By Kate, whose mum died unexpectedly when Kate was 31
1. Sometimes I want to go back. Not even necessarily back to when she was alive, but within a few days after she died. I was closer to her then. She knew who I was then. I’m a completely different person now and it scares me that she doesn’t know how I’ve changed. Sometimes I feel guilty about that. But it’s okay.
2. The silliest things will make you hurt the worst. About 6 months after my momma died, a nearby grocery store closed. I obsessed over the fact that she didn’t know it closed. We talked about little everyday things. She was interested in silly stuff like that. It brought a whole new level of sadness that I couldn’t tell her that Hy-Vee closed.
3. Relationships are complicated. Wooooo. So complicated. Nobody is all good and nobody is all bad. Our relationship was more complex than 99% of people know. It was tumultuous a lot of times. And when somebody asked how I could be so devastated by her death, I had to come to the realization that I owed nobody an explanation.
4. Don’t hold your tears in. Let. It. All. Out. I know you’re tired of crying, but the faster you let it out, the faster your new normal will become just that.
5. Death happens literally every single day. Our society fails us. How does something that happens thousands of times a day make us feel so alone, isolated, and confused? Talk about death before it happens. Talk about death as it’s happening. Talk about death after it happened. NORMALIZE TALKING ABOUT DEATH.
About Kate Burns
”My name is Kate Burns and I live in Lawrence, Kansas. I was 31 years old when my mom unexpectedly died. I was three hours away when I got the phone call from my sister who quite literally screamed into the phone that doctors were doing chest compressions on our mom. That day changed my life forever. I made it in time to say goodbye, though my mom was essentially brain dead by that point. I signed the ‘do not resuscitate’ paperwork. Twenty minutes later, she was dead. Her death is the most profound thing that I have experienced.”
