You can't be mad at someone for dying

 

You can't be mad at someone for dying. 

April, 2013. In the backseat of the car my mother tells me my grandad died in hospital three hours ago.

You can't be mad at someone for dying. 

April, 2020. In my old student room on Lancelot Road, my phone rings. 180 miles away my mother's voice tells me my grandma was found dead on her driveway.

You can't be mad at someone for dying. 

April, 2025.  

I'm starting to think the month of April is cursed for me. I love the springtime because as the world slowly starts to turn green and come back to life it feels like I am too. I love the bright yellow daffodils and the slow lengthening of the days and it feels like some sort of victory, surviving another winter. Time has passed and I can just about cope with the death days of my grandparents, the strength of my mother's maiden name and my grandmother's handwriting etched into my skin shielding me from the sadness of those two memories. April arrives and it feels like I come back to life.  

And, what seems to be inevitable now, someone dies.

I'm no stranger to grief, but this anger is new.

Four days before, my mother and I saw her, alive, but now she's dead, and I cannot wrap my head around this new reality. My brain keeps stuttering over it, repeating the words "Jen's dead" as if telling me enough times will make the shock sink in. I'm trying to think back, to remember what I said to her in her living room that evening, and I can't. I think I said goodbye as we went to leave, but I don't know for sure, and suddenly that uncertainty is another thing I'm angry about. 

 21st April, 2025. Jen's died, my dad tells me when I get home and 2 hours later I am standing in her bungalow with my mother and her daughter, waiting for the ambulance. I stood in her conservatory trying to cancel her Tesco food delivery for the next day, and I'm staring at the half eaten chocolate cake on the stand on the dresser and thinking about all the meals I had in that room which I will never do again and listening to an automated voice tell me "you can cancel or amend any orders online" before the line goes dead. 

It wasn't the silence in the bungalow that got me. It was the opened milk in the fridge, waiting to be drunk. It was the lottery tickets on the side of the kitchen counter, waiting to be checked. It was the Tesco food delivery for the next day that had to be cancelled, it wasn't needed anymore.

The days pass and as the bungalow is organised and we try to find laughter amongst the absurdity of 18 pairs of glasses, the core of my anger is revealed.

Sudden death, post mortem, avoidable.  

"You can't be mad at someone for dying" I said to someone once. But right now? Right now I think I'll be angry forever.

They say that it takes a year to even grasp that death is permanent. Two years to rearrange your internal furniture to make room for it, and the rest of your life to accommodate the loss. Right now my anger at what I didn't do, at what Jen didn't do, has overwhelmed the grief. Rationally, I know anything I didn't do isn't the reason she's gone. We went there, we checked on her, we did everything we could with the what we knew at the time. We wish life were easier but it isn't. 

It's not sitting well with me, this anger and this shifting reality of never seeing her again. 

I'm thinking about forgiveness and freedom and presence and passing. I'm angry, but I will remember the beach hut and the days at Market Rasen and the Monday night meals with her and mum. She died, but the memories haven't.