Last year, Sophia Graham turned 36 and with that birthday, she started to outlive her mother, who died of cancer the day after her own 36th birthday. Sophia writes about the difficult grief that exists when you outlive a parent, and the ticking time bomb that existed around her own 36th birthday as she was growing up.
Lately, when I go to bed, the sounds of my mothered life chase me into my dreams. The creak of her recliner, the tiny splash of a midnight swim, the hum of a bedtime story, the droning ‘ommm’ of a meditation. My most-loved laugh.
‘I had never believed my mother would die. Her cancer was, to me, just another thing I knew about her.’
My mother died the day after her thirty-sixth birthday, the day before my parents’ 11-year wedding anniversary. Her funeral was on Christmas Eve. I didn’t go.
I had never believed my mother would die. Her cancer was, to me, just another thing I knew about her. I knew she had green eyes, freckled shoulders and eleven tumours. I knew she had been sick for half my life. I knew she loved me. To add her mortality to this list came as a genuine and stupidly sudden surprise.
As the poet instructed, we stopped the clocks. I was eight years, five months and three weeks old. I was unmoored, unmade and unmothered. And when the clocks started again, it seemed to me they were running backwards, counting down the life I had left to live. I really thought I was going to die when I turned 36, too.
I can’t remember who told me her time had come, and why I took this to mean I had the same amount of time, that I would die at the same age. I knew, mostly, that it was absurd. But I also knew the prophecy would come true.
It’s not an uncommon belief, for children who lose a parent when they are young. I wasn’t sad or distressed, just resigned. I didn’t want to die, I just knew I would. Unable to envision a different future, I read the articles, the Reddit threads, The Viscount Who Loved Me.
Sometimes I talked to my counsellor, to my family, my friends. It was not a secret delusion. Everyone was very nice, very kind. They said my feelings were understandable but irrational. They said she would want me to live. They said I pointed the bone at myself, I could put it down.
But I could not imagine myself doing anything she couldn’t, and, in particular, living to be 36 and two days, or even three.
I did it anyway.
I turned 36 in June, and, not being a character in a Victorian melodrama, I did not die. Why would I? There’s nothing wrong with me. I was overseas with my friend, Holly. Because my brain is a calculator permanently trying to solve this singular problem, even with the time difference I knew exactly what time I should have died by in order to not outlive her.
A few minutes before, we went for a swim and I thought to myself, idly, that maybe I should have given Holly precise instructions about how to repatriate my body. But the moment passed and the tide came in and there I was and here I am: alive.
‘I’ve spent my whole life reading by the hall-light, asking for one more chapter.’
Soon after, at night, the ghost of my eight-year-old self began to wake, sit on my chest. To her my prophecy was a promise. She grew impatient. She wanted her mummy.
How do I tell my little ghost I love my mother and I also love this life she made for me? My little ghost is a child, she doesn’t understand. Yet I’ve spent my whole life reading by the hall-light, asking for one more chapter, never willingly leaving a book unfinished. I’ve always wanted to know what happens next.
Every morning now I wake knowing it’s a day Mum never had. She never got to be my age. I am so sad for her. This is a new grief all its own. What do I do with all this time I have stretching ahead of me, what could make up for the fact it was never hers to lose? When she should have been my age, she was instead seven months dead.
‘The worst thing about my mother dying is not that we lost her. The worst thing is she lost herself.’
The worst thing about my mother dying is not that we lost her. The worst thing is she lost herself. She had a life. A lucky life, until it wasn’t. She was so fun. She was in love, she had a family and friends and a career. She swam in the sea and walked barefoot and slept every night in a warm bed. She made up silly songs and wrote letters to faeries and snuck white chocolate in defiance of her cancer-fighting diet.
There were so many things she didn’t see.
I wonder what her hair would look like now, what she would think of the internet, what books she’d be reading, what perfume she’d use, where she would have travelled. I wonder if she would have white chocolate with every meal. I still can’t eat it. I wonder if she would still chant, meditate. I still can’t pray.
I think about this every day. I wish I didn’t.
But I’m trying to believe in a different prophecy. One where I just live. In the mirror I watch myself age; my mother wouldn’t recognise me. Getting old is lucky. I have had seven months of being 36, of walking down paths without her footprints to guide me.
I haven’t done anything big or important with this time, but maybe what I do isn’t so small, either. I slip into the ocean and listen to the bubbles in my ears, I watch birds swooping and I stand under very big trees. Here I am: alive.
When my little ghost wakes, I don’t make her any more promises. I invite her to stay. I tell her stories. She seems content. We have always wanted one more chapter.
Sophia is taking part in Move Your Butt 2025, which is a challenge to walk or run 100km this February in honour of the 100 Kiwis who die from bowel cancer every month. You can donate to her fundraise here.
