Anaesthetic

Every year, i do the flower run. The birthday, and the death day.
This year, the multicoloured roses i got on her birthday, ended up staying on my kitchen table. I didn't make it to the cemetery.

Today, it was shades of white, the colour of weddings and grief. Why's that i wonder, while the man was wrapping and calculating the costs. I find it hard to focus on the anniversaries. So i zone.

From the corner of my eye i see someone slow, and stop- i instinctively move out of her way.

'Look at them' she says, 'Aren't they beautiful, those roses'.

It takes me a while to realise she's talking to me. I smile at her, she's small and leaning on a walking stick.

'Yeah.' I respond absently.

She walks on and into the post office.

The man behind the counter is showing me his calculator.

I look at the number, at the cash in my hand - remember a Gratitude Challenge, a generous gift from the lovely Toni Powell.

'I'll take these as well.'

Pink roses, a bright but pretty pink. A lovely pink.

He takes the payment.

I balance the bunches in my hand- 'Careful with the orchids' he tells me as i leave.

When i walk into the post office she's at the counter.

'Hi, these are for you.'

She looks at the pink roses, looks at me and says 'Oh No no, i can't!'

'Please, take them' i awkwardly shove them at her  '...and have a great day!'

She's holding them and i turn and leave, and she's smiling and telling the man behind the counter that she doesn't even know me.

I walk to the car, kind of thinking, i maybe should have explained that.

Should have explained that my mum - she loved flowers too.

I'm buying all these other flowers to put on her table at home, at the cemetery where she's buried, at the temple where they pray for her. For eight years i've bought these flowers to watch them die and be taken away a week or so later.

It's only been this year that i thought - i miss the way i'd always buy flowers home for her randomly when i went out, or cut flowers from her garden- I'd arrange them and put them in the kitchen. She would tell me how beautiful they were, she would tell people i made pretty arrangements of flowers.

I miss giving flowers to someone who loved flowers.

So when Vinnie messages me about feeling odd today- we talk about how sometimes cliches Lie.

Time hasn't made things easier.

I tell her it feels like the anaesthetics worn off, and the pains just coming through.

She tells me of guilt at being sad and not being able to stop it. It's been 8 years, why aren't we over this.

We talk about crazy.

We shrug, we sigh. We do all the things we should do, and wait for this day to pass. This month to pass.

I tell her about the lady at the shops- about the roses- about an idea... that maybe we should shift our focus.

Maybe we should remember the good things - the things we miss about her. Maybe we should celebrate it. Re-focus the crazy. Make it good crazy.

Because really She wasn't about that one night.

Maybe next year, instead of going over all the things we've been over... maybe we can buy the white flowers, and then the bright ones... maybe we can find the tired mother in that shopping center, and give her those flowers. Like the grandmother who stops to admire them before posting her letters. Maybe the living can appreciate the day. The gifts. The pretty things.

A few weeks back i have a solemn talk to a boy whose heart is broken, he apologises to me for voicing his thoughts of ending his life. I tell him that his life will always be his choice, and not a reason to be sorry.

I tell him that i think that what people hold inside them- is released to the world the moment they die. In desperation sometimes, the people who love you - will hold onto those pieces. Suicide in all it's sadness- sets free that part of you, and those who live on - they carry those pieces with them. What they do with it... is their choice.

We can only make choices.

In the 8 years since, i've chosen to be busy, i've chosen to be numb. I've chosen guilt.  I've chosen sad.

Then, there are these moments, when i talk to people... when they talk about her.

My friends who remember her as kids, my sisters friends who remember her.

Everyone that remembers her always talks about these things: Her laugh. Her generousity. Her warmth. Her food.

No one really knew the other bits. The bits that haunt us on these anniversaries. The moments where we might have changed something and it all could have been different.

Today, my sister pours out her feelings in text. I do that too... but lately i've been quiet.

There's not much that can be said about it- other than what has already been said.

She says she's tired. Feels weird.

We talk about positivity sometimes. We try to focus on it in our own ways.

I go through the dates in August, just kinda waiting for this one day to come and go. All the birthdays blur into motions of getting cakes and mandatory 'celebrations'.

All it's leading to is the re-run of befores and afters.

It's only occurred to me today... that when it comes to this, we're doing it all wrong.

And while i write this- i get a text, and it's Cat- and she tells me she's thinking of me, of my mum and her laugh and her generousity and her way of welcoming everyone into her family.

I know all our friends remember her like that. She WAS like that.

What she released to the world that night- it wasn't just pain, sorrow and darkness.

For 8 years, that's what i chose to hold onto, i protect her memory like people wouldn't understand it- all the layers of defence and offence and guilt and some kind of warped sense of responsibility for i don't even know what.

Today though, i think... we should let it go. Let it be swallowed up by the 10 thousand other moments, all those people who ever knew her remember.

Dilute it with the light, with her laughter that carried through doorways and into the rooms of our home, the home that somehow became several degrees colder from that one night.

One night, that for 8 years, i've allowed to define the memory of someone who wasn't always sad, who wasn't always lonely and broken and without hope.

I stop by the house one afternoon and the neighbour across the road is in her yard. We chat about the magnolia tree we planted for her the year that we moved to New Zealand. She says to me, Your mum was a beautiful woman, she was always so happy. She loved her garden. Loved her flowers. She'd love that tree.

So, gradually all the memories of others- they remind me- of a mother i'd somehow forgotten.

I think to myself, when i die... is that the memory of her i want released to the world, is that the part i will choose to carry of her.

Or do i choose now, to remember the moments her laughter rang through the house, the big bright smiles she always had for everyone who walked through our doors, the flavours of her brand of kindness - the sort that filled your stomachs and surrounded you with the knowledge that her place- was always the safe place, where you'd be fed, be warm and be loved. Unconditionally.

'Your mum', They'd say to me -'Remember the way she always picked us up and us off.. and she'd wait for you after school for like an hour- while you sat inside and chatted to us.'

Yeah... she was pretty patient.

I miss her.

I miss her too.

As the anaesthetic wears off- you feel pain. When the pain wears off... you just feel... things.

The things... they can be good things. You just have to choose how to remember.

Thank you all for reminding me.

Little Sister, i think we'll be okay. We'll make plans for the crazy. We will be awkward together, and we will practice being kind, and we will be generous, we will laugh, we will learn to cook and we will feed people, we will be warm and we will be- just like her... eventually.