the absence of someone who once was there

I am 23 years old and barely ever drink. Since my mum passed away a lot of things have changed and I feel like a very different person. One of the biggest changes is that I have stopped drinking large amounts of alcohol, I do sometimes have a drink with dinner or have a few drinks if I am comfortable but for the most part I avoid it altogether. I often feel I have to explain this to people as it doesn’t seem normal for a girl of my age so here goes nothing.

The most obvious reason I’ve stopped drinking is because my mum passed away due to her drinking habits. This is something I know she would not like me to tell people but ultimately it is the actuality. The reality of alcohol destroying our internal organs is all too real to me and this is something that crosses my mind often. I often hear people making jokes about alcoholism as if it was nothing, I know I’ve made these same jokes before mum passed away but now they have new meaning. Jokes about alcoholism aren’t as funny when your mums died because of it.

When my mum passed we only told close friends and family the true reasons and for me this is because the issue was so personal that I feel a strong need to keep her wishes of it being kept a secret. For this reason when she passed away many people made comments about how I just needed a strong drink to help me feel better. This to me shows me just how ingrained alcoholism is in our society and made me want to drink even less.

Something else that has made me find drinking difficult is due to the PTSD I have experienced since the loss of my mum. Given the traumatic way we found and ultimately lost my mum I was left struggling with most symptoms of PTSD and my diagnosis has helped me understand this in more detail. Ultimately I feel overwhelmed with the concept of being around lots of people now, especially new people. I am very hypersensitive in uncontrolled environments. This is very new and strange to me because before my mum passed away I was the loud, bubbly outgoing girl who always spoke her mind. I went out most weekends and loved the excitement of going somewhere new. I still do love seeing friends but I prefer to do something else. This can sometimes be difficult with other friends being the same age and naturally wanting to go out for a drink but I’m very lucky to have people round me who try to understand and support me by still always inviting me to things so I don’t feel left out. Some of my friends also make an effort to do other things with me instead of drinking. Ultimately it is often the environment that drinking happens in rather than the physical act of drinking alcohol as it often means loud, busy places. I am constantly working on building this confidence back up and I’m currently taking babysteps with the support of my loved ones to get where I once was, even if this means going out without drinking.

I have also found that the death of my mum has matured me massively beyond my actual age. I often get comments that I seem wise beyond my years and this is purely because I have had to be. I have had to grow up and experience more than what is normal for my age because of the experiences I have had. Me and my fiancé now have a mortgage, settled jobs and a dog. I am well aware that this is not a situation most 23 year olds are in. I could not be happier with how settled we are but when compared with some friends the same age the differences in our lives are apparent, and ultimately it means we are often interested in very different things. If something goes wrong in my life I do not have a mum to fall back on, I do not have my childhood room to go back to and I do not have the guidance they get. Many of my friends are still young and care free, going on nights out every weekend which is exactly how they should be, however this is just not me anymore.

I felt I needed to write this piece to explain myself so I hope it’s has made things easier to understand or maybe you can even relate to some things. Next time you hear yourselves making jokes about your “alcohol addiction” please consider the seriousness of what this is and what it implies. And please allow your friends to say no to drinks without excuse. Be kind, always because you have no idea what someone else is going through.

Recently it has been my birthday. As it was during lockdown my partner organised for each of my friends and family to record a message saying happy birthday to me and made it into a video. This was really special and is something I’ll treasure forever. Photos and videos are so important when they are all you have left of someone and I wish I’d taken more with my mum.

When I look back at photos with mum there are few. And as I look through them she is often carrying a birthday cake or has me or my brother on her hip. This made me realise how much she did for us and why we seem to have few photos, my mum was always the one behind the camera taking the photos of us. Mums are so often juggling everything in the scene to make it a special memory that they forget about themselves and we get so used to it we often forget to thank them, I know I didn’t.

If you take one thing from this anecdote please let it be that you thank your mum and take a photos of her when she’s smiling, we never know when it will be the last photo.

Around a year ago I lost my mum suddenly. Losing her has been the hardest thing I have ever gone through and undoubtedly shaped the way I view the world. I have learnt lots of important life lessons that most people are lucky enough not to figure out until they’re a lot older. Hopefully voicing them will allow me to explain them to other people and resonate with those who are unfortunate enough to have also experienced the loss of a parent. These are the things I have learnt since my mum passed away.

