The thing that changed it all

I’ve written tens of thousands of words since my mum died in 2019 but shared very few of them. 

That’s because I haven’t quite found the space and, like grief, they’re also all a bit nonsensical.

But for the purposes of talking about why I do what I do, and why I care about talking about death, dying and grief, and encouraging conversations around it, I wanted to share a (semi) structured account of my experience.

So, starting at the beginning. In 2019, when I was 27, my mum died. 

But of course that isn’t the beginning because in death and grief, the context of who that person is, or was, is everything.

In brief, though, she was a great mum who pretty much raised four kids single-handedly in a ramshackle bungalow with no central heating. She cared and loved deeply, laughed a lot and was curious about herself and the world.

I’m the youngest of the four, with three older sisters. That meant I could be carefree and I was. Sometimes I still am. 

In 2018, she got diagnosed with cancer after spending Christmas in hospital. I was living in Armenia. By early spring, there was nothing else they could do. I moved home and cared for her over the summer. It was the best, and hardest, summer of my life.

Hospice carers came in three times a day once it got bad. Then, in late September, she went into Pilgrims Hospice in Canterbury. She died ten days later. Peacefully. Not in pain. 

I had prepared for her death in a conventional manner. By signing up for a one-year Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Kent. I made friends for life and took time to read and write about death and grief. 

And then, with a global pandemic in between, I decided to step away from journalism and got a job working for St Christopher’s in their Communications team. 

I’d seen what hospice care was. But I wanted the chance to learn about it, understand it, and try to tell stories of it. And for almost four years I’ve been doing that from south London, surrounded by some of the very best palliative care professionals. It’s been a privilege to work alongside them at the home of modern hospice care.

With an unprecedented focus on how we die in the UK currently, as well as high-profile funding difficulties in the sector, we’ve managed to draw attention to stories of palliative and hospice care in the media. 

I am still committed to continuing doing that, but now as a freelancer and from a slight distance, as, almost six years after returning to the UK, I leave again for an adventure in Berlin.