Travel with Per

I lost both my parents in the same year.
Mum in January 2024. Dad in December 2024 just before Christmas.

And nothing has been the same since. Grief doesn’t care about your plans. It doesn’t check your calendar or wait for a “convenient time.”

It barges in when you’re standing in the middle of the supermarket, staring blankly at a row of tinned tomatoes.  Or when you’re baking on a Sunday morning and suddenly need to ask Mum if the cake looks ok. It sneaks up when something breaks in the house and your first instinct is to call Dad – because he always just knew how to fix things.

But now… there’s no one on the other end of the line. They say time heals. Maybe. But right now, it mostly just softens the edges enough to let you breathe between the waves.

Living away from home for so long, I always knew there was distance – physical, sure, but emotional too. Life kind of stretches between visits, doesn’t it? You think you’ll call tomorrow. You think you’ll get back for Easter. You think there’s time. I used to think I had time. Time to visit, time to call, time to ask all the questions you always assume there’ll be another day for.

And then there’s not.

They were gone.
First Mum. Then Dad.
The two people who made me – really made me – gone in the space of a year.

That sort of loss doesn’t come with an instruction manual. Grief is a weird one. It doesn’t arrive politely. It crashes in, arms flapping, breaking your furniture and eating all the biscuits. Then it sits with you in the quiet. Sometimes it brings memories. Sometimes just a dull ache.

Some days I function like nothing happened. Go to the gym. Answer emails. Pay bills. Just vibes, right?But then something small happens. A whiff of Mum’s perfume on a stranger. A rerun of Dad’s favourite football game. A familiar song from the 80s on the radio. And suddenly I’m spiralling –  gasping for air in the middle of an ordinary day, like my chest forgot how to be a ribcage and just collapsed in on itself.

I miss them in the big, obvious ways – birthdays, holidays, all that – but it’s the small moments that cut the deepest. The nothing-y ones. Like seeing something funny and wanting to tell mum.
Or wondering what wine Dad would have picked up from Waitrose.
Or catching myself reaching for the phone just to say “hi” – and realising no one is there to answer anymore.

And yes, they both had a good run. No drama, no long drawn-out battles. Peaceful, in the end. But tell that to the part of me still screaming into the void. The part that wants one more Christmas. One more phone call. One more hug where you don’t say much – just know that you’re safe, and loved, and home.

Losing them like that – boom, boom – put everything in perspective. All the stuff I thought mattered?
Doesn’t. All the stuff I thought could wait?
Can’t.

Because life’s not a dress rehearsal. Life is NOW.
And “later” is a lie we tell ourselves so we can keep putting off the things that really matter.

So here’s what I’ve learnt, painful as it is:

Call the people you love.
Wear the ridiculous shirt.
Take the trip.
Eat the cake.
Dance like an idiot.
Ask the questions.
Say the things.

Because it can all change in a blink; we don’t get forever. We get now. And when it does change, you’ll want to know you didn’t hold back.

I’m still figuring it out – how to live with the silence. How to carry on without the ones who carried me.
Some days I get it right. Others, not so much.
But I’m trying.

I’ll keep baking.
Keep travelling.
Keep laughing when I can – crying when I need.
Keep remembering them in the quiet, ordinary thing

Because that is where love lives now.
In the memories.
In me.

And in the life I still have left to live. Make it count.

No regrets. Just love. 

– Per x