By Jude Evans, whose mum died from lung cancer in 2015
1. It's possible to think of someone every single day
I'd heard this said, but never believed it. Over four years since my mum's death and there isn't a day she's not been in my thoughts, conversations or journaling. It really is possible.
Jude with her mum (Heather) in Chawton - a literary pilgrimage
2. Grief is mercurial
There's really no way of charting it. It comes on expected days and often times unexpected - a family celebration or a walk to the high street. Sometimes it's sharp and fierce, other times it's quiet and unassuming, and then there's everything in between.
3. It's okay to love the things we loved together
This has been my biggest struggle, to come back to the things we loved together, the things that she gifted to me - books, theatre, dance, music, creative writing. In the first couple of years I severed these things from my life (all but movement and running) because of deep pain and a kind of self-punishment or guilt. I know now it's okay to love them with both our loves combined.
4. Handwriting is more precious than I could have ever imagined
Tracing her hand on scraps of paper I've found, in an unfinished journal she left for me and in the notes she left for her all her children, it's a huge way that I feel her here with me. The small things are sometimes the biggest things.
5. The presence of dead loved ones can be found all around the world
Home or abroad, the dead are all around. Maybe that sounds morbid, maybe it doesn't. I've felt my mum's presence in our books at home through to the mountains of North Carolina. I choose to believe that our loved ones are everywhere.
Jude’s mum in the Lake District
The book Jude and her mum read together in Jude’s early teens and which Jude read to her as she was dying
About Jude Evans
In July 2015 Jude's mother died from terminal, stage four lung cancer. Jude was 26 and her brother was 23. Her mother was her best friend, theatre buddy and confidante. Jude left behind her pursuit of a career in theatre and turned to teaching movement. She is now a Movement Teacher who believes in the remarkable power of the body to help us navigate grief and other life challenges through somatics, functional movement, dance, yoga and others. She travels far and wide, encouraged by words her mum left her in a journal. She reads voraciously, enjoys lone theatre-going and loves to boogy. She started her #bookstagram feed and blog, The Literary Land, in memory of her mum.
