The absence of you

Two years, 24 months, 104 weeks, 17,544 hours, 1,052,640 minutes, 63,158,400 seconds, all without you here and yet we carry on. The longest of times yet it also feels like only yesterday that our lives changed so drastically. 

Another anniversary, another year reminiscing what life was like, last year I wrote with such anger and upset at what I felt was your abandonment of life, now I feel guilt that in a way I’ve grown to accept your leaving, although the anger, resentment, the questions they’re all still there but I’ve learned to soothe them, to quieten them.

I don’t think we truly appreciate how beautiful family life is, how truly amazing a normal life is. I know we all have busy lives and we forget to just stop and be in the moment with the people we love more than anything in the whole world. Families bicker and fall out, they talk and love and (hopefully) know that there’ll always be someone there to help or to make things better. I don’t think we truly appreciate all we have until one day we’re thrust into the abyss of loss. We all need to appreciate the now more. 

We’ve come to Anglesey to be in the place we have so many happy memories of you and us. The weirdest thing happened on our first walk Neve. We walked from Cemaes along the headland to Porth Padrig and Llanbadrig church, your favourite walk with Zac. He was doing the usual rounding up of his humans, you know what I mean, walking between us, up and down, making sure we were all present and correct when suddenly he stopped and looking behind us, he ran back to the gate we’d just come through. Was he looking for you Neve? Perhaps he was. Perhaps some fragment of a memory resurfaced and he realised his best mate wasn’t there. My lungs seemed to forget how to function, my breath frozen, tears filling my eyes. How wonderful it would have been for you to have suddenly appeared at that gate, out of breath and flushed from running up the steps, how many times over the past two years have I wished for you to miraculously appear again excitedly telling me about the reason for your absence. Wishes don’t come true though, they just give us a moment’s happy reprieve from the horror of our daily life, our new normal. 

We dropped down onto Porth Padrig beach and the tide was out. We stood at the waters edge and Zac went in alone. At this point you’d have been in, promising you wouldn’t get wet and that you’d stay dry, laughing as you and Zac would run up and down the waters edge, water splashing high into the air and yes you’d both inevitably be wet through.

One of the last times we were on that beach you got a bee sting and your tears and sorrow weren’t for yourself but for the bee, you said it would die and that upset you so much, the thought you’d harmed another living creature, you were beside yourself and at that moment I remember thinking how proud of you I was and what a truly wonderful human being you were. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wearing rose tinted glasses and like most teenagers you could give me a serious headache, you could be stroppy and argumentative but even in those moments you’d never try to intentionally hurt. You would always try to be kind and you were the most thoughtful child and adult I’ve ever known. It destroys me to think that the world no longer has you in it, the world needs more people with sensitivity and kindness. At times I fear it’s being taken over by the snakes and the narcissists, the uncaring hordes, the hard faced and manipulative liars, cheaters and haters. That’s the truly tragic part of your final act, you left and now we’ll never know what you would have become, what your beautiful presence would have brought to the world. That’s the real tragedy of suicide, you left without realising that the pain, that darkness you felt, would subside and life would get better.

Over the past two years there have been so many dark times for us and every upset, however minor it may seem to the outside world, sends my brain into a frenzied anxious spiral, I now know how Alice felt falling down that rabbit hole. But, do you know what Neve, we survived every one of those 1,052,640 horrific minutes, sometimes I really don’t know how, but we did.

Today I remember you with so much love. There is always going to be a you shaped hole, not only in our hearts but deep, deep within our souls, your absence spread over everything. 

I love you past the moon and miss you beyond the stars my beautiful girl

Mum xx