Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
11 September 2025
Dear Diary,
The anniversary of Mother’s death has hit me harder than I thought it would. I feel like there’s no right way to mourn. I feel like I should be crying hysterically, but nothing comes. And then I feel guilt-ridden and awful. How terrible a person must I be, not to miss Mother at all? She wasn’t perfect, but she tried her best, didn’t she?
I didn’t even tell Noah about the anniversary, I still didn’t want to address it, didn’t want her to taint this new life that I have with memories of her. But I guess somehow he found out about it– I have no clue how. And so in the morning, he had a bouquet of flowers ready and he told me he was taking me to the church where she is buried to lay them down.
Honestly, I got a bit upset. I felt it was invasive. He doesn’t understand my relationship with her or the conflicted feelings I still have about her, and I didn’t want to spend the whole day thinking about her when for so much of my childhood I was forced to put her first. I wanted to put Claire first today, to put Mother on the back burner of my mind. Just spend a normal, boring day with my fiancé.
Noah told me he thought this attitude was unhealthy, that I needed to process her death properly. And even if I didn’t feel genuinely mournful, we could lay the flowers together and then leave and get lunch somewhere. I kicked up a fuss, said I didn’t want to go and that he had no business pressuring me into it. He conceded this was true and apologised. I sat on the bed sulking for about ten minutes before I told him he was probably right, I should go and make my peace and that I appreciated his thoughtfulness.
He drove me to the church where I’d told him she was buried, a ramshackle field of gravestones outside a crumbling church isolated amidst endless residential south-east London streets. I hadn’t visited the grave since her funeral, and as we walked past all the others with flowers and messages laid on them, I felt a fresh stab of guilt.
When we got to the gravestone, we stood in silence and I stared down at it, reading the words again and again and again. Trina Arundale 1971–2024 Loving mother, friend and angel
I didn’t choose those words. The guys at the funeral parlour did. I’d decided I couldn’t care less what the tombstone said. But as I read it over and over and thought about how her remains were somewhere underneath, rotting away and feeding the earth, I began to sob.
I hunched over, wailing, the flowers beside me and Noah silently rubbing my back.
He waited in silence until I was finished, then took my hand and held it all the way back to the car.
When we got in, he’d told me he was proud of me.
I’m still not sure if I was crying from rage or sadness.
Claire