Surprised by Grief

This is the blog I seriously never thought I'd write. Oh sure, call me naive but I honestly thought my mother would live forever, my sister and I both did.  

My vivacious, bright, hilariously funny, brilliant and incredibly healthy mum has passed away, the details don't really matter - what matters is that my sister and I were both with my mum when she breathed her last breath.

She was taking a nap on my bed when suddenly after a 911 call there were at least 6 firefighters and paramedics in my bedroom working on her. At this time may I simply say that my bedroom was in a state of complete disaster, cleaning out cupboards, re-arranging clothes - it could not have been messier. Bras were hanging on pegs, my work table was temporarily in my room and it was piled high with receipts, craft projects half done, and a million other bits and pieces. At some point the paramedics needed more room and carefully took everything single thing off the table, piled them into the bathroom and put my work table away (very impressed at how careful they were). Standing at the doorway looking in I said in a small voice to the very nice looking paramedic who held a stop watch while they did compressions - "I am so embarrassed, this must be the worst place you've worked on someone." He sweetly smiled and said "not even close, we have been in far, far worse locations". Together we watched these amazing men and women try and bring our mum back to life.

After a half an hour had passed, I asked them to stop - she was gone, I knew the minute she took her last breath, but we had to try. So everyone quietly packed up, my sister and I thanked everyone for working so hard and we sat down on the floor beside my mum, each of us took one of her hands and held it while we sang songs, prayed aloud and talked to her as if she was napping. Meanwhile a lovely police office stood watch over us until the coroner could be reached.

We sat for two-three hours, making sure she was never alone and waited, at some point the coroner called, the police officers took their leave and it was just the three of us, like it had always been while we waited for her to be transported to the funeral home.

I could see our neighbours texting to see if we were ok but I couldn't write back - finally once my mum was gone I called a neighbour and blubbered through the whole conversation, he offered to come over but we said we'd walk over and get a hug. He met us at the door and just held my sister and I while we fell apart, his lovely girlfriend stood by and the 4 of us gathered in his living room. They were so kind and gracious, they listened while we recounted the trauma, meanwhile another neighbour texted that he had made us lasagna and was bringing it over.

This is just the beginning of the story and the only reason I am sharing it is because despite my sister and I being great sleepers, we can no longer sleep. So we are up most of the night, talking and going over every single detail over and over like a worry stone. I've developed anxiety that creeps in quietly in the evening and I thought tonight "I need to write to get this out" so here I sit. Not sure how long I'll continue but after 4 days I have learned a boat load of information I never wanted to learn. This blog will be raw and grammar will not be correct and there will be miss-spellings and maybe when I get a book contract I'll tidy it up - but for my mental health, I am just going to pour it all out.