The A-Z of Death

This piece was published by www.dontpaniconline.com back in September 2007 but I can't find the link so you'll have to take my word for it...


A IS FOR ALCOHOLISM
This is what killed my mum; liver failure. She drank herself to death over a period of almost 20 years and there was nothing she, or anyone else could do to stop her. If you're one of those people that think alcoholics bring it on themselves, or deserve to die, or shouldn't waste NHS money, or whatever; then you are pretty ignorant. You might as well go shout at a schizophrenic to snap out of it and stop hallucinating. Alcoholism is a mental illness – as is most addiction – and no one knows how to cure it. It is also a really efficient way of ruining lives and families. All in all, it's a proper barrel of laughs.

B IS FOR BREATHING
When my mum stopped breathing on her own and had to rely on the ventilator, we all pretty much knew it was game over. But I'm not talking about her breathing, I'm talking about mine. Since she died I haven't been able to breathe properly, and I can't take a full breath or yawn. The muscles in my chest feel really tight, like I'm so bunched up with nerves I can't relax enough to let my lungs fill with enough air. My GP says it's to do with anxiety, which is understandable, but I hope it stops soon; it's really annoying.

C IS FOR CRYING
I've done a lot of this over the past few weeks. When you're riding the crazy roller coaster of emotions that is the grieving process, it helps to have a big cry every now and then. It's like puking and getting all the bad stuff out, and you always feel a little bit better afterwards. I don't mean any of that silent weeping while staring out to the horizon bullshit either. I'm talking about on your hands and knees on the bathroom floor, heaving dry sobs while your heart feels like it's going to come out of your mouth. You need to drink lots of water too, to keep it up for any length of time.

D IS FOR DENIAL
Not only is denial the thing that ultimately killed my mum, it is also the thing that will fuck with your head the most. In the few days after she died, we had to keep reminding ourselves that it had actually happened. Like, our brains had taken in the information, filed it away in a box labelled 'Later', and drip-fed it into our consciousness at a slow pace, so that the realisation dawned on us gradually at a rate we could handle. Nice of the brain to be so considerate, but it really weirds you out when you're in the middle of brushing your teeth and suddenly you're all 'Whoa. I'm never going to hear her voice again'. That stuff can really spoil your day.

E IS FOR EMOTION
As if I need to spell it out.

F IS FOR FUTURE
It's really hard in the first few days after the death to imagine ever being interested in anything ever again. But in your more lucid moments, it helps to think about the future and try to mentally fast forward to a years' time, when all of it won't be so raw and shitty and we'll all be coping with things better. It gives you hope.

G IS FOR GOODBYE
I didn't want to stand at the bedside and watch my mum die, so I told my family I would go in to see her on my own and say what I wanted to say and then go outside until it had happened. For some reason they all wanted to be there, which I thought was unnecessarily morbid, but whatever, that's up to them. Anyway, I went in to see her and she was lying there with a tube down her throat and wires all over the place. It felt like I was someone else, like a character on Casualty. Honestly, the whole thing was so surreal, when I look back on it, I still can't believe it was actually me pressing my forehead against hers and whispering 'I love you I love you I love you' over and over again.

H IS FOR HOSPITAL
Mum was in hospital on average of once a year for at least the past 7 years. I have spent way too much time in them and I can safely say that they properly suck. Ill people are gross. Do I really need to see an octogenarian vomiting on himself at 11am on a Saturday morning? And hey, woman in the bed in the next ward, stop rattling phlegm round your larynx like an espresso machine with cancer. We get it, you're ill. Fuck those places are depressing.

I IS FOR INTENSIVE CARE
This is where mum died. All the patients here are too sick to make noises, so they lie there in comas like those people in the Matrix in the pods with those things plugged into their backs. The only sounds are bleeping machines and nurses' whispers, and it smells like gravy and piss.

J IS FOR JOKE
Like I said earlier, mum's death didn't feel like it had really happened. I half believed that someone was going to call and say that it had been a mistake. The idea that she was permanently gone was so absurd it was laughable. The night she died, we came back home and I was sitting on the sofa thinking about her dying and I wanted to laugh. In fact I had to leave the room because I was worried my dad would notice and get upset. So I decamped to the bathroom and began to laugh like a maniac on heroin. You know like you see in films when people are in shock? The laughter quickly subsided into hysterical sobs though, and I was soon back on my hands and knees on the floor watching my snot drip onto the lino.

