Wednesday 11th February

I think I jinxed myself!

At least, today I definitely felt a lot more tired than I have for the last couple of days. Not gut-drainingly exhausted, though, which still tells me that I am on the mend.

I went for a run this morning and I paddled this evening – and I paddled yesterday – all apart from the usual run around and work etc, so that may explain why I was tired today. On top of that, it is so HOT these days that I think everyone is feeling completely drained.

When I was out on the dam this evening, I wasn’t wearing a cap, as there was no threat of sunburn. For the first time in ages, the wind felt different on my head. Even if I didn’t know it, I could tell that my hair is starting to grow back.

Strange sensation. There is a white ‘fluff’ all over my head now. It’s not very long, but the feeling of the ‘wind in my hair’ was definitely there.

Funny what we take foregranted. Another case of ‘you don’t know what you have until you don’t have it’. Hair really is an amenable thing to have on your head. I find that everything is very much cooler without a hat / bandanna on, but I need to wear one of them because of the sun. Hair, of course, protects our scalps from sunburn and allows the wind in. I’ll never, ever take my hair foregranted J

Everything is feeling extra-surreal this week. On the weekend we are going to the farm to scatter Mum’s ashes. I feel as though I am living in a strange parallel world when I even think about it. There is no way this can be true, no way anything so final can be going to happen.

For all of us, this will be another hard thing to do. People talk about getting closure from the process, which is, I suppose, true – and why one does these things. For me, though, there can never be closure. Such a large part of me just simply cannot believe that she is gone. In some ways, I think I’m waiting to wake up from this nightmare.

I live and function in the real world. I don’t visit Mum anymore and barely drive past her house at all. Mostly, this is because I don’t really have a reason to go that way anymore. In this horrible heat, we don’t pop in to 55 to swim. We can’t anymore, because the house is no longer ours. There are so many ‘don’ts’ and all because Mum isn’t here. She really has gone.

And yet my heart just won’t let me believe it.

She was so much a part of everything, of us, of all of our lives. To say any kind of goodbye, let alone a ‘final’ closure type of farewell just feels so wrong.

I miss her every day.

I know, though, that Mum has been with me every step of the way on this cancer journey. At times I have felt her quite intensely. At others, it’s just been that sense of ‘someone out there’. I remember how she told me how awful I looked last year when I had my head shaved for the Shavathon. And I know how supportive she would’ve been of me when I actually had to have no hair.

She and Dad are our personal angels. I know that. I wish, though, so very, very much that she was still here with us.

I will scatter her ashes this weekend. We all will. We will never, ever be able to say goodbye, though.