Becky’s Story
Life has the power to throw the unimaginable at you; it can, without warning, hurl something so pungent and ugly that it physically knocks you off your feet. Last year life did just that to my brother and I when we found out our Mum, Julie, had taken her own life. The shock and trauma of this news was monumental and the complexities of the emotions it left us with fogged every aspect of our life. It was as if a bomb had exploded and the blast had thrust itself into every nook and cranny. We rode the adrenaline through the police interviews, the organisation of the funeral, through the inquest, the interment, the house clear, through all the admin that is shoved ruthlessly into your hand when a death occurs. Grief alongside us for the journey the entire way. After a suicide you are left with an abundance of questions and a sense of longing, a needing for their answers to help you make sense of it. What I am learning, slowly, is that it is nonsensical; there are no words that can make sense of what has happened and no words that can voice its effects on you. It has no language. That doesn’t make any of it easier to swallow, the taste will always be nauseating, but it becomes less heavy if you can find ways to put the load down. For me that is through my art. I find such a power in putting paint to page and giving these huge feelings a form. It helps me to process what I can’t find the human words for.
The truth is, for me, there will always be that missing puzzle piece in understanding why she is gone but I am learning to fill it with the love I know will always exist between us. Something I have been trying to find the answers to instead is how I relate to all this. Who am I now? How do I let this move forward with me? I know I can never change what happens and that stings deeply, however I am trying to accept that I can, make the steps, to control how I carry it. How I react. It feels incredibly important to me to find ways to reclaim the 99.9% that made up my Mum, our relationship and her place in the world rather then letting what happened hold ownership and label her. She is and will always be more than that. She is the Mum that would always make everyone she met feel seen and welcome. The Mum who would sing my praises to the world. The Mum who loved with every inch of her heart with a love that will never dilute, even though the water got dark and murky. She gave me enough love to fill a lifetime and for that I am ever grateful. I am and will always be her daughter and I will speak her name with no label.
I love you Mum, always.
