Holding on, letting go

Somewhere between the peak of the pandemic and the deep winter, while living away from home in London, I hung up the call that would change my life forever. At 24, I learned that my mum, back home in Spain, had Stage 4 cancer. Shock surged through me, followed by a sadness unlike anything I’d ever known. Just months earlier, we had been on a laughter filled family holiday in the mountains. How could this be happening? How could life change so fast?

In London, after university, my days were centred on one thing: breaking into film. But then, without warning, COVID-19 swept in, and my mother’s cancer diagnosis followed. Suddenly, the future I thought I understood became uncertain, clouded by these unexpected shadows.

Before I could fully grasp it, I was on a flight back to Spain to be with my mother. Whenever I returned home, she would meet me at the train station – a tradition we never questioned. The anticipation of seeing her reminded me that home wasn’t a place; it was her. The scent of her, the warmth of her smile, the unmatched safety of her embrace – these were things London could scarcely offer at the time.

This time, it was different. Our tradition had inevitably changed. Standing alone in the train station, without her waiting for me, I replayed all the times we’d excitedly jumped into each other’s arms. As I walked home without her smile beside me, the knot in my stomach found a new, cosy spot in my throat. Deep down, I hoped it was all a misdiagnosis, an exaggeration, a cruel joke.

Anticipatory grief

Truthfully, I was in such denial that, although I’d packed some bags to move home for a while, I had also left some back in London. I’m sure I did this hoping it wasn’t all that bad; hoping I would still have plenty of time with my mum – the kind of time that makes you forget that life is finite.

As the door opened, there she was. If sunshine were a person, it would be her. That first hug was the complex combination of glorious comfort and the heart-wrenching tangible possibility of her absence. The hug, filled with nothing but love, gave me an insight into her physical state. It sank in – it was all real.

From that point on, things changed rapidly. At times, I took comfort in knowing that her death would inevitably happen. Most times however, that same thought would make me spiral into the deepest of pains. I, and presumably many others, spend our lives fixating on the future or the past. Maybe, in some way, we believe we have more control over them than the present itself. 

Some of us are privileged enough not to have to contemplate our mortality daily. Watching my mum, a person enamoured with life, struggle with her illness, taught me the conflicting and messy emotions that come with realising that our lives can end at any moment. Mortality helps us see ourselves more clearly but can also bring a level of anxiety that can feel almost unbearable. 

For a long while, I felt as if I lived in limbo, each day leading to my one greatest fear. At the time, she was still alive, so why did I feel so much grief already? Writer and bereavement counsellor Katrina Taee has written about what she calls “anticipatory grief.” The term encapsulates the experience of grieving a loved one with a terminal illness. Instead of it being felt all at once, complex grief can occur soon after diagnosis. Although not everyone experiences it, it certainly should be talked about more often. “When anticipatory grief goes on for a long time, this can start to wear you down emotionally and physically,” she writes.

Looking back, knowing what I know now, I feel compassion towards that version of me who did not know not to look into the future. I didn’t want time to pass, and I got caught up in the idea of it passing, forgetting that all we had was the present. All we still have is the now.

Documenting and embracing uncertainty

Somehow, the routine Tuesday blood tests and ongoing medical appointments with her handsome, dark-haired, blue-eyed, too-young-to-be-true oncologist started to become a normality in our lives. In many ways, this lifted our spirits and helped us keep the optimism and hope going. In situations like this, hope was the last thing we could leave behind, and yet at the same time, it took a conscious effort to carry on believing our circumstances could get better.

Enveloped in uncertainty, my mum and I inevitably started letting humour creep in, as we always did back when her illness wasn’t part of our lives. Soon enough, certain situations became running jokes, like the time we sent a prank email to my auntie pretending to be the handsome doctor. At that moment, my mum and I were lying on the sofa, and she suddenly had the urge to prank my auntie, as she always had back in her healthier days. I am glad I recorded all of that mischief; now, that’s a treasure in my museum of mother memories. It’s a moment I replay in my mind or on my phone, every time my heart aches for a piece of her.

But for every sweet moment, there was also a scary one. Good news. Terrible news. Changes. Hopelessness. Togetherness. 

I turned to journaling those heartfelt, little moments in the hope of staying with the positives of the day. I also started writing down all the fears I had. I don’t remember when my relationship with journaling began, but I knew I needed an outlet to express myself. Throughout the journey my family and I found ourselves on, I took so many pictures and made sure to film as much as I could, in case we ever forgot how much we were all there for each other. 

While I did this to battle the grief of any supposed future without my mum in it, I also hoped to use the videos and photographs to show my future children what a force of nature their grandma was. I dreamed that, when I met the man of my life, he would get to know my mum through all those silly, mundane, honest videos and understand how important she is in my life.

