Dear Mum

Dear Mum,

Nothing prepared me

To lose you.

I thought nine months was long enough,

To get it through my head.

But it never was, not really,

Not to lose my Mum,

I was never ready.

It felt so sudden at the end,

Your downward slide, your final days.

You felt the pain,

That started our journey,

And I felt the pain,

At the end.

Did you not look forward,

When my heart fluttered under yours,

For nine long months,

Knowing how it must end?

You must have steeled yourself,

for birth.

You thought you were ready,

nine months to prepare.

Then the pain came,

Searing across your life,

splitting your world open.

You told me once you didn’t know

if you could stand it, if you’d survive.

But you did

And later you forgot the pain,

remembered only that you hurt.

I thought I could handle grief,

It would drip into my life,

Like filter coffee,

Drop by drop

Until it all ran out.

Fierce and acute,

In easy increments,

Sharp, flaring, like a sprain,

or toothache.

As each drop came in, I’d ride it out.

My sorrow would have units,

And they would be discrete.

But grief does not drip in,

In even measurements.

It drowned me,

left me weary, numb, distracted,

It ripped my insides out,

and left me hollow.

The emptiness became a shape,

Had a life all of its own,

A dark thing inside me.

I didn’t know if I could

survive the searing across my life.

I feared that grief would always be,

But slowly, the pain passed.

Now I remember only that I hurt.

It’s as if our bodies can’t withstand,

Raw ferocity,

And slowly pushes it away.

As though it says, “Enough!”

I moved into acceptance,

slowly and reluctant,

into reawakening

to a new life,

to new patterns into which

you no longer fit.

You froze in time, just like the pain.

I got used to missing you,

I shaped a life without you,

Not a better one, just different.

Now, in the end,

what remains is love,

burnished clean of regret and anger

by the fires of my grief,

and the memories,

which bear no pain.

always and forever,

your daughter