Skip to content
cropped-thebearandthewhaleblogbanner1230x1082.jpg

Writing by Larissa Patton

  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • On life
  • Farm life
  • Kids
  • Prematurity
  • Contact

Grief

Expected and unexpected grief triggers

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Larissa

Dear Mum, I was just thinking back to this day last year when three of your girlfriends arrived at your house with morning tea, announcing that they hadn’t missed one of your birthdays yet.  I took candid photos of you all laughing so hard that each of you had to pull a tissue from your … Continue reading Expected and unexpected grief triggers

Posted in GriefTagged on lifeLeave a comment

Another first down

Posted on May 13, 2019May 13, 2019 by Larissa

Tough day at the office. Really tough. Mother’s Day started beautifully. I lay in bed listening to pancakes being made in the kitchen. Elsie and Maeve had brought in a colourful menu full of options and I ticked pancakes because kids like pancakes and I waited in bed because kids like serving breakfast in bed … Continue reading Another first down

Posted in GriefTagged on lifeLeave a comment

Perhaps it was a sign

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Larissa

We teach our kids not to wipe their runny noses on their sleeves. But if you’re at the cemetery visiting your mum’s grave to see the headstone for the first time and you don’t have a tissue, then it’s permitted. Would it be ‘her’ headstone instead of ‘the’ headstone? I would rather we were debating … Continue reading Perhaps it was a sign

Posted in Grief, On lifeTagged on life6 Comments

Here I am on Facebook

Here I am on Facebook

And on Instagram

On the side of the road near our house, I found not one, but two of these same empty cigarette packets. Elsie’s (pictured right) doppelgänger? #thebearandthewhale #prem #prematurebaby #doppleganger #smokingharmsunbornbabies #bytheway #idontsmoke
Blog update - The first year I woke this morning at the same time that Mum took her last breath 12 months ago. I remember every detail about that moment. In fact, I can recall, hour by hour, every detail of the two days leading up to it. Apparently, the cortisol released by our bodies in times of stress embeds memory very deeply in our brains. In the months after Mum’s death, that was actually a challenge. But here’s something interesting. I said to my friend last week that this was going to be a big week. I was about to refer to the end of the financial year and the invoices that I still needed to send, find or pay. ‘It will be,’ she said. ‘You have your Mum’s anniversary.’ I hadn’t thought about that. I rang Dad on the way home and we racked our brains to remember the date. I ran through the events over those two days, and as we sat in our vehicles, he spraying fencelines and me in our driveway where I’d pulled up, we agreed it must have been the 28th. Another girlfriend texted last night, ‘Lunch tomorrow?’, and, since she thinks of everything, it made me realise it must have been the 27th. It was. Was I so busy living life that I hadn’t thought of it being a year? No. Was I still picking myself up after crawling through the ‘firsts’? Perhaps. Or was it, as Dad and I agreed on the phone, that it was not a date we wanted to particularly acknowledge. We want to acknowledge and remember the good times. There were so many. Seventy-one for Mum. Fifty-one for Dad. Forty-four for me. For us, as we navigate this new landscape, we want to carry with us the happy times. That’s not to say we’re not sad. That we don’t bawl easily or often. Or that we loved Mum any less just because we don’t want to mark the day she died. For me, 12 months indicates the end of the firsts. I didn’t think they’d be hard. People told me they’d be hard. They were hard. (Post continues in Comments)
27 years of bubbles and laughs #thatslivin #thebearandthewhale @patricia_robs_ @lysandrat #missyouvick
Today’s workmates. #thebearandthewhale #farmlife #onlyinstraya #canfilmsteerandnothitthefence #clever
Teach your baby to self-settle, they said. #thebearandthewhale #cutestthingever #evenifyouhatecats #unlessyoudonthaveaheart #kittensofinsta
Dear Mum, I was just thinking back to this day last year when three of your girlfriends arrived at your house with morning tea, announcing that they hadn’t missed one of your birthdays yet. I took candid photos of you all laughing so hard that each of you had to pull a tissue from your sleeve or bra and hold it to your eyes. When they drove away, you stood on the deck waving. And I saw that you were crying. ‘I wonder if I’ll ever see them again,’ you said. You didn’t. But they loved you so much, Mum, and I bet they miss you as much as we do. I’m glad you got to spend your last birthday with them. And it’s only right now, as I’m writing this, that I don’t think I ever saw you cry at any other time during your illness. Did you do that to protect me, Mum? I did my best not to cry in front of you, too. Until the morning you told me that you’d cleaned Dad’s good shoes ready for your funeral. I’d read about the Ring Theory where the person experiencing the bad thing is in the middle ring, like the bullseye of a target. And the larger rings around that person represent, first, significant others, then true friends, casual friends and in the outermost ring, members of the larger community. I knew that if I was talking to someone in a ring smaller than mine, in this case, yours, the goal was to provide comfort and support. If I wanted to unload about how crap the situation was, I had to turn to someone within my ring or in a larger one. That was hard, Mum. You’ve always been in my ring. It was you I always cried to. And it was you I wanted to cry to. But I knew that the situation was crap in every ring and you had enough going on in yours. How on earth could I ask you to comfort me? I tried not to cry that morning, to hide my tears, but I was kneeling in front of your armchair with my hand on your knee, and you saw them. ‘Don’t cry,’ you said. It breaks my heart again no to think of the emotions bound up in those tears and your comment. We were lucky, Mum, that the ring around yours, the significant others, was so crowded that we held each other standing. We still do that. (Blog post continues in Comments)

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,066 other followers

WordPress.com.
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
Cancel