I'm sad to hear your news, Sabine.

I lost my Mum 3 years ago and the "Mum-shaped hole" (thanks for that, Sapper82!) is still there. I found that just after she went I was busy and still in the initial stages of shock. People around me were asking whether I was all right and whether I needed anything, but the period from a few weeks after until almost a year after, other people think you should be over it. That was when I really started to miss my Mum, because of our regular phone conversations and I'd still be saving up little stories to tell her, and when I saw things in shops and thought "Mum would like that, I'll buy it for her" and then had to do a double-take because then I remembered she was gone.   Someone said that initially you think that maybe she's just away on a short trip and that she'll be back and then you realise that she won't be back here at all - in this life.

But she isn't gone. I still feel her presence.

The poem that Shanghaiceltic quoted is the same one that Mum always loved and that we read out at her funeral. The other one is about waving goodbye to the ship disapppearing over the horizon - from our perspective - but reappearing on the horizon and being greeted from another perspective.

Look after yourself, cherish the memories, be happy that you could be with her the night before, and draw your family close and share your love of your Mum and of each other.

I'll light some candles for you all here in Australia.

Helen