Songs For Your Mother

upon me like a tidal wave, and I’m washed away in a tsunami of feeling as I register the immensity of the loss. I am not going to see Will again. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back. There will be no more nights out, no more nights in, no more heated discussions, nothing at all. It makes no sense. It’s too soon. It feels like we’ve just started; like we hardly even got going. I know it’s entirely useless, but I am thinking about fate again, and how it twisted and turned to that quiet stretch of Californian highway.
How Will and I had almost never made it out of London.
How Will decided to go home to TSP.
How I got Will to turn around.
How we crashed.
And how Will died.
All that stuff about fate was bullshit. We ended up where we did because of a series of decisions, like a long line of dominoes that went down one at a time. From London to Los Angeles, to Monterey and Santa Cruz, they toppled. Those dominoes kept falling, and they are still falling now.
Later, a doctor turns up and greets my mother like an old friend. She says her name is Dr Anna Ward. She knocks on the door, and I push myself up in bed. She has red hair and is wearing a dark blue blouse and grey trousers. I try to speak again and get the same result. She smiles at me and, like my mother, tells me that it will take time. It’s only then that it strikes me I haven’t been out of bed in months. I look down at my legs. I wiggle my toes and move my legs. Everything feels fine. What will happen if I try to get out of bed? The doctor must be reading my mind.
‘Walking is something else your body is going to have to get used to again. There’s no rush, rest for now,’ she says.
Over the next couple of days, my voice starts to return. I can form sentences. I also get out of bed. I might be as feeble as a new-born foal, but I manage to make it to the en suite toilet with crutches. My legs are rubbery, and my muscles like bags of jelly strapped to sticks. My leg, which broke in two places below the knee, despite having technically healed, hurts like hell. I do, however, what my mother says. I take it slowly. Dr Anna tells me that I’m lucky. My speech shows no signs of slurring, and I can move about, albeit in degrees of pain.
I find out that I have had other visitors while I have slept including, the doctor tells me, someone who has been in at least four times. A tall blonde, my own personal Florence Nightingale, is how she puts it. I wince at this description as it has to be TSP. It’s funny, I didn’t have her down as the type for bedside vigils. Thinking of TSP only elicits a feeling of horrible guilt. I cannot imagine how she is coping, or what the loss of Will has done to her.
I’m glad I saw my mother first, that she was there for me, and that she had all the immediate answers, and sometimes no matter how old you are you just want your mother.
After my mother, my sister Dani visited, and she also made me cry. I have no idea what is going on with me. I am never like this. Only the waterworks keep coming.
‘I’m not sure what I would do if I didn’t have a little brother,’ Dani said.
‘I’m two years younger than you,’ I managed.
Dani asked if I wanted to talk about it, and I shook my head, not yet. The truth was that Will was all I wanted to speak about, but that wasn’t our conversation. That was one for me and TSP.
I’m torn with TSP. I want to see her so we can speak about Will, as more than anything I miss him. It hollows me out to know we will never talk again. At the same time, I don’t want to see TSP, as I worry I will fall to pieces all over again. I also know that she has seen me and sat by my bed as I slept, and I wonder what thoughts went through her head as she looked at me. I imagine the same ones that are going through mine. Why is he here, when Will is dead?

Chapter 6
A week slips by, and I hardly notice it go. I am in and out of twisting painful sleep, and almost every thought is about Will. I cannot get over that I am still here in this world, and Will has gone. I am having difficulty processing this fact, and I don’t know what I will do.
When I am not thinking about Will, I am thinking about TSP and what I will say to her when I finally see her.
My mother is in and out of the hospital, and we spend a lot of time doing what we have not done for a long time and just talking. Some of it is me babbling, and the words come tumbling out. I find myself apologising for being a disappointment and not having sorted my life and career out. My mother bats this off, telling me I am no such thing.
‘No one is a disappointment, and you have plenty of time, and right now you don’t need to rush. Just focus on getting better, and getting out of here,’ she says.
We go on like that. Me talking and my mother doing what I didn’t think she or anyone else could anymore, making me feel safe as I lie in my hospital bed. It is just so comforting to have her around.
A few friends visit en masse and sit around my bed like we’re in a group session. They bring a lot of grapes, which Emily apologies for. The thing is I’m