quiet things, loud anger
February barely registered.
I don’t remember doing much. Maybe that’s the point.
I started colouring in. Not mindfully. Just filling in shapes so my hands had something to do.
I did jigsaws. Pieces, edges, something that fit where it was meant to. It helped in a way I didn’t have words for.
I went for a hike to Kodak Corner in the Mourne Mountains. It was beautiful in the way things are when they don’t ask anything of you. The sky, the rock, the distance. I remember standing there thinking how strange it was that the world could still look like that.
My mum received a posthumous award for poppy collecting. Twenty five years.
I didn’t go.
I was too angry.
Twenty five years she gave to the legion. Twenty five years of standing, collecting, feeding something that kept her drinking going. People called it dedication. Service. Commitment.
All I could think was: that was time she didn’t give to us.
Time she wasn’t parenting. Time she wasn’t helping. Time she wasn’t there for her grandchildren. Time that should have been spent differently, but never was.
I felt cruel for thinking it. Then I felt angry for being expected not to.
Everyone else saw a woman who gave so much.
I saw a mother who stopped showing up.
Both things can be true, but only one of them lived in my body.
Grief didn’t soften in February. It sharpened.
I wasn’t sad all the time. I was furious.
At her.
At the damage.
At the way addiction takes credit for things it destroys.
I don’t have a neat ending for this month.
I didn’t learn anything.
I didn’t come to peace.
I coloured.
I walked.
I stayed away from ceremonies that weren’t for me.
That was all I could manage.
