Denial is easier…

Yesterday was Christmas day….

I couldn’t compose myself properly all day, every time I stopped thinking about the gravity of what was missing I snuck a glance at the display my sister had put up to pay respect to our mum, a photo and a video montage.

It has been just under four months since mum died of cancer and I thought I was at the “acceptance” stage of my grief. Yesterday, however, I unfortunately realised I’d slipped all the way back to the stage of denial.

My sisters are going to clean out mum’s room tomorrow and I have not been able to agree to help them with it. My dad has requested quite insistently that it gets done as soon as possible because he can not deal with everything looking as if nothing has happened.

I, on the other hand want to pretend like nothing has happened because it is easier that way. I like her room the way it is, it allows me to forget mum is gone, it gives me hope that she is coming back. But… I know she isn’t.

I managed the courage to ask my dad for more time, I told him I wasn’t ready but I knew what the answer was going to be. He needs to move on like we all do and clearing out mum’s stuff is the first step of helping him do that. I respect that, it hard to swallow but I do respect what he needs.

As I sat on mum’s bed for the last time looking at her room untouched, like the day she left it, I could not contain my emotions. This was it, she really isn’t coming back. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breath, this just could not be real.

My emotions were compounded by the fact that I had not spent last Christmas with her or the year before either. Sadly whilst last Christmas’s absence was due to me being overseas, the one prior was due to me arguing with my dad and sister about something so insignificant that I cannot believe it made me miss the event my mum cherished the most.

If only I had known, if only I had accepted that she had cancer, if only I wasn’t so selfish. I would turn back time in a heart beat.

The truth is I never accepted that mum was sick. I told her straight out too, it was too hard for me to comprehend, so I just didn’t. In my head it was going to get better and mum was going to see me get married and help raise my kids just like she did with all my three sisters. It just wasn’t an option that she wasn’t going to do that. It wasn’t OK that she was not going to be there.

The denial cost me time and I would do anything in the world to get that time back.

For now I have to crawl my way out of the denial stage and hopefully skip over the anger and depression part… I have already been there and done that and they were horrible. Perhaps I escaped out of those stages by repressing it all and setting up camp back in denial. Denial is easier.

Despite the ongoing emotions, I am OK, I think. At least I know I will be.

Mum won’t be back but she is still in my heart and hopefully one day I will be able to smile when I think of her.