Hello Gail,
Thank you for your kind wishes. They are much appreciated.
I understand what you say about the ashes. It took my sister-in-law about four years to decide what to do about them and even then, found it very hard to scatter them. In the end she did that on a beach where she and her sister used to spend saturdays with their mum having fun when they were little. She felt her mum would have had happy times there and would have liked to end up there.
In a similar way, I have revisited some of the places I went to for days out and holidays with my mum and although it made me feel sad to go back on my own, it also made me smile at the memories I have of having gone there with mum and it helped bring back the memories of the things we did and the happy times we spent there. It did help and helped me focus more on those than on the miserable weeks at the end of her life, which do seem to blot out any other memories for such a long while after you lose someone. But those weeks, when you look at it rationally, only make up a fraction of the time the person you lost spent here and you have to remember that the majority of their time was probably much happier and full of smiles and laughter, so you need to find ways of resurrecting memories of those to blot out or at least balance out the memory of the horrible last weeks that remain so sharp during the early months of grief.
Making the cake sounds like it helped with that. Well done for doing that! I bet you were thinking when you were eating it what she would have said about how it tasted or the quality of the texture etc.It is in these little things that you find your lost loved one still uppermost in your mind and still with you in spirit. I was doing a household job that involved using some of my dad's old tools a few weeks back and I could feel him looking over my shoulder with an amused smile on his face, overseeing my efforts to do something he would have done instead if he had still been here.
Oddly, I have a portrait of him that I never liked much when he was alive as he looked rather severe in it. Now though, when I look at it, he seems to be smiling at me and more sometimes than at others! My brother has noticed it too. I have it hanging near the door along with a nice photo of my mum and whenever I go out, especially if I'm off to do something nice, i tell them where I am going and when I am likely to be back and invite them along if it's something I think they might enjoy too. A bit mad perhaps, but I feel like they hear me.
I am having some building work done at the moment that I planned with mum when she was here and put on hold after I lost her and wasn't sure if I would be able to keep the house. I recently found a little drawing she had done in the back of a diary of how she would have liked to see the kitchen rearranged and it did give me a little boost to think she would have approved of my getting on with some of the work needed. I would swear my dad's portrait is smiling a bit more too. He would have been impressed as well!
Sometimes I find little feathers around where there is no obvious way they could have got there. I am coming to understand that these can be sent by our lost loved ones to show they are still nearby. This has happened quite a few times now and usually after something particularly upsetting has happened or I have something challenging to do. I didn't know anything about the feather theory before I lost my mum, but now I find myself looking out for them and am beginning to be able to recognise which ones might be meant for me and not one just lost by a passing bird! The other odd thing that happened a few months after mum died, was that a robin flew into my conservatory one morning as I was making coffee and just perched for a few minutes looking at me. I am told visiting robins can be sent by lost loved ones too and it had never happened before nor has it since, so I do think that was connected with mum too. After my dad died, quite a few odd things happened that I associated with him too, so I think our lost loved ones do continue to watch over us. Everyone will have their own theories on that of course and you may not believe in life after death, but I found these incidents significant.
I looked for a choir to join when I was looking for an activity to take up as mum and I also liked to sing and she had belonged to a choir, but couldn't find one suitable near me, so turned to different activity instead. I agree with what you say about it being emotive and like you, feel I might have struggled with that. I hope it helps you though and do encourage you to go back. It is these kinds of things that help dispel the feeling that you have no interest in living without your mum being around anymore. I think we all feel like that after the loss of a close loved one. I know I did. If you can find something to do that you enjoy and that takes you out of yourself, out of the house and makes you engage with other people and makes you enjoy yourself, if only a little, though, this really will help. I know it has helped me no end and still does. It made me feel like I had begun to build a life for me again and found a way forward in building a new way of living for me in my altered circumstances. If there is anything you have always wanted to do, but haven't, this is the time to try to make it happen. You will find you can feel what your mum would think about that in your mind and maybe what she would say about it. If nothing else it will give you both something to talk about when you do see her again, if there is an afterlife! I bet she wouldn't be very pleased to hear you spent the rest of your life being miserable, so you will be doing it to please her as much as yourself.
Keep working on being positive and finding ways to cheer yourself up, if only for a few hours a week, Gail. It does take time and there will always be ups and downs. I have just come out of a couple of weeks of feeling low, but have come to understand that these periods do end and I will feel better for a while again, so once you have a little list of things that make you feel better, keep going back to them to help you raise your spirits again. Also, some days, it is an achievement just to get dressed and do the household chores, so congratulate yourself for managing those when you can. It can help too to make a little list of good things you have seen or experienced each day, even if it is just seeing flower or stroking a cat; something ordinary and everyday that nonetheless gave you a little pleasure. I didn't make a list, but I do keep a diary and write down such things in there. This is something else I have carried on for mum really. I never kept a diary before, but she always did, so now I am doing that to carry it on for her.
It does help to write down each day how you have felt and anything good that has happened, even things that were not so good. I wrote a couple of poems after mum died to express how I felt about it all and that helped get those feeling out of my system a bit. I know some people write a letter to a lost loved one if they have unsaid things they wanted to say to them and they find that helps. Perhaps this is something you could try. There is something about putting pen to paper that helps you offload feelings that would otherwise weigh you down.
Keep trying, Gail. Life is for the living and you have to make the best of it. Sadness will always be part of it, but doesn't have to be and shouldn't become the only thing in it. Loss is unavoidable. None of us lives forever, so we have to find ways to prevent losses from overwhelming us in grief. Keep looking for those combatting tools, Gail and slowly you will find a way to live with your grief and counterbalance it, so that you can still enjoy your life. I know it doesn't seem possible now, but you can still do that. There will always be good and bad days, but gradually the good days will be more and the bad ones grow less as acceptance of the loss and the knowledge that you will always miss your mum becomes part of what you grow used to living with.
Keep going, Gail. Little steps, every day. You will find a way forward.