Fighting

Sometimes I scare myself with how much I want to let myself fall into the darkness.

Your voice

Watching home made videos from your childhood is highly addictive. I could do it all night long. I get to see you. Hear your voice. And your laughter. I am forever grateful for all the times my parents have brought out the video camera. It is painful, tears run down my face. but it is so wonderful. It's my drug. I can sit and watch the same sequence over and over again.

How's it going?

Oh how I hate that question. Do you really want to know? Or are you just being polite?

I am sad. That's how I am. Sad. And angry. And lost.

There's your answer.

Two months

Tomorrow morning it's been two months. It seems like forever ago. And it feels just like yesterday. I keep replaying the last days, and that day, over and over again in my head.

I wonder if I ever will grasp the true meaning of it all. That she is gone.

Who do I text now?

There's so much I want to tell you. The little things. How I've knitted a scarf using my arms instead of knitting needles. That I've signed up for the 10km run you were meant to do in 2013. About the restructuring at work, and how no one really knows what's going on there. And that I made a delicious cake today.

It's so weird that you're not just a text message away. On Friday I picked up my phone as I was preparing to leave work, and I was going to text you asking if you and dad were having Friday pizza as usual. Then I realised that I couldn't.

I am so lost without you.

Night

When you dread the silence and the dreams you will be dreaming so much that you refuse to go to bed. And instead sit and watch the rain through your window.

I've never felt such pain and loneliness before.

Coldplay

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face

In, and then out

Some days it's hard just to be.
The days when you have to remind yourself that all you need to do right now is first to breathe in, and then out. Days like these that's really all I have to focus on. And that's difficult enough.

New year

I keep thinking that 2015 has to be better than 2014. Because that is how you think after having gone through such a difficult year as the previous one. But then I realise that it will never be better than 2014. It might not be full of hospital visits. Three month checks. Chemotherapy. Death. Funeral. Oh how I hope that 2015 will be free of all those things. But I had no idea when we stood here two years ago that 2013 would change my life forever.

2014 has been a long year. So much has happened. But it also went too quickly. Looking back my 27 years of life has gone too quickly. How I wish we could have slowed it all down, so that she could have been here longer. In so many ways it's been such a good year. We grew so close as a family. We fought together. And I am so so proud of all of us. We have so many wonderful memories from this last year as a whole. Now we're just a part. That's what it feels like. We are not whole. We set the table for three people. We do family walks, but there's only three of us. Someone is missing. And she will always be missed.

I can never get a better 2015 than 2014. It may have been the year that I lost my mum, and best friend. But it was a year when she was here. How can anything become better than that? It might have been hell, and the biggest battle we have ever fought. But she was here. And now we're heading into a year where she isn't. And that terrifies me. I'd much rather have stayed in 2014, at least then I was in a year where she also had been.

19th of November, at 7.57 am my mum died. She is dead. I need to repeat that to myself about once every hour of every day. She is dead. But, she didn't lose. People tend to say that this or that person has lost the fight against cancer. My mum never lost. She was a fighter to the very end despite being given no odds what so ever from the beginning. She never gave up on life. She is not a loser.

Happy New year. This became longer than I had planned. Sometimes I have a lot to say. I wish everyone a good 2015. Personally, the battle is far from over. It's going to be a tough year. An empty year.

Mamma, I will keep putting one foot in front of the other one for you.