This year has been no different to the last 5, i have lost many people i loved dearly over these years and this year no different in the exception that one of those i lost was my mother.
I dont know how i have managed through these past weeks, maybe because ive been so busy as it came down to me to sort everything from funeral to clearing her home to chief consoler of the rest of the family, but i do know that i seem to have coped with the biggest heartbreak of these last 6 years better than i ever thought i would. I am here and still holding on, something i was unable to do for others when all this trauma decided to enter my life. Sheer overload (and the menopause) hit me and knocked me off my feet leaving me ill for some years but i fought back and for some time now have been hanging on the edge, clawing my nails in to ensure i dont slip back down that dark lonely abyss that i was in for so long.
There were many who helped and supported me, but with this kind of illness you have to help yourself first but thats almost impossible, i cant explain how i manged to get through as i dont really know .
With recently losing my mother, it has given me to think of my childhood and i have reflected on my life, my mum was a strong woman going through much in her life and its made me think that maybe its what my parents gave to me, taught me as i grew, that there is in me a hidden strength i didnt know i had.
In saying that, I had always thought myself as a strong person and couldnt understand being ill as i was, i felt this was week of me, that i couldnt fight it off and how i allowed it to destroy me and my world but now im coming to believe that my strength has always been with me, it just got lost for a while.
I have a long way to go with grieving for my mum, i am still grieving for all those i lost years ago but i am slowly learning to live with that pain , with the loss, emptiness and sometimes numbness that comes with it. There are a huge huge amount of emotions through the greiving process and i am still having many of them one of the worst being this deep painful almost sickening ache inside.
Depression and grief would be more than enough to knock anyone down and make it almost unacheivable to get up again but i had that added torment of the menopause hit me in addition. I wonder how anyone has coped with me and in fact still are.
My life has changed dramatically once again - I dont know how to adjust to this one, i was cooking the other day and thought i would do a little extra for mum, just as quickly the realisation hit me that it wouldnt be needed ever again.I have had regrets that because of my being so ill i was unable to be with my mum much during these last few years of her life but i have to remind myself that i was with her when she needed me most, she was not alone and i ensured she wasnt, the one thing she was afraid of.
So where do i go from here - i really dont know!! The centre point of our huge family has gone, the one link left that each one of us hung on to is no longer there. I know our family will now see little of each other, we had gone our seperate ways long ago with only mum keeping us within each others lives.
It saddens me deeply that our once tight knit family are now likely to become practically strangers.
I imagine it being like a flower that has to let go of its petals as it dies, the petals scattered and no longer forming that once beautiful flower, now just a single petal once a part of something special but now alone with no way of being a flower ever again.
I am currently fighting off the fear of my own mortality, of all that i might, should have done in my life. Regrets keep seeping through and i keep thinking how short a time i have left to change things and a bigger fear that i will acheive nothing.
I am waiting for the time that i get to write the last blog like this one, that my next blogs will be with a more positive out look and changes happening for the better for THINGS FINALLY TO GET BETTER! and start living it the reality instead of in hope!
