Mum

My mother died three years ago tomorrow. It seems as if I have lived a whole lifetime since that day. I feel almost a new person, like I have been laundered. Or I am like my palm that got too wet one winter, and rotted away completely, but then grew back good as new. I dread tomorrow a little less than I did last year, and a whole lot less than I did the year before. I miss her, sometimes with a physical lurch of pain or nausea, but I always recover pretty quickly. It is like she is sitting up there, watching me, and whenever I get a bit self-indulgent or melodramatic she gives me a sharp prod in the ribs, sort of like the way things were when she was alive. Or as if her memory, everything good that she instilled in me, settles over me like a nice warm blanket.

I have a job interview tomorrow, I've decided I'm going to be a lawyer, after being undecided through 5 years at uni, the million-dollar practical component that led to admission, and the last couple of years I've spent faffing around in a non-descript but yet identity shaping role, I've finally decided I want to give it a go. So i dug around and pulled out my notes from Profs, not to study them, just to have them sitting where I can see them so I can soak up the vibe for tomorrow. And I stumbled across a whole galaxy of sentiment, photos, cards, enough memorabilia of her that i could open a museum. And I feel sadness. I feel her presence as tangibly as I hit this keyboard. And it takes my breath away that she isn't here, that person that was the most defining figure in my life until the day I touched her and she was warm, but without breath. And I feel relief, that now she is safe, and with me always. For I worried about her. I'd forgotten, but I could see it there in those physical memories. I suppose I continue to worry to some extent. About her estate and her evasive sister that manages it. About her babies, especially the boy, so even now I hear her words to me under the washing line. "He needs a mother, just until he is ten". I worry that to only live until you're 44, well that leaves me with 18 increasingly rapid years. But I no longer worry about her. I think about her, and I feel an earth-core peace, and the corners of my lips involuntarily turn upwards.