This week marked 7 years since my mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and June will mark 6 years since she died. If you’ve known me since then, or before then, those numbers are probably just as shocking to you as they are to me.

I read a lot about grief. I don’t often go searching for it – unless I’m craving the comfort of a shared experience – it’s more that commentary on grief is just a channel my brain is tuned in to. There is nothing I can say about loss that hasn’t already been said before, and in a way that’s nice. At the centre of our grief, in the place where it hurts the most, we all feel the same. There is no feeling too outrageous, too complex, that at least one other person doesn’t already share with you. One of my favourite songs by Bleachers is Everybody Lost Somebody, which Jack Antonoff wrote about life after the death of his younger sister. The title speaks for itself, but the song references the fact that almost everyone is carrying around a grief that we can’t see, even as they move forward with their lives.

If you’ve ever had your heart broken, regardless of how long ago it was, you’ll know that you can still take yourself back to the very second that it felt like the greatest pain you would ever feel; even if only for a fleeting moment. It’s the same concept with loss. Despite the seven whole years that have passed since that horrendous weekend, I can still remember the feeling in my chest as soon as I think about it. It is then incomprehensible to me that I have lived seven more years of my life past that moment. My youngest cousin is the age now that I was then, and it breaks my heart because I can see so clearly now how young I was, even though I felt so old already.

If you’ve lost somebody to cancer, or any kind of long illness, you’ll know that grief really begins months before they actually die. You begin to mourn the version of the future that they were once written into, and you already miss the person they were before everything happened. I think the saddest part of all is feeling completely and utterly helpless, and so angry that they don’t get to stay here with you. Grief – the word itself being an umbrella term – is a cloak you wear forever, woven out of love and loss.

I remember I couldn’t understand how everyone else was just walking and talking as if nothing had changed, and there I was feeling like the world had stood still on its axis. It was then that I realised how blissfully unaware of the harshness of life I had been until that moment. All those people that were going through something like this every single day – and I had just continued getting up, brushing my teeth, going to school, laughing with my friends, and eating dinner with my family. Doing the most mundane things with no heavy weight behind my heart. All that hurt that consumed the lives of others, and there I was just living my life.

Of course, that’s the point. We can’t know what it’s like until it happens to us; we can’t expect others to know what it’s like until it happens to them. But somewhere in the middle of all that are the ones of us who do – those of us in that very unfortunate club – and I find comfort knowing that they’re out there too: just getting on with it.

I’ve been thinking about my mum a lot this week. It’s hard to explain because really I’m always thinking of her. In every tiny decision to every major life change, she is the voice in my head. But on the title of this blog post – time and loss – I can’t quite comprehend how 6 years of life, life that she missed, have passed me by. All the conversations, the cups of coffee, the bad haircuts, the fashion trends, the films, the music, all of it, and she never got to see it. How unfair that I get to continue appreciating all the things she loved about life, while she doesn’t get to do it herself. Time often feels like I’m on a train, speeding away from someone I don’t want to leave behind. I worry about forgetting the smaller details of my life with her, and I still daydream about a future with her in it.

Nothing about coping with loss is linear, but it doesn’t mean that life beyond that point is hopeless. I think that’s the most important part of this blog post. I am happy, and my life is filled with fun and love and excitement, on top of all the other shit. Because that’s how life goes, really. I used to fear the future and suddenly I realise I’m living in it.

I wanted to write about this today because I hope it can provide solace to anyone else who has lost a parent or someone close to them. If you have lost someone recently and you can’t imagine a time that you might be happy again, I promise that you will, and that doesn’t take anything away from the piece that will always be missing. In the past 7 years I have had days, or weeks, where I’ve been so sad I could hardly bear it, but I’ve also had days where I’ve laughed so hard that my stomach hurt. Grief and everything else go hand in hand. Time is both our worst enemy and our best friend – and we just have to find a way to exist somewhere in the middle of it all.