Happy Birthday Mum, my best friend xxx

Well I think that today is a good day to blog as having plenty on my mind. Today is my mum's birthday. Even now it feels weird not to perform my normal ritual, completely forgetting how close her birthday is, frantically go out and buying a card, make up some excuse about how the post has been delayed, polar ice caps etc, but not this year. This year like last years and the previous I remember every day coming up to this date that it is in fact mums birthday. I remember her last birthday that we celebrated together, I bought her a rather soppy card. Now those who know me know that I do not do soppy, ever !!! I hate it, but I know that mum loved it and for that reason I wanted to make her smile. So after my mum opens her card and reads it, she looks at me and says, 'so a person has got to be dieing before you can be emotional' !!!! Thanks mum!! She laughed and so did I. We also celebrated at this time because plans to move her to Bristol for her bone marrow transplant were pretty set, we all knew how and when, just a few more weeks of Chemo they said and then she will be able to move. They anticipated mid August if my memory serves me correct, as we were discussing on whether to move back to Bath to help look after the little ones until she was well enough to come out of hospital. It wasn't until a month and a half after her birthday that we found out that this trip was never going to happen. I clearly remember the phone call as it was my birthday. I was getting up to do a small shift at work, then going out with mates and then the next day going to visit mum. Didn't quite go like that. I got up, got ready for work then got the phone call..... 'nothing more they can do, the cancer has come back, they are going to stop the chemo, about 2 weeks left'..... that was all I got from it. My happy chirpy birthday self soon disappeared. Although Mum had been in hospital for nearly 2 years and there were times when it was really tough going, vomiting up her false teeth, falling asleep in her food, but I never ever once thought that she was going to die. I always thought, be strong, if not for yourself but for her and every one else ! So I was, and I never admitted the possibility that this could happen. I can't explain what I felt cos I just went numb. Sounds retarded but I went to work, a small thought in my head said if I can keep normality then maybe it wont happen. I walked around like a zombie for a few hours until they made the wise decision to let me go home. So I went straight to the pub. Not to celebrate with friends but to try and find out what it was I needed to do. I ain't proud for doing that, what I should have done was get in the car and get my ass down to her and be her daughter, her friend. But what do I say, what could I say to a person who has just been told you're fucked???? I couldn't do it ..... how can you hug some one and tell them they are going to be okay when you both now that is a complete lie............???............ My heart just froze. I didn't cry, I didnt do anything. I just drank myself in to a mess. Trying to find the answer at the bottom of glass, only to find that it isn't there, not in first, not in the last. 


  Well I finally smacked some sense into myself telling myself to get some fucking balls, at the end of the day it wasn't me who had just been told that, it wasn't me who had to live with the thought, if I fall asleep will I wake up? I wasn't the one that was leaving 4 kids to grow up without their mother, or leaving their own mother with out their daughter. After this big fucking wake up call I made my way down to see her. Obviously sober now. And once again I found a women who is ten of any one, smiling, lying on her bed eating haribo whilst doing a cross word. Only once did she show any weakness. Once she hugged me and said 'I don't want to die, I don't want to leave you'..............I held back the biggest flood of tears, looked at her and said 'you ain't ever gonna leave us'. This statement wasn't becuase she was afraid of dying, she was afraid to leave us kids.  For a women who got weaker by the day she still smiled, she still got up every morning and applied her make up. We painted her nails and stuffed her with every thing sweet. She lasted longer than those 2 weeks, of course she did, just over 3 to be exact. Every second I spent with her in those 3 weeks was the best of my life. I didn't just find my mum again I found my best friend, and the most courageous and beautiful women that I have had the pleasure of being a part of.  


   Its been nearly 3 years now. I won't lie, it doesn't get any easier. Every day is a struggle and I often have to remind myself that I can't text her. We use to have a competition of who would text her first in the morning. Some days I would cheat and set my alarm to get in their first. It's been nearly 3 years not being able to do these things and it still chokes me up. I still talk to her, she is the first person I ask for advise. My favourite room is the kitchen, and I often just sit in the kitchen, close my eyes and just remember us rocking out to meat loaf, drying the dishes, then as I got older helping with the baking, and just the times we would sit and talk. The pain I feel now is the same pain I felt when my nan told me she died. It isn't any less, and it won't ever be, because I'll never have her back. I'll never be able to look at my phone with blurry eyes and think 'bitch you beat me again', or ring her up with boyfriend trouble, or get smashed off my face and turn up at hers to carry on the party. These things won't happen any more but I am never gonna forget the times they did. 

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