The pain of grief

I can't sleep tonight. The night time is the worst. No distractions. It's quiet, and dark. Thoughts come easily into your head. Your brain ticks, going over events that have happened in the day, remembering things you had forgotten, trying to make sense of what has been.

The night time is when I think about my mum. It's mainly ok in the daytime. There's lots going on, plenty of things to catch your imagination. Things to deal with, people to see, children to organise. But at night, there's none of that. There's just you, and the dark, and your thoughts.

She's been gone for 4 months. It's got easier as the time has passed. But every now and then, things come back to me. The hours we spent in the Hospice. The night it happened. I can see it all clearly. I can feel it all, just as raw as it was. It's a wrenching pain, grief. And the worst thing is that there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can say or do will change anything. I go over those last hours. How I held her hand. How i heard her last breath. The quietness afterwards, when they turned the oxygen machines off. How different she looked without the oxygen mask on her face. It had started to become a normal feature, she'd worn it for so long.

I think about the days afterwards, my visits to the funeral directors to see her. She looked peaceful and calm. Not struggling for breath. But I wanted her to look like that and still BE HERE. You never imagine your mum not being here any more. Well, I didn't. Everything changes in one movement of a clock's hands. And you can't go back. You have to go forward. You have to deal with it all. So you do. But the rawness and the pain don't go away. Yes, you get on with your life. There are things to do, children and husbands to look after. Washing to do. School runs. Life.

It's just when all the chaos deadens that you have time to reflect. Like at night. When it's quiet and dark. Then you cry. You cry quietly, while your husband sleeps at your side. You remember it all. You think back to your childhood. You try to recall things that happened with her, when you were small, but you can't remember it all. You can only remember bits and pieces. The photographs help. They spark memories.

I don't want a photograph. I want her.