Today’s episode is a family affair with our guest, my brother, Matthew Mills. Apart from being my brother, Matthew is a trailblazing CEO of the Deliciously Ella business empire, the most loving devoted Dad to his two girls… my heavenly gorgeous nieces Sky and May and husband to our Ella.
But today we are here to talk about the love, the loss and our life beyond the death of our exquisite Mum. On the 24th May 2017, Mum and I hung up the phone from our daily Facetime. My baby was 10 weeks old. If I wasn't’ with Mum, we’d speak on Facetime everyday, because whilst navigating the wonder and strangeness of new motherhood I had returned to the unsanitized, boundaryless intimacy of her love. As a new Mum, I needed her in a way I hadn't since my childhood. As the sun was setting on this perfect early Summers day I got a phone call- it was a police officer, who was with her , in an ambulance being rushed to hospital. She’d suffered two huge seizures and was unconscious. Two days later we were handed her death sentence. An MRI scan revealed an aggressive brain tumour in the left side of her brain. We were told she may have 13 months, she died 11.5 months later on the 12th May 2018, at home in our arms. Her diagnosis, dying and death for us, has been obliterative, but from it, new life grows, our new life, as a family, without her. Learning to live without her has been a moment by moment process of restitching our own edges and understanding how we could be whole again.
But whilst what has happened to our family has been life defining for us, it is far from extraordinary…quite the opposite, it is entirely ordinary. Our experience of loss is a thread that tugs at the universal fabric of them all because whilst the stories of our grief are unique, I believe, the language of them, is universal. So if the world is feeling like a dark or difficult place, join us and let your heart be ignited by the fire of the human spirit.
Created and hosted by Jess Mills
Creative co-production by Bonny Tydeman
Produced by Joel Porter - Dot Dot Dot Productions
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.