K IS FOR KETONES
When the liver and kidneys can't flush out your blood properly, the toxins build up and you can smell them on the patient's breath. These toxins on the breath are called ketones, and they're gross. People on the Atkins diet get them too, because all the protein they eat overloads the kidneys making them unable to do their job properly. Ketones smell kind of like TCP and shit, I still get whiffs of it now, all these weeks later. To me they smell like death.

L IS FOR LIFE
When no one's died, the old life and death clichés can seem, well, clichéd. When your mum has died, you hold onto those clichés like a man dangling over a precipice holds onto the edge. Life goes on, life goes on, life goes on. You need to believe this, otherwise in a year's time you will still be sitting in your pyjamas at 4pm with the curtains drawn, watching the repeat of Jeremy Kyle on ITV2 that you already saw that morning (I actually did this for about a week after mum died before I finally pulled my shit together).

M IS FOR MOURNING
The word 'mourning' conjures up images of Victorian widows in black, leering at the gardener through their veils. It's kind of an archaic word, but it best describes the state we're all in at the moment. Not just an immediate state either, but rather a state of mind that we'll probably remain in forever, to a greater or lesser extent.

N IS FOR NOTHING
Literally. I can't think of anything for 'N'.

O IS FOR OPERATION
We were all like, 'If her liver's fucked, surely you can operate and she can have some of mine or something?', and the doctors were all 'Sorry, it doesn't work that way'. In a situation like that, you truly put all the power of the world in the hands of those doctors. They might as well be God at that moment in time. In fact, I'm switching 'Operation' for 'Omnipotence'.

P IS FOR PAIN
There is a pain in my chest where my heart is. I don't think it will ever go away, and I kind of don't want it to.

Q IS FOR QUICK
Once she'd started to go, it all happened really quickly. Like, hours. It was the best way really. I think I'd have lost my mind if it had dragged on into the following day. Then that would have been a euthanasia situation. Seriously.

R IS FOR RELATIVES
I love my family, but I don't spend an inordinate amount of time with them. I'm close to my dad and my brother, but as far as the extended family goes; we all live quite disparate lives and normally only see each other at Christmas and weddings. OH MY GOD have I seen a lot of them over the past few weeks. As soon as it happened, they all arrived en masse, closed ranks, and set up camp in my dad's living room. Relatives rule.

S IS FOR SPOOKY
Check this out. My mum had a mobile phone that she never learned how to use properly and she was forever ringing me from her handbag and leaving answer phone messages that was all background noise and bag jangling. On the second night after she died, I was getting ready for bed and my phone started ringing. I was pissed off because it was 1 in the morning, and even though time held little relevance at that point, it was still too late for people to be ringing me. Snatching up my phone in anger I looked at the screen and saw 'Mum' flashing away above her number. I was scared to answer it in case she might actually be on the other end, so I shouted for my dad and my brother who came running in and were stopped in their tracks when they saw she was calling me. So they went upstairs to find her mobile and switch it off. They weren't sure where it was until they heard a ringing coming from the drawer in her bedside table. Her phone had started ringing too. That's pretty fucking weird, right?

T IS FOR TIME
Time flies, travels and heals. I'm hoping it will be really effective at doing the latter.

U IS FOR UNDERTAKER
How do those guys do it? Seriously. It's got to be one of the most miserable jobs in the world. If I were an undertaker, I'd probably kill myself. And then I'd have to be buried by undertakers, and that thought is just so depressing I might have to stop writing this, get out of bed and go downstairs for a cigarette.

V IS FOR VERBOSITY
Wow, I have talked the most shit I have ever talked in my entire life over the past few weeks. Life, death, why, how, where, etc. Take this A-Z for example. I have uncontrollable verbal diaorrhea at the moment. I feel sorry for anyone who has to talk to me.

W IS FOR WAITING
You can't hurry grief up. There's no point where you're like 'OK, that's over, I'm done with that now!'. You just have to wait.

X IS FOR X-RAY
My mum had one of these when she was in hospital. It was either that or 'xylophone', which would have been totally irrelevant.

Y IS FOR YESTERDAY
Each day I get through without my mum is progress towards a time when I won't feel so shit. Wow, maybe I'll go and film myself crying in front of a mirror and put it on youtube (another ‘Y’).

Z IS FOR ZOOLOGY
My mum studied zoology as part of her degree. She always said she wanted to go and do conservation work in Africa, but she never made it out there. When I think of her now I picture her in Africa, surrounded by zebras, and she's beautiful, and happy.