With normal life suspended, I couldn’t be with her when she died. But so much of mourning happens in the ruins of your own head
My mum died on 3 June 2020, in the middle of the night. We were in national lockdown at the time. The first one. The one none of us will ever forget. So, when my mum took her last breaths in a Surrey hospice I have yet to visit, I was more than 400 miles away, at home in Edinburgh.
I was lying wide awake in bed when my dad called to deliver the news we knew was coming. I had not slept a wink. My head, heart and – well, there is no hashtag-adjacent equivalent for this – soul had been filled all night with my dying mum, like a cup to the brim. So, although I was not there physically when she left this world, I was awake, lying beneath the same dark segment of northern hemisphere. This matters. It is strange that what haunts you in grief can also heal you.
