On the 29th May 2023, I arrived home from work to find my mum unresponsive on the bathroom floor. My sister who was passing the area and myself performed CPR until the paramedics arrived. Sadly, shortly after, my mum passed away.
My other sister had been speaking on the phone to mum at 2.25pm and I found her at 2.30pm. She had COPD and her cause of death was ‘an exacerbation of COPD’. We don’t know if she slipped in trying to get something from the bathroom cupboard. She passed in her beloved home with two of her family with her which is how she would have wanted to go.
She couldn’t do a lot due to her COPD which she was diagnosed with about 8 years previous but she wasn’t on oxygen and she still loved staying in seeing her gorgeous young grandsons and talking on the phone to my sisters and her own sister.
Since she passed, my auntie told me that mum had said that she wouldn’t make the year (2023) end but she didn’t want to worry us so kept it from us.
3 years, 3 months on, I still miss her terribly and I think a big part of that is how suddenly she went. I didn’t get to ask the things i had always told myself I would about her childhood, her illness, her early years with my dad etc but I kept putting it off thinking she had years left. It still eats me up.
I try to take comfort in the fact she passed quickly and the way she would have wanted.