A Grieving Daughter, A Greatful Mother

 

Forty-Six Days

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Forty-six days ago, I lost my mum, and I still don't know how to make sense of that sentence.

People often talk about grief as if it's a journey, a process, or a series of stages. For me, it has felt more like an emotional roller coaster that I never agreed to get on. One moment I feel numb. The next, I feel overwhelmed. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I stare into space. Sometimes I laugh at something and immediately feel guilty for laughing at all.

The truth is, I don't know how to man oeuvre my emotions right now. I don't know what I'm supposed to think, feel, or do.

I keep asking myself the same question: Why did this happen so soon?

No matter how many times I ask it, the answer never comes.

I wasn't ready. I needed more time. More conversations. More ordinary days. More birthdays. More chances to tell my mum the things that now feel trapped inside me.

Lately, I've found myself scrolling through old messages. I came across a birthday message she sent me last year. A message that seemed so ordinary when I received it. At the time, it was just a birthday message from my mum.

Now it feels like something sacred.

I read her words and remember that there was a version of my life where she was still here. A version where I could pick up the phone and hear her voice. A version where I didn't know what was coming.

And that hurts more than I can explain.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I don't feel like celebrating.

Maybe that sounds strange. Birthdays are supposed to be happy. They're supposed to be about cake, cards, messages, and looking ahead.

But all I can think about is the person who won't be sending me a birthday message this year.

The person whose absence has changed everything.

There is another layer to all of this that I have been struggling to put into words.

I am not just a daughter grieving the loss of her mum. I am also a mother.

And while I don't feel like celebrating, I have two children who do.

They don't see the emptiness that I see. They don't feel the silence where my mum's birthday message should be. They simply know it's their mum's birthday and want to celebrate it.

Part of me wants to withdraw from the day completely. To treat it like any other day and let it pass unnoticed. But another part of me knows that my children are excited. They want to make cards, sing Happy Birthday, and create memories together.

That creates a strange conflict inside me.

I feel guilty for not wanting to celebrate.

I feel guilty for wanting to celebrate.

I feel guilty for smiling.

I feel guilty for being sad.

The truth is that the one person I want there tomorrow is the one person who cannot be there.

My children will be around me. Family and friends may send messages. People may wish me a happy birthday. Yet there will still be a space that nobody can fill.

Because children and parents occupy different places in our hearts.

My children bring me joy, purpose, and a reason to keep moving forward. They remind me that life continues, even when grief tells me to stand still.

But they cannot replace my mum.

Nobody can.

I think one of the hardest parts of grief is that the world keeps moving. The calendar keeps turning. Birthdays still arrive. Seasons still change. People still ask how I'm doing.

Meanwhile, part of me is standing still, trying to understand how my life became divided into a before and an after.

So perhaps tomorrow won't be a celebration in the traditional sense.

Perhaps it will simply be a day where I allow myself to be both things at once: a grieving daughter and a grateful mother.

A woman missing her mum while being loved by her children.

A woman carrying loss while still receiving love.

And maybe that is what grief is teaching me.

Not how to stop loving the person I have lost, but how to keep loving the people who are still here while carrying the absence of the person who is gone.

I don't have a neat ending for this.

I don't have a lesson, or a breakthrough, or a piece of wisdom that makes the pain make sense.

All I know is that I miss my mum.

I miss her more than I can put into words.

And forty-six days later, I am still learning how to carry that reality with me.

Maybe that's enough for now.

Mum i miss you more and more each day.

Love Lena 💖💖💖

The Phone Call That Changed Everything!

 

My day started like any other.

I woke up early for work and began my usual morning routine. There was nothing unusual about the day. Nothing to suggest that my life was about to change forever.

As I got ready, I noticed that I had two missed calls from my mum's friend, Sandra. I didn't think too much of it at first. I assumed I would call her back once I got settled at work.

I arrived at work and began the normal opening procedures. Turning on the air conditioning. Writing the doctors names on the board. Getting everything ready for the day ahead.

It was all so ordinary.

Once everything was set up, I sat down at my desk, logged into my computer and returned Sandra's call.

That's when everything changed.

Sandra told me that my mum had been taken to hospital in Greece.

At first, I didn't know what to think. There was very little information. No explanation about what had happened. No indication of how serious the situation was. Just the fact that my mum had been taken to hospital.

I immediately tried to call my mum.

I knew she had her phone with her. My first thought was that there had been some sort of misunderstanding and that she would answer, tell me what had happened, and put my mind at ease.

