Previously, on my blog…
I’m now up to March 2020. and a certain pandemic has hit.
The last 2 years have been tough, but not really about being adopted and not being able to meet my birth family in Ireland.
On December 14th 2020, after a period of 5 weeks of being in hospital, my adopted mum passed away.
She’s never really had brilliant health, and the last few years had seen her in hospital several times, for gall bladder, infections, hernias, chest infections. Not wanting to explain her entire medical history, needless to say, she was a tough woman who before Christmas 1993, had a heart attack, and after this, her health started to struggle more. She was in pain a lot due to different conditions she suffered, even so, with not being able to visit her in hospital, having to teach my adopted dad how to text and use his phone ro communicate with her while she was in, it did hit me hard.
This is the first time I’ve really spoken about this in any depth, and even though it’s over a year, it’s still hard. Most days I’m good, some days, not so great. Even just this second I thought about how I’ve been and I can feel myself being hit by that wave of emotion.
Some people might say it’s natural, and although I agree now, it’s only in the last 10 years I’ve become a lot more emotional. Christmas telly 2010 was a nightmare for me, everything set me off. Eastenders, Dr Who… you name it, somehow I was tearful (although I’ve never spoken or said pubicly about this either – till now).
We were phoned by the hospital to say my mum’s condition had worsened (it was up and down all weekend), so the journey down to my dad’s and then to the hospital is one of those memories as much as I’d like to forget, I can’t. It was the longest 45 minutes of my life. We got into the hospital by 845pm, and my mum had been sedated as she was in pain.
I don’t think she was fully aware of us being there, she was in pain to start, but slowly “got tired”. I remember watching her breathing get shallower and shallower, till I couldn’t see her chest move at all.
It’s that moment I became the parent to my dad’s child.
For the next couple of weeks I spent a lot of time just organising everything, changing bills and all that kind of boring stuff I suppose. Even now, 11 months later, I still have to think did it happen or not.
The funeral happened on New Year’s Eve and because of COVID restrictions was quite limited. But I did create a service for her that I know she would’ve loved. Dr & The Medics Spirit in the Sky, and Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust to end.
In the months that followed, I had counselling, just to make sense of everything I’d been through.
As I say, that’s been about a year now, and each day can be a little bit of a struggle, and I suppose suffering from anxiety on some level doesn’t help either, but through it all, my partner has been by my side. It might be a bit of a cliche, but she has been my rock, and the only thing I know I need to apologise for is not being a brilliant for her as she is for me. These posts are part of my truth, my story, as is she.
What next? Let’s see what we can write in the next post.
Thanks for checking me out.
