Now I understand why Cheryl Strayed did heroin

And why Kate Beckinsale was coughing up blood

If you’re feeling grief-y or you know me in real life, you might find this harder to read but please know I’m not planning to harm myself and I don’t want advice (thanks). If you’re worried about your own mental health, Samaritans are always there on 116 123 or try your local suicide helpline, details here. If you’re concerned someone else might be suicidal, there’s guidance here.

---

Apparently the most challenging literary sentence to translate into English is the first line of L’Étranger by Albert Camus: Aujourd’hui Maman est morte.

The New Yorker devoted an article to discussing whether it might mean “Today, Mother has died,” or “Mother died today,” before going on to debate whether “mom” or “mommy” is more accurate. None of which seems relevant.

I might be biased but it’s obvious to me — a newly grieving anglophone who hasn’t read the book — that the line should read, “Today, mother is dead.”

A fact so unacceptable that it’s a fresh shock every day.

Since the early hours of 23 July, 2024, my first thought on waking has been “My mum is dead,” or more accurately, “My mum is dead?”

It doesn’t seem like something that should or could be real.

My next thought is always, “I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my mum,” the soundtrack to everything I do and everywhere I go for as long as I’m awake. Sometimes muffled, mostly full volume.

My mum was both seriously ill and expected to live for longer than she did, meaning her death was sudden and traumatising. The only tiny relief is that now I know how her life ends after dreading it forever.

Over the last few months, she’d been told that she had could have heart disease, then that she had lung cancer, then that she had stage 4 lung cancer, then that she had stage 4 lung cancer and kidney disease and it would be a race against time whether the kidney disease or the cancer killed her first.

Then she had a biopsy and it wasn’t cancer.

She had a rare autoimmune disease called granulomatosis with polyangiitis that had attacked her kidneys. With aggressive treatment, doctors could extend her life.

Instead, a couple of weeks into her new protocol, for reasons that are still unknown, she went into cardiac arrest and couldn’t be saved.

In the taxi home from the hospital, as I clutched a bag filled with the blood-stained remnants of her nightie and dressing gown and an NHS-issued Bereavement Pack, I was oddly calm. I didn’t cry. I knew we had no unfinished business.

I wanted more time, of course: to play Scrabble, to watch films together, to have Christmas and birthdays and visit the seaside again.

But I knew my mum felt loved, that we’d racked up many good memories, that if I ever dwelled on some of my bitchiest moments, frozen by guilt, she’d always replied, “Oh, I’d forgotten about that,” or, “Isn’t that just what families are like?”

It wasn’t until the next day that I opened my eyes and felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Not knowing what to do, how to survive from one minute to the next, I found myself acting like a traumatised character in a TV show, doing the things those characters do: rocking as I cried on the sofa, wrapping my arms around myself in a futile attempt at comfort, opening the fridge and extracting nothing.

When I’d seen people simulate grief on screen, or been close to people who’d been through it, I always thought, God, that looks bloody awful. I had no bloody idea.

Grief is torture. Grief is hell. Grief is being alive but feeling like you should be dead because how can you go through such pain without it killing you? Grief is constant and unending and when you’re alone, it feels like the start of a miserable pointless existence that you’d rather not be forced to endure.

Grief is remembering everyone you know who has ever lost a parent and thinking, “How on EARTH did they do this?”

(My new hobby is Googling celebrities with dead parents to see if they’ve said anything about grief that might give me hope for the future. Shoutout to Chrishell from Selling Sunset for thriving after tragedy, although I’d feel more encouraged if she was an only child too.)

In the last two months, I’ve had moments, sometimes hours, of reprieve: my dad came to stay for a week and a half and I got out of the house and felt fresh air and tasted nice food and got hugs from someone who loves me. But now I’m back in the pit, trying to claw my way out.

One of the random thoughts I had in my first few days of grief was, “Now I understand why Cheryl Strayed did heroin.” (Is “do” even the right verb?) My brain flashed to the scene in Wild where she does (?) it for the last time before walking 1100 miles up the Pacific Crest Trail, a decision which also makes a little more sense to me now.

Then I thought about how Kate Beckinsale was hospitalised for six weeks following the death of her stepdad and her mum’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis. She lost weight and vomited blood after, as she said, “the grief burned a hole in my oesophagus” and not only did that seem understandable, if not inevitable, it sounded appealing because at least then someone would be looking after me.

I need someone to look after me. I want to be swaddled in blankets and rocked like a baby as I scream and cry. Because today, my mum is dead. And the next day. And the one after that.