Be careful

Hello (again, if you’re returning!) 👋🏾 I’m Ingrid and I publish Permission. I share words about my world as a grieving woman, in middle age, as a mother of boys, as an Australian living in The Netherlands, and all the nuance (and mess) that goes along with these. To know more you are welcome to check out my About page, and to read more you are welcome to check out Permission.

Be careful.

Photo by Josh Frenette on Unsplash

I say this to my children a lot, likely too much. One aspect of the general parenting advice for my generation is to be specific, give context and consequences when giving directions so the children understand why they’re being given said directive – e.g. please don’t play with the sharp knife as you could stab yourself – obviously a flippant and unhelpful example, but you get the idea. Apparently, ‘be careful’ is too vague, and when used too much, ceases to be effective.

But when I say it too many times a day, and think it many many more, I’m often not thinking of the literal directive. I’m thinking, please be careful so you don’t die.

Extreme, I know.

I don’t think I used to have this in my mind. Before my mum died in 2018, I don’t think I gave too much thought to the possibility of people close to me dying. This is the innocence of ignorance, the luxury of privilege, as I had not lost anyone close to me before losing my mum. The notion of it happening felt far away for me. I knew people who had lost loved ones, but those felt like singular instances, unusual, not the norm.

I was far removed from the reality, which was that we could lose anyone at any moment. And it happens all the time.

I didn’t exactly lose my mum in an unexpected way… or did I? Honestly, I’m not quite sure anymore. I have thought about it so much and felt it so heavily that I don’t have any objectivity with it anymore. My mum had been diagnosed with a disease in 2009 which we had been managing without any indication that it was worsening, and in March 2018, she had been declared free of that disease. Sadly, she wasn’t actually free of the disease, and in August 2018, we were advised that she had stage 4 terminal cancer. What ensued was 10 horrendous weeks, and then she died.

In the first couple of years after losing my mum, I was constantly afraid that someone else I loved would die. And when I say constantly afraid, I mean it consumed me. When I was awake, when I tried to sleep, when my husband left the house, when I dropped my children at nursery, when my husband took my children to the park (this was probably the worst, because all three of my people could die at once), when my sister was feeling unwell, when my girlfriend was travelling – every instance of people going about their lives stoked the fear. Because if my mum could go from being here to not being here, how could I be sure anyone else wouldn’t do the same? Where was my guarantee that anyone would come back safely? And I very much needed that guarantee, because I could not do this again. I could not lose, and grieve, and be ok, again.

With time, with support, with therapy, I was able to manage the fear. I was able to understand that I couldn’t will everyone to be alive forever. I couldn’t control everyone, as much as I would have liked to, so that they all stayed safe always. And I couldn’t carry the weight of absent guarantees that everything would be ok. Sometimes things would be fine, and sometimes they wouldn’t. Sometimes I would have my loved ones around, and sometimes I wouldn’t.

Sometimes people I love will get sick and then get better. And sometimes they won’t get better. Sometimes people I love will do the opposite of get better.

And sometimes I will be ok, and sometimes I won’t.

I still send my husband, my children, my sister, my friends off into the world with a sub-texted ‘be careful’, and I think I always will. And they will probably roll their eyes (if they’re my children) or nod absently (if they’re anyone else) and go about whatever they were going to do, as well they should. And I will always actively hope that they don’t die, and look forward to seeing them again, and I will know that this is me living with grief.

Thank you for reading and, you know, be careful.