I am 29 and the world is at my feet

I have to start writing again, not because I’ve been wasting time finding other things to do but more because I’ve found new sanctity in time. I used to scoff at people who lamented the brevity of things as though they were greedy for wanting more than their share. Now I am hungry for everything – every animal and sunset and kiss I can get my hands on.

The writing itself only feels like little dog-hairs but to me it’s better than nothing.

This is the first time I have written anything to put on the internet since my Mum died last March, but writing that still makes me want to shut off my laptop and go for a walk. Luckily I have long fallen out with the idea that I am responsible for turning my grief into something beautiful or interesting. This is enough, it’s actually plenty.

The problem with writing here is that I imagine my words have more permanence than they do. I dream I write books that are too sad for the child I was then. My dreams have taken on a predictability now with the added occasional crow. I could weep that my Mum never got to see jacaranda blooming in Lisbon or that I never got to tell her about it. There I go again painting a picture to bring it all together at the end like that. If it wasn’t May I’d try to think of something more original than the tightly balled-up peonies I got sent which are stuffed full of a few days of unabashed flamboyant beauty.

What army of things have had to die for me to live?

If there were more layers between me and the world it wouldn’t be able to hurt me so much. There are some people who walk around the world elbows first, and there are others who walk into every room with their guts hanging out.

There is a cemetery in London near where I am staying and there’s a tribute for someone that says “She gave us happiness and her love.” The fact it’s written on a gravestone makes me think about Kurt Vonnegut, of course (“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt”), but the fact is there’s something in the act of giving as it’s written here that brings me near to tears when I think about it. What a way to be remembered. I wonder if the words were agonised over in the act of remembering.

I feel so often that the process of female aging (and motherhood wrapped up in that) is presented as one of dilapidation and deterioration. As though the act of love depletes the enactor, and perhaps that’s why I find that particular stone so moving; the love reunited with its giver in symbolic fortitude. I wonder what it would mean to witness (or be) that unity in life.

I know that my Mum and I won’t ever be together again. But she didn’t just give me happiness she taught me happiness. She could look at the world like a delicious meal and took no shame in enjoying every bit of it. And she gave me her love.

I am 29 with the world at my feet, and the weight of her/my love won’t go wasted.