[Day 10] It's been six month since my mother has passed away

I deliberated for a while about whether I should write this post or not, since it's quite personal. On the other hand, we're all concerned by it: one day, our loved ones will die and so do we.

Now it's been six month since my mother has passed away.

I still remember very vividly the morning when my father called me on the phone.

I was under the shower, and my phone wouldn't stop ringing. I immediately had a bad feeling.

When I picked up the phone I asked him if something was wrong and he only answered in a choked voice "yes, mum has died".

It already occurred to me to have had dreams of my mother being dead. But in my dreams it was always different.

There was some sort of a "good bye"-scene with lots of tears, but this here was different.

There was no goodbye, no indication, just nothing. I even was talking to her on the phone the evening before.

She asked me when I would be back to visit her, I said in a week and we said our good byes. Just a normal, trivial phone conversation.

On that day I came to the conclusion, that death can be trivial.

We like to imagine death as being something that announces itself and that we have time to prepare.

But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

My father found her at 7 am on the bathroom-floor. Her night light was still on and there was blood on her forehead. She must have hit her head when she passed out. Her heart just stopped working.

My father called immediately the ambulance and did try to reanimate her. The paramedics arrived already 10 minutes later, but they could only testify her death.

Her body temperature was 32.8°C, meaning that she must have died roughly three or four hours ago.

I slept during that time. My father slept during that time. We didn't have any nightmares or have seen her in our dreams. There was just nothing.

Until that day my father is full of self-reproaches for having slept when my mother passed away.

For me it is still not possible to understand that this is real. I just cannot grasp it. Even six months later.

When I was back home I saw her dead body lying in state in the crematory, but something in me refused to believe that she's dead.

Six month have passed ever since and I still have the feeling that I could just call her and she would pick up the phone, as she always would.

Death is trivial. If there is anything that I have learned over the last six month, then it is this. Death is trivial.

We live, we die.

Carpe diem et memento mori.

I've starting reading Seneca (on the shortness of life) and books about stoicism.

I think reading them has helped me to make sense of my mother's otherwise senseless death.

It taught me to seize the day and to be courageous.

Carpe diem is more than just two words on a fancy tattoo. When you see a loved one die, just like this, without any warning, you will understand the significance of this latin proverbe.

Our society has a tendance to avoid death and to look only on the bright side of life. There's nothing wrong with that. But by doing so, death might catch us off guard and we risk to live a life without direction and without purpose.

My mother's sudden death made me sensitive of these things.

I used to be afraid of death, now I'm not anymore.

The thing that was frightening me the most, was, that my mother would die one day.

Now, as she has passed away, I'm not afraid anymore. I have witnessed with my own eyes death's triviality.

If one day my time has come, so be it! Until then I will seize the day(s).