Two Years. Just Yesterday.
Anniversaries are strange things. They shouldn't matter, but they do. A friend recently asked why a specific date should carry more weight, more hurt or sadness or joy than the day before it, or the day that follows. I couldn't explain it to her then, and I cannot now. All I know is that this morning I woke up and it was as if I were sitting beside that bed in the Hospice, wanting to scream and just pouring out the loss and the realisation that nothing would ever be the same ever again. I had already collapsed in the car park where my Uncle had met me and told me the news and later I would be walking the dog after we had come home and she knew somehow, even her little doggie head had understood that things had changed.
That was two years ago, and it is as if only yesterday. Fourteen months. But its only just happened.
Thats the anniversary. Its the date that in your head takes you back to that place, removing the time inbetween. The hurt isnt suddenly more powerful, its not a case of having been aware of it less over the intervening days. Its the reminder that there will be no more newspapers with the spelling mistakes corrected in red pen, no more Sodding-Uko or crosswords on the kitchen table. You wont be waking up to hear the radio in the same way again, that smile you remember is all you have, you wont see it again. Every time from now on when you think of the good things, her laugh or the way she rolled her eyes when you did something extra daft, the way she would phone her brother to tell him that the "nights are fair drawing in"...there'll be the spectre of the person in the bed, still cheery when you visited, but knowing that she wont make it to the Scottish Six Days Orienteering this time round.
It was raining today, when I took Rowan to the woods. I didn't mind, because it meant I could let it all out and no one would see.
I miss you, Mum.