I am very new to all of this, and I very rarely talk about my emotions. But I feel like I need to. (Apologies for the essay)
My Mum passed away very unexpectedly on the 1st April 2020, only days after the 1st lockdown. She passed away at Home within minutes of not feeling well, with my younger brother by her side. The last I saw her was on Mothers Day. Mum was our only Parent, my Brother, Me and Her were extremely close, and our relationship was truly really special. She was everything to us. My Brother was only 27 and I was 33.
She worked so hard as a Mum and a Maths Teacher, to give us a happy life. Even through struggles and hard times, she was a ray of sunshine to us, her students and everyone who knew her.
As mentioned, her passing away last year was very unexpected, very sudden and I had no chance to say goodbye. I not only lost my Mum, I lost my Best Friend. She had only just turned 56, and she still had so much life to live especially with her first Granchild who at the time was only 4 months away. She was so excited about our Son! He has her smile!
At the start it was a HUGE shock to the system. I barely remember that night. The days to come were just numbing. The Funeral for Mum was obviously during the 1st lockdown, so we had to choose only 2 of the many people that knew Mum to attend alongside us. I remember a friend of ours said, if things were ‘normal’, we would have had to have the Funeral at the Cathedral because there would of been hundreds of people and students wanting to attend.
Emotions definitely run wild each and every week. There’s been times when all I want to do is scream and shout and blame something, and thats when the emotions are angry and you feel everything is unfair. Then there are days when I almost forget that this horrific part of my life ever happened…then that’s more than likely when the guilt kicks in. My head feels like a constant vortex of a storm where every emotion and feeling is spinning round and round, but it just has no where to go.
In October 2020, my partner became my Wife. We had an empty chair with some flowers on at the Wedding, along with the 10 people that was only allowed to join us.
There are often times when I’m driving to work and I watch a lorry, and just think, I wonder what would happen if that Lorry just tipped over on to me!! How can I think that? For a few seconds I do, but then I come back to reality and realise I need to be here for my Son, Wife and Brother.
I still don’t feel like I’ve properly grieved. I think I’ve been so busy in a period of less than 12 months with the loss of my Mum, the Birth of my Son, our Wedding, and moving into our Home. Although I have my Wife’s Family, and our Friends, it’s just my Brother and I as a Family unit, and that really hurts, and it feels very lonely at times. I feel like something is building in side of me, ready to burst and I cannot figure out how to just let it burst…I have been brought up too well to be positive about Life!
I miss being able to talk to my Mum and ask her any ‘life’ questions, so I started writing in a Journal as an outlet for the conversations I wish we could have. Alongside the Journal I began to write my feelings as Poems as a way of expressing the whirlwind of living with grief. These both seem to help with some of the feelings but I know that they will never be a cure…I feel somehow that I just need to learn how to better manage these feelings and know that I do have options to talk about these feelings - so this for me today, is a start.