Conversations With My Mum
I love you Mum. My awareness of you, and my awareness of the lack of you, ebbs and flows with time. But you are always there, like the moon pulling at the tides. So what the hell is this expansion and contraction? One second is one second, right? A minute is a minute. And a year is supposed to be a year. So, how is it possible that five years have passed since the day you died? Five whole years?? I was 47 years old, but I can’t remember anything about being 47, except that’s how old I was when you died. In some ways it feels like time stopped at that moment. Except it wasn’t time at all, it was you. You stopped. Existing. In the present tense, anyway. You just froze in time. And the last message you ever sent me will always be the last message you ever sent me.
But still, I talk to you. As if you were here. Or there. Or somewhere. Not in fully formed sentences, but more like fragmented thoughts. Like I wish, I wonder, I’m sorry, I love you. Half-formed ideas that stick in my throat, and in my heart. Because the second they start forming, I realise there’s nowhere for them to go. So they abort. They reject. They miscarry, but still, I talk to you. It hurts Mum. It really fucking hurts. But it’s OK, I let it hurt. I want it to hurt. Because hurting is better than not hurting. But sometimes the pain of missing you is so bad, that I can’t help but cry. And the crying helps, so I sob. I crumple, and I sob my fucking heart out. And the oxytocin floods my body and I feel a little bit better. But the pain doesn’t actually go away. The pain is still there, and you are still gone.
I was clueless. I didn’t know, I honestly didn’t know that I would experience it so painfully. You were so unwell, and your life seemed so stripped of joy towards the end. I had brief, guilty, cavalier thoughts that perhaps death would be a kind of blessing for you. Fuck, I actually thought that. I thought it might be better. I had no idea.
I’ve thought about you a lot over the last five years. I’ve wondered a lot of things that I will never know because you’re no longer here to tell me. I wonder what you would think if you saw your beautiful rings on my fingers. The very same rings that you wore every day, and that were a part of you. I wear them now, every day, with love and pride. Would you think it was weird to see your rings on someone else’s fingers? I wonder if I could have done more to make you feel important. I wonder how you would have coped with covid. With all the lockdowns. I wonder if you knew exactly how stunning your smile was. And I wish you knew how much I love it when people tell me I look like you. I wonder what happened that day in 2012 when you left your dirty jeans in the laundry hamper in your bedroom in the house in Greece, and then just flew back home to Melbourne for the last time. How could you know that you would never go back? That you would never see your jeans again. Or your sister. How could you know that eleven years later I would pull your jeans out, with the worst feeling of finality that I’ve ever felt in my life?
I wish I could hold your beautiful face in my hands and tell you how much I love every line, every wrinkle. Every sign of a full and spirited life. I wish I could tell you how desperately I miss you. I wish you’d known that you were so adored that your absence has created a massive black hole in my heart. I wish you could tell me how I’m supposed to go from a life enveloped by your love, to a life devoid of it? Because, when you were alive, no matter where I was I was bathed in pure and unconditional love. How do I go from that, to suddenly having it ripped away from me without any fucking warning, without any kind of preparation? I’m still grappling with that. I know that you never truly appreciated how important you were, and how much of an impact you had on people’s lives, but you were an extraordinary woman and you still are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever known. I wish I had told you that more often. I wish I’d made sure that you knew it. That’s a regret, because I’m not sure that you did know. I’m not sure that I did convey it well enough. And now it’s too late.
I wonder about your collection of beautiful rocks and crystals, which I had to arm-wrestle Mary and Pieta for when the three of us went through all your things. I had to give up some pretty good shit for the honour of claiming them as mine. I wish I could ask you where you got them from. Each and every one seems like it must have a story behind it. I wish I knew what they meant to you.
I wish I’d spent more time with you. I wish I’d talked to you more. I wish I had been more affectionate. I wish that we had listened to more music together. I wish we’d gotten high together. Danced together. I wish I knew the recipe for your rice pudding. I wish I had made you laugh more. I wish I hadn’t been so dismissive. I wish you could hear me speaking Greek. I’m getting so good at it, and you’d be so proud of me. I’m taking online lessons with a gorgeous woman from Piraeus called Marilena, and we’ve become such good friends. Her personality reminds me so much of you. I wonder if you knew that life is a circle. Μακάρι να μπορούσαμε οι δυο μας να κουβεντιάσουμε στα ελληνικά. I wish I’d bought you a better mobile phone. I wish that neither of us had to deal with our feelings of social anxiety alone. I wish you didn’t have to worry so much about money. I wish you’d had more joy in your life. More than anyone I’ve ever known, you deserved more joy. I wonder if you know where my purple dress is? The beautiful one I made when I took up sewing after Dad died? I can’t find it and I don’t know where it’s gone. I’m sorry that David and I had a big fight in front of you a month before you died. I’m sorry I didn’t listen when you told me what you wanted, and when you told me what you didn’t want. I’m sorry I took you for granted.
I wish you’d used your mobile phone to call an ambulance when the landline wasn’t working. I wish you’d pressed your medical alert. I wish you’d gone to the neighbour’s house before sunrise. I wish you’d knocked on their door and woken them up in the middle of the night. I wish you’d bashed their door down. I’m sorry I wasn’t there in the hospital with you, with Mary and Pieta. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you died. I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to you. I wish we could have heard each other’s voices, just one more time. I wish I could have told you that I love you. I wish you’d known that I was there with you. I wish you knew that you are always here with me.
