space for love. Next week will be the first anniversary of her death (06/11/23) and when she was found and declared dead (07/11/23). I am terrified of reaching this milestone. It literally feels like a milestone – like distance – and I don’t want so much distance between us. I don’t want her to feel far away. It feels irrational; I know she won’t be any more dead than she has been this year, but I think her death will feel more real. More permanent. Like, at that point, this is definitely not a mix up, a nightmare or a delusion. In some ways I think it will feel like losing her all over again. Everything we have learnt since she died suggests she took her life on the 6th, so I don’t want to deny that just because it’s not what the paperwork says, but I also know the 7th will be full of memories of the events that unfolded after she was discovered. I still have flashbacks to that day, but I don’t ever want to lose them. I feel like I have to hoard the memories. Forgetting anything will only make her feel further away. I worry that in the future I will learn new things about the time leading up to my mother’s death and I won’t have strong memories to integrate and interpret the new information with. Sometimes I go and sit by where she lay and I feel closer to her, but I won’t be able to do that much longer. It gives me the same urge to hoard. Even if it hurts, in time it might heal too.
It’s a lot to carry at times, but no one says I have to carry all of it forever. Only while it serves me (or feels like it’s serving me). I’m already encumbered emotionally, so what difference does it really make?
And who can really blame me for holding on to everything I can after all that I have lost?