Marking a parent's deathiversary

On your parent's deathiversary, don’t forget to celebrate their life as well as commiserate their death.

This week is that week. The week that Mum died and I found out. One minute she was there, the next she wasn’t. This week is her official deathiversary, marking six years. Apparently sugar is the traditional gift of choice for six years of marriage. And so I have decided to gorge on Jaffa Cakes. Seriously. They were our sweet treat of choice. 'You only get three Jaffa Cakes in a box' we would say, whenever we brought some home to share. It was our in-joke.

Some Adult Orphan posts celebrate life, some deliver a inquest into death. It’s funny, on Instagram I chose to mark this week by focusing on how beautiful I thought she was but never told her.

If you have a compliment for a loved one that you hold back on saying, out of shyness or any other reason, tell them. Do it now.

On The Adult Orphan I think it’s important to dig deep and share the unsharable. I don’t seek sympathy. I am 100% not writing any of this blog for sympathy. Only understanding and comradery. I want people to at least know, even if not understand, what it feels like when you find out the news and what deathiversaries are like. Only because then people won’t feel alone if they have found themselves in a similar position, or when their future self does. And to prepare our children for trauma. We wrap them up in cotton wool and want them to have the happiest life, the best education.

The value of educating young people on resilience in the face of adversity is a vital tool in growing up. Don't shield your children from learning this skill.

Much like her birthday, I try not to make too much of a big deal of it, as it would just be too upsetting. I appear to have adopted the approach of little and often. I guess when you’re honouring her life and death most weeks with a blog and social media, you kinda hope some big hoorah isn’t as necessary.

On her first deathiversary, I marked the occasion with a cosy gathering of her friends, my friends and family. We visited her grave, laid some flowers then I brought everyone back to mine for tea and cakes.

Since then, each year I just ensure I send a little tribute upwards, lay some flowers and try to surround myself with people or things that make me happy. As it occurs in the height of summer, I sometimes find myself on holiday. I used to take with me a beautiful stone from her collection and leave it on top of a mountain or something, saying a few words.

So, onto the inevitable deathy stuff. How does it feel when you find out your parent or a loved one has died? Each discovery, relationship and personality variant will deliver a different set of feelings and reactions.

No reaction is right or wrong. It’s really important that you know that.

No matter what role you play in the crisis; as someone delivering the news, as a recipient of it, or if you are a friend or family member of the bereaved. In a state of shock, disbelief, sadness or even relief, human beings are complex creatures and we can’t be held accountable for our response in such a traumatic moment.

My discovery was conducted over the phone and the poor person that told me endured a lot of angry swearing. I was told something had happened to her, I asked, ‘How bad? Like, hospital bad or worse?' I was told worse. The ground fell from beneath my feet and all I could think to say was, ‘Are you f***ing kidding me?’ and various other curses.

It was a violent shock. Completely and utterly unexpected, and beyond bitterly ironic timing. Nothing could have prepared me. I suddenly visualised my past and future on a map and the roads on it had eroded into a land of disreality. I suddenly pictured a world where I would never hear her call me kiddo again, or eat her macaroni dish, or take that trip to Ireland together. And so on.

It took a looong time to find out the official cause of her death as her inquest took place a year later. A year later! Though through various facts it wasn’t hard to speculate (COPD related). But in that exact moment of finding out, and with no facts other than she was found dead at home, my thoughts went haywire, trying to find an answer. Did she commit suicide? People don’t just drop down dead, do they? I mean that happens in films and to other people, but not me, right?

I spent the next few days wavering between sobbing, calmly philosophising, and obsessively trying to piece things together so I could make sense of everything.

This too shall pass.

But back to the present. Six years on. It's a Sunday night and this weekend I've celebrated the gifts of life and love on a hen party and a baby shower. I have a glass of wine and scented candle to hand, and I'm going to take them with me to the bathroom. I will speak to the ceiling (it comes highly recommended) and I am going to tell her all of the things I am grateful to her for. And then I'm going to eat a packet of Jaffa Cakes.

Happy deathiversary, Mum! xx