Response

She was my mother. We had a close relationship and kept in touch almost every day. She was in good health, with no other illnesses, no history of cancer in the family and received negative results to all the cancer screening tests so nobody would have predicted she would die at 65.

I've lost one of the most important people in my life. I had planned a future where she would be there for me and I'd be able to share my life with her. All the significant moments and the really mundane aspects of family life have changed. I feel like a conversation has been cut short, and I have so much to tell my mum. From good news to having a moan about daily life. She'll never know if I get married or move abroad or change jobs or have kids. It's even stuff like when I bake a cake I would have wanted her to see it or have a piece. I've got a lot of fear related to my dad's health, as he's at quite high risk of Covid complications as well as the other illnesses he already has due to an unhealthy lifestyle. I think some of this fear would have been going on regardless, but it's exacerbated by the loss of my mum. Due to Covid I've had very limited face to face contact with family, friends and work colleagues. I've only seen my dad for two afternoons since the funeral. This has made the grieving process really difficult, as I feel like I've had to put my grief 'on hold' to cope with daily life. The constant talk of sickness, hospitals and deaths was very hard at the peak of the lockdown, as sometimes it felt like there was nothing else to think about.
Visiting our family home is really difficult for me now and due to lockdown I haven't been able to go frequently and try to get used to it. It's where she was ill, and we cared for her at home for as long as we could. I had some very vivid dreams in the first few weeks after mum died. I couldn't clear my mind of the images of her while she was weak and in pain. I also feel a sense of grief seeing really everyday objects in the house - things like a book she was part way through reading, or a pair of her shoes that will never be worn again. Hopefully this will improve when we're able to get together as a family and sort through what we want to keep and what we're ready to let go of. Now it's a few months on I still often feel like I can't fully relax to go to sleep at night, thankfully I'm not preoccupied with the really specific grief but I'm just unable to relax. Similarly my sex life has suffered as I just don't feel like I'm really relaxed enough to clear my mind of other things and be fully present for sex. I've found that I feel a real spectrum of emotion in line with my menstrual cycle now, while in the past I have always been pretty consistent. Now I cry about once or twice a fortnight (sometimes just for a few minutes, other times I can't easily calm down for an hour or more). I have problems with my digestion so I worry about the possibility that I could one day experience the exact same illness which took my mum (bowel cancer) sneaking up on me without warning. I'm trying different options to control my symptoms and help me to feel physically healthy as a baseline but it might be a worry which stays with me for a long time.

It was always my mum who I spent the most time on the phone with and swapped photos with on whatsapp, so adjusting into life with one parent has been hard. Dad is learning to be a bit more emotionally available for all three of us now. It's hard to know where his boundaries are with things like sorting through mum's things, finding a cleaner to pick up the household jobs mum used to do etc. I worry about his physical and mental health a lot. In a world without Covid we would have spent so much more time with dad after the funeral, but we are torn as we all want to protect him from the risk of Covid. My partner has been a huge support throughout mum's illness, diagnosis and bereavement. I worry about being a burden on him though. I've felt quite isolated as most of my friends haven't experienced anything like this themselves, so they don't know how to approach talking about it. I worry about upsetting a friend who has a parent living with cancer so we don't talk about it much. This is probably how most of my friends feel about me, but it's just not easy to talk about, especially as I don't live nearby most of my friends. Some work colleagues have been absolutely brilliant, supportive and understanding throughout. I think this is probably to do with them being a little bit older than me, and having experienced similar things before. Others have really upset me, as they behaved as if I was able to give 100% effort straight away when I returned to work. In reality, I was (and still am) frequently feeling upset, tired, angry. I had missed 6 weeks of work, and was trying to catch up while working remotely for the first time. I didn't even have proper IT equipment so it was really horrible to experience this lack of support from some colleagues. I feel more connected with my sisters than before, but I feel a greater sense of responsibility to look after them now that our mum is gone. Both sisters were struggling with their mental health before we knew mum was ill. I know I can't control this but it's hard to see them both struggle. There have been some tensions, as I'm doing comparably quite well, so I feel guilty that I'm managing at the moment while they're going through a harder time. I've found it hard spending time with people who don't know me very well, as the classic conversation opener 'what did you get up to in lockdown?' question stresses me out. I feel like I have to explain what's happened as part of my 'introduction' so they understand at least a basic overview of what's been going on for me this year, and why I might not be in the best mood that day, or in the future.
People I know but who I haven't kept in close contact with recently have innocently asked how my family is, and I've had to briefly explain to them. Then they feel guilty and I feel like I have to reassure them everything's ok.