Author Matthew Heneghan

It’s a day that always lands like a gut-punch. It doesn’t matter how much logic I arm myself with, or how often I tell myself I’m “ready” — I loosen my grip for a simple second and WHAM! It gets me.

Part of me understands why. Part of me accepts that November 6th is allowed to hurt. And then there’s that other part — the sharp-tongued bastard in the back of my skull.

“It’s been eight years… get over it.”

I try. I really do.

But grief isn’t interested in time limits or tidy milestones. It doesn’t care about celestial calendars or how many years have passed. You don’t “get over” it; you make your way through it. It hangs on like a wet blanket charged in dryer static — clinging to every square inch of your best intentions and morning affirmations.

On November 6th, 2017, my phone rang and my life split in two. My mother had taken her own life. Pills. A bathroom floor, and a soon to follow coroner’s report. A cadence I’d seen a thousand times as paramedic. It hits different when death is dispatched to your door as opposed to you arriving to theirs.

And just like that, memories I didn’t ask for came back in a freefall — being ten years old, listening to her talk about suicide like it was some kind of tragic love story. I never knew what to say? At ten, I didn’t even have words for half the feelings I lived with.

I was thirty-four when I became an orphan. Living in Toronto, Canada’s metropolis, swallowed by concrete, neon, bespoke coffee shops, and strangers, and suddenly the biggest city in the country felt like it shrank to the size of the fist around my throat. Grief does that — it corners you, squeezes, glares at you with apathetic pupils, waits for you to blink only to still be there once your eyes open.

Breathing felt hard. Swallowing, like a chore. Living…impossible. But every time I opened my eyes, there I was — alone, phone on the floor, the date staring up at me like a bad headline from the gazette: November 6th.

She died from an overdose. Prescription pills swallowed on a sea of morning tea and solemnity.

The world around me sounded like a broken country song about loss — bus brakes hissing, a homeless guy yelling at pigeons, and worst of all… laughter from people walking past my window. How could they laugh? Didn’t they know the world was broken? But it wasn’t their world — just mine. What a terrible song.

My life is different now. Years removed from the bustle of big-city life. Ironically, I dream bigger out here among the pines than I ever did when I was bottlenecked on the 401. But when November 6th shows up like a pre-winter wind, my chest still tightens. A small ache slithers along my bones. A quiet reminder of what’s missing. My mum. My complicated, pained, cancer surviving beautiful mum.

I miss her. I always will.

If you take anything from this story — let it be this: call someone you love today. Tell them. Don’t wait for reasons or excuses or emergencies. Love doesn’t need a warning label or tragedy to justify itself. Just call them and tell them that you love them.

When they ask, “What’s wrong?” Say, nothing. Tell them that everything’s just right. We’re here. They’re here. And that’s enough. More than enough.

Take it from me — we only get so many chances at it.

I love you, Mum.

Wherever you are — I hope you know that.