Mum died just before Christmas in 2002. A few months later, a show called Six Feet Under began airing. I watched the Fisher family compulsively for the next five years; the trajectory of their acerbically rendered grief following my own. The last scene of that show still leaves me breathless (its number 7 on the definitive list of awesome).

I have often tried to imagine what Mum was thinking in the last moments she occupied her body. She died in her sleep and I wonder if she had a moment of knowing, if she woke up or if she dreamed. What did she see?  Was there a tunnel and a white light, a reunion with her own mother who died at the age I am now. And then what? What do our souls do for eternity? Do we get a do-over as another human? Can we chose to be a horse grazing in a paddock?

I sometimes wonder about my own last day.

I imagine myself as an old woman; walking around the garden breathing in the sunshine, a couple of cats at my feet. The house is in the countryside with trees and fields everywhere. I walk through a home full of photos and books and smile at all the people I have loved, who loved me. Whenever I think of this, I am alone and so I think it likely that Ash goes before me, but I sense that I still have out-loud conversations with him.

There is time for sitting in my favourite chair and remembering: the years I spent sleep-walking through life, and the shuddering heart-shaking wake-ups. The 87 days of queuing.  Fifteen hours signing my name. Two days of tying shoelaces. Five weeks sitting around boardroom tables wondering how the hell I got there, fifty-one days deciding what to wear, nine days downloading software. Six years writing. One hundred and fourteen days crying. Three months folding laundry. Forty-six minutes of pure joy.

I think about my body shutting down, the possible pain and despair that might bring; the utter inability of my human brain to conceive of an afterlife and how that might be arranged.

I always come back to being alive now: to appreciate and cherish this very miraculous existence, and to take it all for granted; to waste time and put decisions off and to forget to keep a tally of those utterly perfect moments.

I have been dreaming about Mum lately. In the past,  I dreamt that she came back but had lost her memory or couldn’t find me.  Or I couldn’t save her. And there were the mash-ups where she was super-imposed into events that happened after her death.  But the recent dreams are different; like a Renoir painting, they are all milky light and impressionistically vague. I am left with a sense of peace.  I think she has gone somewhere else from where she has been this last decade. I can’t really explain it.

I have always felt intuitively that I will live a long life. Several shamans and psychics in different countries have affirmed this (these are the people one turns to for the low-down on such matters).

Given that most of my wardrobe options are designed to see me well into old ladyhood, I am kind of banking on it.

‘When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time – the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes – when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever – there comes another day, and another specifically missing part’ ~ A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving

Small Medicine Wheel: new beginning ~ promising start ~ change ~ success ~ outgoing energy ~ completed cycle ~ gratitude ~ a new phase begins

It was ten years ago today that my beloved Mum died.

This fact is a little crazy – ten whole years. Sometimes I feel her so close its like she is in the room; other times I miss her with a fierce intensity and my grief is so raw, it overwhelms me.

In the build up to today, I have found myself thinking a lot about the gift of Mum’s death.

Because this has been a story of loss and abandonment, but it is also a tale of being broken open. When Mum died, an entire universe of emotion was was suddenly brilliantly alive in me; empathy, sadness, vulnerability, strength all woke up and become accessible. From this grief I have made deep and immediate connections with others – especially my fellow motherless daughters.

And because I was so profoundly loved by Mum for 29 years, I know that unconditional love is fertilizer for our little souls; it is essential for every child to experience this. Especially children walking around in grown-up bodies.

I think there was a spark of something that was ignited in me when she left, and that something has evolved with me. And really, how could it not? In the 3653 days since she died, every one of the billions of cells in my body has been replaced several times over. There is not one part of me that exists now, that was alive then (how insanely amazing is that?!) I suspect that I am (we are) held together by the only constant in the entire universe: love.

In the magical, synchronistic way the universe works, today is also the last day of my coaching training. And this is the last post at the magical mystery tour.

After a decade of loss and growth, a big year of change and learning, and few months of playing with words and fonts (they matter so crazily much), next week all the zero’s and one’s will be transmogrifying onto my new corner of the interwebs. I seriously cannot wait to show you around my new digs. Can. Not. Wait.

And I hope that if Mum has free wi-fi, she reads this and knows all is well.