But the calls went unanswered.

I tried again.

And again.

Nothing.

At first, I told myself there were perfectly reasonable explanations. Maybe she was being examined by a doctor. Maybe her phone battery had died. Maybe she had left it in a bag somewhere and simply couldn't get to it.

But with every unanswered call, the knot in my stomach grew tighter.

The thing about moments like that is that your mind starts searching for answers before you have any facts. You find yourself jumping between hope and fear within seconds. One moment you're convincing yourself everything will be fine. The next, you're imagining the worst.

I kept looking at my phone, willing it to ring.

Waiting for her name to appear on the screen.

Waiting for her to answer.

Instead, there was only silence.

Looking back now, I realize that was probably the moment I knew something was seriously wrong. Not because of what anyone had told me, but because my mum would never have ignored my calls if she was able to answer them.

That was the moment I started to feel genuinely concerned.

Once I finally managed to get hold of my mum's friend, my first questions were simple.

What happened?

How did we even get to this point?

How had my mum ended up in a hospital in Greece?

I was desperately trying to make sense of a situation that, at that point, felt completely unreal.

She explained that they had gone out for dinner that evening and that my mum had started complaining of stomach pain. At first, it didn't seem overly serious. The kind of discomfort that you might put down to something you've eaten or a temporary illness.

Later that evening, my mum went to lie down.

As the night went on, things apparently became worse.

During the early hours of the morning, she began complaining that she was struggling to breathe properly.

Hearing those words now still stops me in my tracks.

My mum's friend realized something wasn't right and contacted the hotel reception. The front desk then called for an ambulance.

From that moment on, everything changed.

As I listened, I found myself trying to picture those final hours. Trying to imagine what my mum was thinking, how frightened she might have been, and wishing more than anything that I could have been there with her.

But all I had were fragments of information.

Small pieces of a story that I was desperately trying to put together.

Every answer seemed to lead to another question.

What happened in the ambulance?

What happened when she arrived at the hospital?

Did she know how serious it was?

Was she scared?

Was she in pain?

Those are the questions that stay with you after someone dies unexpectedly.

Not because you're looking for someone to blame.

But because when someone you love is suddenly gone, your mind searches endlessly for understanding, hoping that if you can somehow reconstruct every moment, it might make the impossible feel a little more real.

The lack of information was terrifying. My mind immediately began filling in the blanks with worst-case scenarios. I kept refreshing my phone, waiting for a message, a call, anything that might tell me what was happening.

In the meantime, I was doing everything I could think of.

While waiting for answers, I started looking at flights to Greece. I checked availability, looked at departure times, and began searching for accommodation. At that point, I still didn't know exactly what was happening, but I knew I needed to get there.

I couldn't sit and wait.

I needed to be closer to my mum.

I needed answers.

As I searched through flight options and tried to make sense of the little information I had, my phone started ringing constantly.

The hospital was calling.

The Greek consulate was calling.

Different people were trying to make contact.

The calls seemed endless.

Each time my phone rang, my heart would sink. I found myself staring at the screen before answering, wondering whether this would be the call that finally explained what was happening.

It felt as though events were moving far quicker than I could process them.

One minute I was checking flights.

The next, I was speaking to hospitals and government officials.

The reality of the situation was beginning to settle in.

People weren't calling me because my mum was unwell.

People were calling me because something serious had happened.

I remember feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, questions and decisions that suddenly landed on my shoulders.

Everything felt urgent.

Everything felt important.

And yet all I really wanted was a simple answer to one question:

Was my mum going to be okay?

At that point, I was still holding onto hope.

Even as the phone continued to ring.

Even as the conversations became more serious.

Even as a part of me was beginning to fear the worst.

I contacted my aunt and together we began trying to piece together information. We made phone calls, reached out to anyone who might know something and tried to establish which hospital my mum had been taken to.

Every answer seemed to create more questions.

Was she conscious?

What had happened?

How serious was it?

Would she be coming home?

At that point, we didn't know.

All we knew was that she was in a hospital in Greece and we needed to get to her.

Looking back now, that period of uncertainty feels almost harder to describe than the grief itself. It was a strange limbo between normal life and disaster. A period where nothing had been confirmed, but where deep down I knew something wasn't right.

I spent those hours desperately searching for information while trying to hold onto hope.

Hope that she would be okay.

Hope that there was an explanation.

Hope that this would all turn out to be far less serious than it felt.

I didn't know then that this would be the last day of my life before everything changed.