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Guest post: Mother's Day - "I buy a card that will never be opened"

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MumsnetGuestPosts · 04/03/2016 11:44

"I'm having twin girls." I screamed excitedly down the phone, knowing that my mother would be the person just as excited as I was at that moment. Similarly, my first instinct, as soon as I'd found out I was pregnant, had been to tell her - even before I told my husband. No matter how old I was, it was always my mother who I went to with news. If I needed advice, I went to her.

Her first granddaughters were born in June 2013, four and a half years after the birth of my son. The girls were honeymoon babies after our wedding the previous September. Our lives felt perfect, and like there was nothing else we could wish for. We took them home to complete our family, and my parents were there, waiting with our son Charlie. I was on top of the world, wholly unaware that life was about to come crashing down around us.

Cancer.

Three and a half week after the girls were born, this word barged its way into our lives and pressed the destruct button. My 58-year-old, fit and healthy mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was given six months to live.

While we grappled with the news that none of us could have seen coming, we felt lost. No one knew where to turn. The one person who always fixed everything for us all, the one person who put us back in line - she was the one who was crumbling away.

As a child, you think your parents are indestructible. I had always seen my mother as a woman who seemed to be able to fix things, sort things out, and make everything somehow better. She was my hero; and superheroes don't die do they? I'd never thought about her dying. Old people died, but she wasn't old - she was strong. Cancer, I learned, doesn't care.

I wanted to convince myself that she would be fine. Of course she would be fine. I created fairy tales in my head, imagining that everything would be okay. But there was no happy ending and, 22 months on, I am still feeling the painful aftershocks of my mother's death.

Something pops into my head that I need to ask her about every day. The smallest things remind me of her. Sometimes, I just long to speak to her. I often wonder what she would make of the girls now. They were 10 months old when she passed away and I know that the pain of knowing she wouldn't see them grow up was gut-wrenching for her.

I haven't just lost my mother, I feel like I've lost part of our past and future. Gone are all her memories that I never got to know about, gone are all the answers she never got to tell me. The future is shaped so differently now. The first days of school, teenage tantrums, university, engagements, weddings - she won't be a part of them. We set one less place at the table now on Christmas, at celebrations, for birthdays; and it's still hard to accept that she is never coming back. There will never be one more phone call, one more joke, one more hug - there will be no more memories that we make together.

When I realise the enormity that her death has left, I ache. My heart aches. The lump returns to my throat and tears again fall at the finality and cruelty of death.

Mother's Day, like birthdays and anniversaries, is incredibly hard. Card shops brim with 'Best Mum' paraphernalia, bunches and bunches of flowers are carried proudly out of the shops - but I carry mine to a grave. I buy a card that will never be opened and write words that will never be read. I shouldn't be taking a card and flowers to a graveside. My babies should be bounding through the door and proudly handing their handmade creations to their beloved granny. They should not be standing in a cemetery, looking at a gravestone.

On Mother's Day, there will be so many families feeling loss - and there will be those who have lost touched with loved ones or no longer speak to relatives. There will be mothers who don't have their children in their arms and ones that dream one day that they will get a card bearing that very special title. We never know how quickly things might slip away. This Mother's Day, I will be treasuring what I have.

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Themodernuriahheep · 04/03/2016 13:08

I lost DM 24 months ago. Empathy. It's the little things which we told each other about every day, the jokes we shared. I still like them, maybe even more now for her sake, but there is an aching hole.