In October 2018 I lost my mum who passed away in her sleep at the age of 49. It was very unexpected as no one even knew she was ill. She had had issues with alcoholism through my childhood which had taken its toll as she died of liver cirrhosis. Though my childhood wasn’t especially easy living with an alcoholic mother, in the last few years me and my mum became incredibly close. I would speak to her every day on the phone sometimes multiple times a day. My parents split around 5 years ago and my mum was always heartbroken about this. My mum lived 250 miles away from me, down the road from my older sister until 3 weeks before she died. My mum was a nurse and had to stop working shortly after her divorce as she was unable to walk for long distances and was unable to use her hands due to Peripheral Neuropathy. As she became more disabled my sister wasn’t able to look after her and my mum felt like a burden on her if she asked for something as simple as a pint of milk from the shop. I would try to visit as frequently as I could and take her out and help her with her washing and helped her with showering, something my sister refused to do. My mum moved to her hometown to be nearer to her mum who lived much further away as I was living with my boyfriend who was in his 3rd year of university in temporary accommodation and she didn’t want me to have to stay there after he finished uni if I didn’t want to. On the night of 12th October 2018 I spoke to my mum for the last time. We spoke about rubbish on the TV for about 5 minutes and I told her I had to go to bed as I had a 14 hour shift at a care home I worked in the next day. My mum had been having trouble sleeping so I didn’t want to call her after my shift finished at 22:00. On the 14th My Nan had planned to take her out for lunch so tried calling her throughout the morning but there was no answer. I was working that morning so didn’t have a chance to call her. At around 13:00 I had several phone calls from my Nan. I texted her to tell her I would ring her once I finished work but she kept trying to call me. I answered quickly as I was worried and said I couldn’t talk is everything okay? she said “no its your mum” and I hung up as I didn’t want to hear the next part. I felt numb. My work colleagues helped me calm down and called my Nan back to check she was okay. About an hour later after trying to call my sister repeatedly she finally answered, completely unaware of the situation. I had to explain that our mum had died. No one had spoken to her after the 12th October, so we don’t know what day she passed away. To this day the guilt still eats me up that my poor lovely mum passed away all alone and could have been there for 2 days. I miss my mum so much that some days I feel like I cant breathe. It’s like a 10 tonne weight is crushing me. I struggle to talk to people I’m close to about how I’m feeling about my mum as I don’t want to bore anybody. My Nan acts as though it was only her daughter that died and it shouldn’t be affecting me and my sister. Since my mum’s death I have been dealing with all the legal bits as she left no will and no one else wanted to do it. I’m still trying to sort out all of mum’s pension stuff and its really getting to me. My Nan is adding pressure as she had to pay for the funeral and she wants her money back. I feel so much stress about everything I have to do on top of grieving for my mum. I’m so bitter and frustrated that I cant fix it and that I cant bring her back. I only had my mum for 20 years of my life and would give anything to have her back.
Sorry for the rant just feel like I need to get it off my chest.