Everything I Miss

Hello. Welcome to another edition of Sassy Cat Lady – The Grief Diaries. Not that that’s the official title, but I just wanted a subtle way to warn you that I’m still shrouded in my massive grief bubble, so my dark, self-loathing humour and thirsting over Paul Mescal is still on a bit of a hiatus.

As I write this, it’s been just over four months since my dad died. If I’m completely truthful, I feel worse now than I did in those first few weeks. I feel horrendous. I have no motivation, no energy, and the only thing I look forward to at the moment is opening a bottle of wine. It’s then a challenge to drink as much of it as I can before I crawl into bed and put the day out of its misery. As I write this, I’ll be honest, I want my Mum.

The long and short of it is that I’m struggling. I’ve never really understood how grief can physically hurt until recently. I physically ache all over, and sometimes it hits me so hard to the point where I feel sick to my stomach. Other times, I’ll be doing something mundane like hanging up the washing or blow-drying my hair, and it just takes the wind right out of me so much that I can’t catch my breath. On top of that, I’m sad. All the frickin’ time. There are brief moments where my husband will make me laugh or when Tilly meows at me, where I forget. But those moments are mere seconds. Once they’re gone, I’m hit with the realisation again.

During those early days, I wrote a bit of a journal. Well, you can hardly call it that. I basically just made lists and wrote sentences about anything and everything. But looking back over those wine-fuelled scribblings, there’s one short piece that I think I’d like to share. There’s no particular reason behind it, I’m just going with the fact that writing is a huge catharsis for me at the moment. So, here goes. This is a short piece I’m calling Everything I Miss.

I miss you.

I miss how you always had a sweet tooth. 

I miss seeing you sitting in your armchair whenever I walked into your house.

I miss hearing you tell me about military planes. 

I miss your jokes.

I miss your advice. 

I miss how you always used to take the piss out of the state of my car (you’ll be pleased to know I treat my new car less like a bin, but I’m gutted you never got to see it).

I miss how you never told me off for swearing.

I miss your love of animals.

I miss how you always used to tell me “They can’t take it away from you, my love” every single time I complained about my useless degree.

I miss you telling me “Don’t worry about what anyone else wants, you do what YOU want, mate.”

I miss you commenting “That’s my goal” on drunk pictures of me, followed by “GIRL…bloody autocorrect” on my Facebook photos.

I miss how you were the only person to call me Amy May. Most of the time it was Amy. Never Ames. But you were the only one to ever call me Amy May.

I miss how, even though I was nearing 30, you would still kiss me goodbye every time I saw you.  

I just really, really miss you.

Featured image credit: Kat Smith via Unsplash