When my mother passed away last December, I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year.
I thought I was doing the right thing for me, going ‘no contact’. She had hurt me pretty badly with a poorly-timed message on New Year’s Eve 2024, which to me seemed like the last straw in over 40 years of fraught relationship. I told her I was upset and didn’t feel like talking to her, and then I just… didn’t.
It wasn’t really my intention to never speak to her again. But then I lost my job in February, things with my landlord starting escalating in March, and by July I was homeless. I didn’t want her to know any of that. She wouldn’t have been able to help, and her stressing about it would have added to my stress. I had it handled, and figured I’d reconcile with her when I got back on my feet.
All the times we ‘spoke’ last year were via text, and I remember every one.
We spoke over text when my aunt died mid last year.
I texted her the day after her birthday in late November to let her know I’d moved into St Peters, and sent her some photos of my cats.
She tried calling me for my birthday in early December, but I was busy with my party and wasn’t sure I was ready to talk.
She tried calling me when the Bondi attack happened to make sure I was safe, but I was having other issues and didn’t feel like talking.
So I ignored her, and I’ll always regret that. She left voicemails in December that I can’t listen to. I don’t want to because I feel so ashamed for not taking her calls.
But I read the transcripts a few times. It’s sad when that’s all you have left of someone – a handful of texts and voicemails.
I was pet-sitting at Christmas, and thinking about her a lot. I’d been talking to the Chaplain at Wesley about our relationship, and ways I could move forward and repair while still maintaining some boundaries. I went to the Christmas lunch at Wesley and came home thinking about her, but since I’d had such an emotional day, I decided to call her on Boxing Day instead.
But by the next morning, I was getting frantic messages through friends that my estranged sister was looking for me, that something had happened. My mother had collapsed and gone to hospital, and was in and out of consciousness. Apparently she had an infection in her liver that had turned septic, and there was nothing she could do. The doctors gave her days to live, and I would never speak to her again.
I did record a final voice message for my mother, which my sister assures me she heard and acknowledged. But it’s not the same. I’ll never know if there might have been some way we could have face-timed, just seeing her one last time would have been so good, even if she couldn’t speak. But I’ll never know if that was possible.
After her passing, I spent the next two weeks doing what I could to help with the funeral. I put together a tribute video of photos, organised some flowers, wrote an obit. I wasn’t able to attend the funeral since travelling out of the country is impossible for me, so I had to watch the funeral online.
I cried so much during the preparations and the funeral, but I had to handle my grief by myself as I had no one around to support me. I wonder if it would have been easier if I’d had someone to hold me while I cried.
After the funeral, the Wesley Chaplain asked me if I was okay and getting time to grieve. I responded by saying that I didn’t really have space for my grief – I was in the middle of trying to move again under very stressful circumstances, and trying to get my TAFE enrolments sorted out, and a few other things. I felt at the time like my mother’s death was just one thing in a myriad of things that had happened and I couldn’t stop to give much attention to it as I had to just keep going.
But I guess I must have room in my brain again, now that I’m settled into my new home, I’m one term into my TAFE course, and routines are starting to lock into place. Because I’ve been thinking about my mother and crying constantly for weeks now.
It’s really just the little things. I’ll see something that reminds me of her… a teddy bear tea towel, a butterfly, a rose bush in a garden… I’ll think, “Oh, mama would love this”, then I’ll remember she’s gone, and the tears start to flow. Or I’ll get the urge to call to hear her voice and tell her what I’ve been up to. I’ll think about sending her a picture of something I’ve baked, or my cats or something in my new place, and then I’ll remember that I can’t. I can’t do any of those things anymore.
Grief is complex, but mine feels overly so.
I never really forgot or forgave a lot of the neglect or abuse that happened when I was younger, because it shaped me in ways that continue to be challenging today.
I am still hurt that my parents never made any effort to visit me, as they knew that overseas travel was out of my reach. I resent not getting to have a Christmas with them since the 2000’s, not even to be included in a video call at family gatherings on Christmas Day.
I resent not getting the chance to repair the relationship with my father before the dementia took him, because my mother was in denial for so long and downplaying his state of health (as she did her own).
I resent feeling like I had to hide most of my authentic self around my mother, had to constantly edit and filter what I shared with her about my life. I thought her passing would mean I’d finally be free to be myself, and I guess in a way I am, but it feels like such a hollow victory.
As soon as my parents moved overseas almost 20 years ago, I knew it would always end like this. When I attended my dad’s funeral in 2020, I had a feeling that would be the last time I saw my mother. And she was so different then too, from the mother I pictured in my mind. She was smaller then, and frail. I remember thinking how did she go from being 50 to being 70 overnight? But of course it wasn’t overnight, I just wasn’t there to see her transition.
We’d made plans. She was going to come visit me in January 2025. We talked about it for months, planning a time that would fit both of our schedules. I was supposed to be busy at work from February to March, and she was planning to move house in April or May, so January was the perfect time. I got my hopes up, foolishly, that I was going to be a priority for her.
And then came the message on New Year’s Eve. She wasn’t coming to visit. She hadn’t checked the travel requirements and didn’t realise she needed to update her paperwork, and wouldn’t be able to do it in time for a January visit.
I was at a club with my friends to celebrate NYE. My friends had gone off to get drinks, and I stood alone in the middle of the crowded dance floor, reading her message like a gut punch. I couldn’t stop the tears that started streaming down my face; all I could do with stand there while everyone around me swayed to the beat and hope nobody noticed I was crying.
I ignored that message and her subsequent messages. Two days later, I sent a reply saying I was very hurt and didn’t feel like talking. And a year later, she was dead.
I don’t know what to do with my grief. I have so much of it. I am grieving the parental relationships I didn’t get to have. I am grieving for myself, an orphan, with nobody left now who will care for me when I’m gone. My own mortality looms large. I feel so intensely lonely.
At least now the tears come though. All through last year – losing my job, losing my home, losing my sense of belonging and my place in society, losing friends – I didn’t cry. I kept myself strong, I kept my head above water. I wanted my mother to know this. I wanted her to be proud of me. There’s no one left now to be proud of me.
So I have more questions than answers. What now is the point of my existence? What is the point of any of this? How do I define myself now, without the reference point of family? I am perfectly capable and content with self-validation, but to go through life without witness, without the safety net of another’s love and care, feels vastly empty.
I still have so many things I want to say to my mother. I still have so many hurts from the past to heal. But figuring out a way forward, a way to redefine what my life will be like now… at least feels easier to process and work through than decades-old resentment, hurt and grief.
So let’s start there.
For now, I will compartmentalise. I will focus on the here and now, not the there and then. I will not banish grief from my life. I will let the tears come. I will find a way to honour my dead, and forgive them. But I have to live, too. And figure out for myself what living looks like for me.
I am broken. I’ve always been broken.
I am alone. I’ve always been alone.
I am. I’ve always been.
I love you, mama.
Cadence Poetica 