In her healthier days, we approached cancer as another member of our family – one who  brought an ordeal of chaotic emotions, and with whom we had to maintain harmony. Sticking together seemed like the only recipe for success. From a trip to the supermarket to a day trip in the mountains, trying out new homemade recipes with her favourite foods, and watching The Holiday (one of her favourite movies) together for the 30th time, the love we shared filled in all the cracks created by the pain of reality. 

But that’s life at its rawest; the moments of laughter that made our belly ache, moments of parental life advice, talks about death, crying on her lap, arguing with my brother, normal and real moments of a home, with its ups and downs but with enviable amounts of unconditional love. As time kept slipping through my fingers, the rapidity of it all became a blur. In the many moments, I asked if I could do more for her and always said she was exactly where she wanted to be with who she wanted to be. We truly had it all.

Strength in numbers

Sometimes, I feel that we have been sold this idea that the end of life looks like a fancy bucket list involving skydiving and exotic trips to unknown lands, but life’s experience essentially comes down to the relationships we have and the feeling of home we build. My mum, a lover of all things seaside, Mediterranean lifestyle, different cultures, simply wanted to be with my brother, dad, and me at our little cosy apartment, the four of us. 

That was her feeling of home, of safety, her bit of heaven. In practice, our family dynamics varied and became tense at different stages with anger and resentment arising as we tried to care for each other. At many points, I grieved the dynamics we once had. Amidst the changes and emotions, our love was our glue, and we persevered through the most difficult circumstances.

In the two years that we had with my mum from her diagnosis, we went from each of us living abroad, visiting home once every three months, to being under the same roof almost every day for months and months. Each of us had disrupted our normal routines, leaving behind the worlds and communities we had built independently, to be where we needed to be – as we always knew we would if something like this ever happened. We squeezed what some might share in twenty years, into two instead. 

From morning walks to birthdays to the inevitable physical deterioration of my mum’s health, we were always there, in one way or another. We took on caring duties nobody had asked for, watching slowly as the radiant fire of my mum’s spirit faded behind the fragility of her body; time wouldn’t stop, and neither would her illness.

In her last days, I was able to express how I felt although she already knew; My love and admiration for her, my hopes and dreams for life and the wisdom she imparted that I will hold with me for the rest of my life. No matter how much I said, it will never feel like I said enough. Hearing me cry as I kept trying to express all that cannot be expressed, my mum pushed through the realms of consciousness briefly and with all the strength in her, extended her arms and pulled me towards her chest one last time. I wished for more hugs, kisses and her affection. I wished for her warmth to never stop. I wished to lay on her chest forever, in the peacefulness of knowing I still had my person. 

Letting go

On our last night sleeping next to each other, I kissed my mum’s forehead delicately. I lied and I told her it was okay to go if she needed to. I thanked her for holding on and asked her to come visit me when she could. In the early morning of the 15th of November, as the most potent sun tinted her room in an unseasonably summery orange hue, I found myself on my knees next to my mum, knowing she was everywhere. 

Looking back now, I realise a level of love I’d never explored before rushed through me that night, a force of resilience stormed in uninvited, and acceptance broke in. My inner intuition spoke in ways it hadn’t before, letting go wasn’t giving up, it was love in its purest form. Selfless. Death, loss, and grief play a meaningful part in my life, but deep-rooted love and connection encompass every single bit of it. It is not in the absence of love that we feel pain, we feel pain because we’re creatures who love. 

My mum taught me that life happens in the little corners of your ordinary world. And, in retrospect, I have now learned to see life as a series of decisions, in our control and not, from the way we handle difficult situations to the people we choose to have in our lives, the bonds we create, the memories we share, that’s the real legacy of our journey through life. 

In my case, in all the grief I have experienced, from her diagnosis to now, as I write these words, I take comfort in all these moments I got to share with her. I take comfort in the people who got to experience her radiance, for she is, in a way, permanently ingrained in someone’s life, in someone’s memory at some point in their personal timeline. She is, therefore, in so many places, and in so many people, she’s timeless. Now, I choose to embrace the little moments with the people I deeply love, knowing it’s not so much the destination that I’ll remember but everything that happened on our way there. 

I continue to be the annoying friend who takes photos and videos for my personal museum of memories. I continue to navigate life in a way that allows me to have time to feel what I need to feel, without adding extra pressure on figuring it all out. Because, in the end, I’ve come to realise that the goal in life isn’t to figure it out, but instead experience all the colours that go with it. We’re all learning in real-time. 

A year and a half into my grief now, I am patiently coming back to an optimistic version of myself, knowing that whatever life throws my way, be it pain, struggle or change, will be met with love and a community of people I can reach out to. Those two come for free. 

There’s no formula to avoid the uncertainty and grief that may come when we choose to experience life, but navigating it becomes more tolerable when you have love to count on.