The Year I Began To Petrify

2018 started with a funeral. My mother’s funeral, where I took my glasses off to deliver her eulogy so that I didn’t have to see the rows of faces staring up at me.

The months that followed were a frenzy of movement; paperwork, phone calls, visits to the solicitor. Clearing out her bedroom, her drawers of clothes, her wardrobe. Finding old letters and mementos. I sat at my friend’s dad’s funeral and I cried and cried.

And then the snow came in March, and my birthday. The snow melted and gave way to Spring.

I didn’t slow down. Instead I kept pulling, pushing, forcing myself forward. Through boxes and boxes of belongings. Through walking her dogs. Counselling. I began thinking, thinking, thinking. And once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

About mum’s life before she died. About how I used to say she’d lived a half-life, for so many years, because after my dad died, she sat still for so long. Her grief was so heavy, there were days when she didn’t move from the sofa with the heaviness of it all.

She began to petrify. And the thing about petrifying, I’ve learned, is that you can’t always see it happening. Her arteries began to narrow, the supply of blood to her heart restricted. She was turning to stone, and I didn’t even realise.

2018 continued to roll by. I painted. I went for reiki healing. Read self help books. Realised I needed more therapy. Booked therapy.

And then I began to lose steam. Another friend lost their dad, and I dreamt of my mum that same night. I asked mum what dying was like, and she told me it was a golden light, and smiled at me. I think it was meant to lift me, that little message of hope, to carry me forward.

But each day it was harder to get out of bed. Tasks became more difficult. The weight of all of this was no longer dragging behind me, but had wrapped itself tightly around me, and there were days when I sat still, too.

Days when I was sure I could feel my heart hardening, my hands, my feet. My arms, my throat. Days of just nothing but heaviness and being still.

The thing about loss is, it makes you think about old losses, too. And by the time 2018 started to draw to a close I was thinking so much about my mum and my dad, I was…

Related posts:

At some point you will have to make difficult decisions. Some bad and some good decisions will occur daily. For me, a very difficult decision was accepting the fact that my startup failed. Next…

Last week We were having Our last Practical Exam and I was waiting for my Chance to show up my skills. I was chit-chatting with some of my besties Waiting outside the examination hall Where the topic…

Everyone says that technical writing is mostly about communicating, not writing. And it’s true — a technical writing job involves communication with members of other teams: developers, designers…