Today, 23rd March 2025, marks two years since my mum left this plane of existence. Two years since I last heard her voice, saw her smile, or felt the warmth of her unwavering love in the physical world. The first year after her departure was a blur of pain, confusion, and self-destruction. My drinking spiralled beyond anything I could pretend to control, dragging me into the deepest, darkest pit I had ever known. I had lost not just my mum but myself entirely. It wasn’t until I reached what I believed was the point of no return that I found my way to Alcoholics Anonymous—found my way back to life.
A year ago, on the first anniversary of her passing, I was still in the fragile early days of my recovery. The grief felt raw and unrelenting. My mum had always been my safe place, my refuge when everything else collapsed, as it so often did. She was the one person who never fully gave up on me, who saw the light in me even when I couldn’t see it myself. Without her, I felt like I was adrift in an endless storm. But something profound has changed since then. Today, I do not feel lost. I feel her presence in every breath, every quiet moment, every act of love and kindness that fills my life.
This past week has been one of mixed emotions. Not the aching longing for her to still be here, nor regret or sadness, but a quiet apprehension—an underlying fear that when today arrived, all the feelings I thought I had made peace with would come crashing down on me. But then, yesterday happened.
Yesterday, I attended the five-year anniversary celebration of the Sunrise Step 11 Zoom meeting—a meeting that has been my spiritual anchor since I surrendered to this path of recovery. The people in that meeting, my Sunrise family, have been there for me every morning, walking alongside me on this journey. Most of them, I had never met in person—until yesterday. And what a day it was.
I have never in my life experienced so much love in a single day. I have never shared so many meaningful, heartfelt embraces. It was a day of connection, of gratitude, of overwhelming warmth. It reminded me of something that has become clearer with time: love doesn’t disappear when someone leaves this world. It transforms, expands, and finds new ways to fill our hearts.
With my heart overflowing from yesterday’s love, today I am not mourning my mum—I am celebrating her. I used to think that without her physical presence, I had lost her completely. But now I understand that she is with me more than ever. I don’t need to drive to her house or pick up the phone to hear her voice. All I have to do is sit quietly, pause, and speak to her. The answers come—not just from her many journals and the pages of her meticulously annotated Bible, but from moments like yesterday, from the undeniable feeling that her love has been guiding me along the right path since the day I surrendered.
She may not have seen me sober in my adult life, but when my time comes, when my soul reunites with hers in the vast expanse of the universe, it will be a sober soul. And I think she’d be proud of that.
Love’s cosmic Embrace
Two years, the breath stilled.
March twenty-third, a marker, yet no mark.
A voice, a smile, warmth, vanished.
Then, the dark river, the spiralling down.
Self undone, a hollow echo.
The pit, the bottom, a strange turning.
AA, a whisper of light, a path found.
One year past, the wound raw, the storm unending.
Mum, the refuge, the unseen light, gone.
Adrift, a soul untethered.
But change, a silent shift.
Presence, not form, in every breath.
Love's echo, a quiet knowing.
Apprehension, a fear of the old pain,
Yet, yesterday dawned.
Sunrise Step 11, a gathering of souls.
A Zoom family, faces made real.
Love, a flood, embraces deep,
Connection, gratitude, warmth unbound.
Love, transformed, not lost.
Today, not mourning, but celebration.
Mum, not gone, but woven within.
No journey needed, no phone to lift.
Silence, a pause, a speaking heart.
Answers, not just in ink, but in moments.
Her journals, her Bible, whispers of guidance.
Yesterday's love, a testament, a sign.
The path, revealed, since surrender began.
She, unseen, yet ever guiding.
Sober, a souls quiet promise.
A reunion, in the vastness, a homecoming.
And she, in that boundless space,
Would know, and be at peace.
