On 1st January 2021, my mother died of cancer. This was shortly before the third national lockdown. I was permitted to be with her in hospital, clad in huge quantities of protective gear, but my partner was back at home. Driving back alone on New Year’s Day, I stopped to buy petrol and thought of telling the attendant, apropos of nothing, “my mum’s just died”.
It felt such a mad, surreal thing — how could that have just happened? How was it allowed? As though suddenly I was carrying an experience that could blow everyone else’s out of the water. Yet at the same time I knew it was utterly mundane. Everyone dies, in some cases slowly and painfully. Most of us witness the death of someone we love. What did I know that I didn’t know before?