Spent the day listening to old David Bowie and Elvis Costello, Talking Heads and the Smiths, the Models, the Divinyls, Tears for Fears and Bryan Ferry. It’s a lovely sunny, quiet afternoon otherwise, I’m squirreling away in the rooms of my mother’s house going about the now regular, not altogether happy task of sorting through her things: this thing we keep, this thing we give away, and that gets thrown out. It’s a ruthless business requiring a ruthless attitude. Still, I stop more than I should, hesitating over old photos, or finding my mind cast back years to memories long forgotten, insignificant moments that now, here, doing this business and with the shaky knowledge that I’ll never see mum again, now loom large.

I don’t know if I can say it enough: I find it hard to believe that mum is gone. I know it, consciously, but it seems too bizarre to accept without question. Perhaps that makes this job harder. It feels intrusive, invasive, to be tipping her home upside down, to dismantle all of the things she put together over a lifetime. And why it feels so shocking when people fight over what remains. I’ll never forget this. I don’t doubt that there is a part of me that will be forever changed now.