Twenty

22.12.03 - 22.12.23. Forever missing my mum.

I picked out the clothes I would be wearing the day you died. Of all the things I remember about that day, I don’t remember what I wore or what I was thinking when I was making the choice.

All I can remember is the eerie sense of leaving to come and see you in the hospital, knowing when we left, we wouldn’t be coming back.

It’s a strange thing to do, to come and wait for you to die. We had spent the last couple of days at the hospital along with the rest of our family. Soaking up every last moment because we knew the end was coming. Watching the people who loved you coming to say goodbye.

Arriving at the hospital I knew it was different. That today would be the day.

You were in a battle with reality. Slipping in and out of consciousness. I have to believe you knew we were there, but I think you were halfway to heaven.

When you spoke you sounded different and said things which made no sense.

I didn’t want these to be my final memories of you and so I would leave the room whenever I heard you starting to murmur.

I split my time between the waiting room, the cafe, and your room. Dad, Grandma and Grandad never left your side. Soph and I would tag team. Occasionally we were all in with you together.

At least I think we were. My memory is getting hazy.

I may no longer remember the outfit I picked out to wear the day you died. There’s so much about that day that evades my memory. But what I have never forgotten, not once, was the feeling of walking back into that room and feeling as though the life had been knocked out of my chest, the way it had vanished from yours moments before.

The way you looked like you as well as looking like a complete stranger.

The way the body changes when the soul is no longer there.

I skipped down the hallway to your room, before opening the door and changing my life. I skipped.

Soph had just come down to the cafe to have lunch. At least I think that’s what she was doing. There had been no change.

I rode the slowest elevator in existence on the way back up to see you. I was antsy. It had been hours and the anxiety was pumping through my body. So I skipped. I skipped down the hall past the nurses station, into your room and I was met with the devastating reality you were gone.

I can’t remember how long I stood there crying. Actually, crying doesn’t feel like the right word for it. Then I heard them call Soph’s name over the loudspeaker and I immediately left.

No one else was going to tell her. It had to be me.

I don’t remember what I said. I do remember us crying in that elevator, impatient for the doors to open.

I have never forgotten the feeling of losing you.

I worry you exist only in the confines of my grief and not as a whole person. That I am forgetting the essence of who you were and instead focusing on how your loss changed me.

In the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades since I last saw you, I have slowly forgotten what it was like to have you.

I became that day, and have remained, the girl whose mum died.

That is my defining trait.

And I hate it.

Because I would have given the sun, the moon and all the stars to keep you.

But instead I had to leave you in that room.

Not before we cried over you. Not before I removed the earrings from your ears, noticing how when I turned your head to the side to do it, your ear didn’t spring back.

Never in the 20 years since forgetting that specific moment.

Trying to memorise every part of you, but realising you weren’t you anymore. Trying to pack up the things left in your room with you laying there. Knowing we would never be coming back.

Sitting in the hallway with Dad and Soph. Realising this is our family now. The three of us. Never to be four again.

I can’t remember why we were waiting. That part didn’t stick with me.

Twenty.

How has it been twenty years since I last saw you?

And why is that number so hard?

Twenty implies that enough time has past.

It was literal decades ago now.

How can I possibly explain to someone who doesn’t know that it doesn’t matter that it’s been twenty years? That the grief hasn’t lessened, I’ve simply grown around it.

That I will still cry about it.

Lament it.

Grieve it.

Grieve you.

I might now be in my thirties. But inside I am still that sad thirteen-year-old girl who picked out the clothes she would wear the day you died. The girl who just desperately misses her mum.