Grieving What Wasn't

Today I woke up feeling unsettled, as if the events of this week were finally catching up with me, since she passed.

It started with a small moment, Raevyn climbed into bed next to me and began singing “Open Shut Them,”

just like I used to sing to her when she was a baby, just like my mother used to sing to me.

That moment struck me deeply. I’ve always been obsessed with my children singing nursery rhymes, holding onto those memories like a lifeline. Patsy Biscoe on repeat for as long as I could keep it going.

But then, I wondered why. Was it nostalgia? I realised it was more than that, my mother was a mother to me until I was five. In those early years, she was a good mum.

Remembering that brought a flood of emotions, and sadness started to creep in.

I went to yoga, knowing that like somatic therapy, it would help me process. As I moved through poses, emotions surfaced. The instructor said something that hit home: “The importance is just showing up, just show up.” That’s when it clicked. My mother didn’t live by that motto, but I do, sometimes to a fault.

When you grow up with trauma, you often either suppress it, make poor choices, or try to be the hero for everyone else.

I realised that I’ve spent so much of my life “showing up,” often out of fear of not doing enough, stepping in where it wasn’t my place, trying to save everyone from feeling alone.

But that was my trauma response, a pattern I’m only just beginning to understand.

How do you grieve something you never had? As I drove down town today, a harvest song played, bringing me back to the religious fears I used to carry, wondering if there was any place for her.

But today, for the first time in a long time, I thought, “Why not?” She may not have been able to be better in this life, but God has given her the grace to be made whole in the next.

For the first time in ages, I felt hope for my mother.