Grief's a bit like that. Approaching the outside world every morning, saying, 'No thank you, not today!' and laughing at how silly it all is. Because what else can you do but laugh?
Whenever my grandparents visited and left ours to go home, my nan would roll down the car window, give a royal wave, and call out, 'Bye, Sarah! Bye, Catherine!' and we'd all laugh as if calling us by the wrong names on purpose was the funniest thing in the world.
I would give a kidney for her to call me the wrong name now.
My nan, Doreen Joan, died 129 days ago. She was 82. It would have been her 83rd birthday today. I said when I wrote about her dying during a pandemic that one day I'd write about her - just her and everything she was - so today seems fitting.
Which is an absolute lie, because no day is fitting to write about your glorious, silly, kind, funny, stubborn, childlike, caring, interested-in-anything-and-everything-about-you but now dead nan.