27th October 2015 – My Thoughts

As the past few months have passed, I have been writing.

Sometimes just making notes on my phone, sometimes writing myself emails…anything to remember everything. It’s like I don’t want to forget how awful this thing is or sometimes how funny the situation appears.

I was up visiting my parents in October half term….

I would love to sit with my mum and tell her about my week. About how Archie did so well in his swimming gala….something I never thought I’d be able to say, seen as he was terrified of water until he was nearly 5.
I’d love to giggle about Mabel’s 2 year check up with the health visitors who were wowed by her amazing vocabulary and taken aback by her confidence!
I’d love to share my pride at the feedback I got at parents evening when I heard nothing but praise and positive things from my eldest two’s teachers. I know she’d be as proud as me (probably more so), by their personal, academic and developmental achievements.

But, I cannot share these things anymore. I cannot enjoy my small accomplishments with the person I want approval from most in this world. She is no longer capable of it. She is lost to me and the rest of us so completely and so cruelly.
Instead, I pass the time of day. We discuss the weather, the neighbours, Downton Abbey is do-able, as is (weirdly) my brother-in-law’s recent promotion. Her bag is continually packed ready to “go home”, and her eyes no longer smile at you. They instead look through you blankly. They look through me vacantly. Not seeing me. Not knowing me. Yes she plays along with the “game” of life. She pretends to get the joke. She enjoys her dinner. She believes she is participating in discussions. But “she” is not my mum. “She” is not the lady who held me tight as a frightened child, who helped me get ready on the morning of my wedding, who taught me how to make cheese sauce as my one life-saving dish when I went to university. That lady is gone, for good I think. Sometimes I see glimpses of her or hear her in a word or a sentence, but then she is gone again. And then again I am sad. For despite being almost 40 and having 3 children of my own, sometimes all I want is my mum.
I just miss my mum.