Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. Of course she is dead now. Died in 2019. It was strange though. It hit me like a brick. I remembered how it used to be on her birthday. We never firgit ut. Not that she ever wanted a lot for it. But despite all of the horrible things she did to me, we tried to make the day special for her. Sometimes we would take her out for a meal, and sometimes we would go to the ice cream parlour or just go to the seaside. Those days were not too bad with my mother. But yesterday I was taken with th hugest attack of grief. I wanted only to go to the crematorium and take a bunch of flowers for my mother on her birthday. Not that she is in there. Oh no. She is tied up in seven carrier bags in my sister’s bedroom drawer. But my Dad and my grnadmother are scattered there with no plaque or anything but we know they are there. My Dad is under a Lavatory Tree. Oops sorry I mean a Lavateria tree. He loved to call them Lavatory trees but the crem staff chose that spot because no family member was there and so they just did their thing, choosing the spot. They could not have chosen better. My Dad would have approved. Anyway, I wanted to go there. After all this Christmas show I wanted at least to be near my dead family for it is all I have. Strangely I felt an overwhelming sense of love for my mother and I wanted to put on the flowers ‘Ilove you.” Stupid am I, or what? Oh well. I did not do it. I just spent the day remembering and feeling overwhelmed by grief.

So many memories came back to me. Good ones, bad ones. The lot. A whole day was lost. By the evening I was in a terrible state. Then this morning I awoke with a particularly bad memory of her. After I had cancer and while I could still walk with two canes, I used to go and see her sometimes. Not often but just sometimes. My sister was often there too. She had a little low settee on which I sat. My body even then was very painful and as I got up to leave a kind of groan would escape from me. My sister told me one day that my mother had said to her one time, “ugh, and that noise she makes as she is getting up.” Obviously my mother was saying awful things to my sister about me. My mother always was repulsed by me but I never knew why. But that memory came back to me this morning as I was getting out of bed and I thought to myself why did I bother yesterday. It is strange but we can long for family so much, especially at Christmas and New Year and we try to imagine that we did have one when in reality we didn’t. A very painful day yesterday. And a lost one.