Coming up on Monday, 19 days before the first anniversary of Kat’s stillbirth, is the anniversary of my mum’s death. 21 years. She passed away at the age of 45 after a 4-year battle with cancer.

At 12 and in year 7, I was too old to feel like a child anymore but too young to realise just how young I still was.

Whilst I mourned – and was encouraged to mourn – part of me felt that I should be happier for her than I was sad for the rest of us. She wasn’t in pain anymore. I also felt a little less entitled to grieve because we had known for so long that it was coming.

In the years that followed I would of course experience a lot of reactions to her death. I felt guilt. Her life’s wish was to see her children grown and happy. My brother was married with a baby on the way; my sister was in her final year of teacher’s college and already had a position for the following year; and there I was still in high school. I felt that if it wasn’t for me she would have had her wish. Much later, as I entered my 20s I would go through another grieving period as I saw that the people around me still had their mums, still had relationships with them. I grieved for what I would never have and for what had been taken from my brother and sister.

Mum, over the years I have missed you as I navigated being a teenaged girl and becoming a woman. I’ve missed you at my big events. I’ve seen you in my dreams and I’ve talked to you a lot. I’ve longed to have you walk through my front door, sit down at my table, drink coffee with me and talk. I saw you with babies before I knew I was pregnant. I felt you standing next to me as I stood beside my son’s cot watching him sleep. I held my daughter while listening to “Nan’s Song” and saw her lift her head to look at… something… over my shoulder and then lift her hand and wave. I’ve missed my children knowing their Grandma, wearing the clothes you would have made and eating the cakes you would have cooked. I’ve had special moments putting their hands on your tree for the first time. I’ve felt the weight of your hands on my back when I was sick. I’ve learned the lessons you tried to teach me that I couldn’t understand at the time. I cherish you telling me that I will always be beautiful, no matter how old and wrinkly I get, because I have a beautiful heart and it will always shine through to the outside. I’ve asked you to be with our girl because we can’t be.

Mum, part of me will always be that 12 year old girl who was too young to understand the enormity of her mother’s death. Part of me will always grieve for her. Just as now, part of me is forever frozen in time, a woman at a graveside watching as her daughter’s coffin is lowered into it – for how is it possible that that woman ever got back up?

Mum, there have been times when the only thing that kept me going was the sure knowledge that the world would keep turning, the sun would keep rising and we would keep going. We would eventually learn to live with the pain. I learned that from you Mum, over the course of 20 years. And I thank you for it