1. You notice who your true friends are. My friends and in particular my boyfriend have been so understanding throughout this past year in all sorts of ways. They have given me a messages to check in and understood when I don’t want to drink or go somewhere busy. They have also sat with me when I’m in floods of tears, helped plan a funeral, collected my mums ashes, helped tidy my mums flat and box her things, came with me to visit my mums memorial tree and covered my workload when I am struggling too much to come into the office. My close friends and boyfriend have massively supported me and those who never tried are not worth my time as I begin to feel more ‘normal’. Through this pain and grief I have discovered that I have the most loving and loyal people around me and for that I will always be grateful. If I have learned one thing from this last year it is that you should always tell the people around you how much you care.

2. You realise how meaningless money is. When my mum passed away we were left some inheritance but this makes barely any impact on the pain you feel after losing your loved one. Yes, money is important but as long as you’re financially stable you start to realise that the people around you are worth so much more. We have bought a home but the people in it are worth millions more to me.

3. There is an unspoken bond between you and other people who have also lost a parent. Every person who has lost a parent has their own story and it is so individual, but there’s this mutual understanding between you that you can recognise the pain in everyday life. These people recognise the strength you may have needed to get up for work today and the mix of happiness and dread you get for birthdays and special occasions. Losing a parent is something that you do not understand until you have gone through it, and those who don’t understand how it feels to lose a parent apologise which makes my heart ache to think how lucky they are.

4. People stop being so understanding after a few months whilst you’re still in shock. Naturally, after time you begin to sense people around you getting fed up of you being miserable, unmotivated and talking about your dead parent. Yet, as people begin to get fed up of this I am still coming to terms with the loss so find myself still explaining her to people, perhaps as a way of trying to explain it to myself.

5. You want to talk about your parent wherever and whenever and forget that this is uncomfortable for some people. I want to tell the world about my beautiful mum and tell them all the lovely memories I have, and I often forget this shocks people until I see them wince or give a caring smile as though I should be sad about her stories. My mum dying is my reality day in and day out and I forget that not everyone is living this journey with me.

6. Nobody ever teaches you to plan a funeral. When my mum passed we were lucky enough to have her family to cover costs of the funeral. Her family all live 6 hours drive away though so planning a lot of the funeral was left to us which is something I thought ‘adults’ always did… though technically that’s us now and we needed to make sure our mum had a service she’d have loved. I remember feeling that it felt like I was planning a surprise party for my mum whilst knowing she wasn’t going to turn up which was a strange experience you can’t prepare for. There are also lots of legal things to do which I was oblivious to so we had to get more ‘adultier adults’ to help us.

7. People will tell you to ‘take some time to yourself’ without really knowing what that means. I was encouraged to take time off work but after planning the funeral and doing all the legal bits I didn’t know what to do with myself, what are you supposed to do? I found that going back to work helped me to take my mind off things and I was so lucky to have a job where I had the most supportive colleagues and a flexible work life.

8. The smallest of things can start to make you angry. I became angry when people who I knew my mum didn’t like pretended to care about her. I became angry when people posted Mother’s Day posts on Facebook when their mum didn’t even have Facebook. I became angry when people made jokes about drinking. This angry feeling is most likely out of frustration as I know all of these people were not intending to hurt me, but it didn’t make my pain any less.

9. You realise just how important family is and those bonds grow closer. Since my mum passed I realise how lucky I was to have such a lovely upbringing and have so much love in my childhood, which is something I have been guilty for taking granted for. I am now closer with my family, especially my brother as I realise how important this is. If you are lucky enough to have a family who love you spend time with them whenever you can.

10. People forget about the trauma of those around you. Yes, it is awful losing a parent, but it must have also been awful for my grandparents to lose a daughter, my aunties to lose a sister and for my mums friends to lose someone they cared about. I feel like some of these people weren’t given the support and love I was. My boyfriend also went through the every step of the way with me and was there when we found my mum, at the hospital and at the funeral home- yet people didn’t ask him how he was.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton