It's My Birthday and I'll Cry If I want To.

The year of firsts has begun. The first Halloween on Sunday, when small my children only ever trick or treated Nanna. As they grew older she was always first on their ever growing doorknock list.

And today. Today is the first of my birthdays without my mother. Today I woke with tears on my cheeks. Today I want to hide under the covers and pretend it is not happening. I want to stop the world from spinning. I want my mum. And I cannot change any of it, for we all know there is no stopping the year of firsts no matter how much we wish it to be otherwise.

I think W.H. Auden summed it up best in his second version of

Funeral Blues: Stop All The Clocks.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A motherless