I never thought I’d move back to my home town, let alone back to the area I grew up, and so close to where Mum now rests.
20 fucken 20, what a brutal year. Just as my city’s covid lockdowns were about to end (note to self, that’s a whole other set of traumas to unpack), I get a call that Mum’s cancer had gone nuclear had found it’s way into her brain.
Mum had been fighting breast cancer for the better part of eight years at this point, and she was over it.

What followed was six weeks back in my home town watching that beautiful person who raised me waste away, pickled in drugs, still clearly in extraordinary pain and suffering.
For anyone still ballsy enough to conceive a child during Nazi occupation during WW2, the Dutch built em fucken tough then, and she wasn’t going to go until she was ready, and people had a chance to say goodbye.
I look back on that six weeks a lot. Often because it brings up very strong feelings about euthanasia, but also because of how much of the experience was spent in a small hospital room with my family and partner, going out of our fucking minds with boredom for the most part, just waiting… Waiting for her to die, for her suffering to end, knowing once it was all finished we’d say goodbye one more time, and go back to our lives.
I actually treasured that time in a lot of ways, and I was extremely greatful that we were able to be there together as a family for her and to say goodbye. So many people just didn’t get that chance because of covid.
I evan treasured reading that god awful Murdoch toilet paper rag to her, because whether I liked it or not, she liked the paper, she enjoyed me reading it to her, and it was a way to spend time with her, what little of it was left.

As an aside, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the weapons grade psyops that is Murdoch media. How in blue fuck did it manage to brainwash so many beautiful, intelligent, peaceful, and wondeful people from the war baby and boomer generations? It was a weird thing to watch with Mum, she was always so much more progressive and left leaning than my father growing up. She’s was still this amazing kind hearted soul with her family and her friends, but the bile she would recite with true conviction that came from those god damn papers and talking heads 😭
I had resolved many years earlier to not let that affect my relationship with her, a part of me felt like that was the design from the powers that be, and I just wasn’t prepared to let these grifting fucks win and actually divide us.

The hospital visits had become routine, and one afternoon after work, a few days before Christmas, the oncologist had come in to do some routine checks. He said that she was was doing well on the new medication regime and could possibly survive a few more months. You’d think that would be good news, but it really wasn’t, not for her going through all that bearly alive suffering, and not for all of us watching her decay infront of us. Mum must have heard what he’d said and thought “Fuck that with rusty spoons, no”. We’d quietly all looked at eacher with a face of dispair at the idea of this going on for months more, this was inhumane, and just as quickly this strange feeling gripped us all at once, and we all slowly turned to look at Mum. There she was as she had been moment before, but she’d left the room, the earth, us. I quickly bolted out the room to find the oncologist while one of my siblings went to find a nurse. I managed to find the oncologist just about to leave the building and let him know that she just passed, mentioned that I don’t think she liked his news. He gave a sad smile and came back up to the room with me to pronounce her death.

That night we all went to the family home for dinner, laughed, cried, and shared stories of our wonderful mother. I doubt I’ll ever be able to properly articulate the feeling of relief. I didn’t really let myself grieve until I was back in the city I lived. There was too much practical shit that had to be dealt with before then. Once I got back and we’d unpacked though…I collapsed into a sobbing mess and let it all come out until there were no tears left. I knew that wouldn’t be the last of it.

So back to now, and living so close to Mum’s resting place… And rarely taking the time to visit her… 😞

Those that know, know. Those that don’t… All I can say is that grief is a really weird process. I’m not all together sure it ends. It hits you at random times, in random ways, like me posting this blog right now. But I remind myself that it is a human experience that we get to have, and there will be many more like it. I guess I struggle with visiting her. It reminds me of her life, and I start to think about what I’m doing with mine. That thought pattern opens a super dangerously pressured canister of psychological silly string, bullshit, and worms. I think culturally in the modern west we already have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with death and mortality. At least for me, death makes me turn inward and ask a lot of uncomfortable questions about life, my life specifically, and straying into the part of the metaphysical map with lots of warning signs about dragons simply named ‘meaning’. I should be able to go visit her and just shoot the shit, as weird as that all sounds, but I struggle because deep down I feel like I just have nothing to show for my life. Which is a me problem I need to sort out, the actual truth about what I have to show for my life is different, and is entirely on me to define what a successful life even looks like.

I’m nearly onto my second bottle of red, so I should rap this up before I start getting salty tears all over the keyboard. I’m not all together sure what the point of this post is, then again I’m not all together what the point of this blog site is beyond working some shit out and trying to articulate the human experience. But Mum, if you’re reading from the ethereal plane, I hope you’re at peace and enjoying all the cappacinos you want. I’ll come visit you soon.