It was mid-afternoon in Kentucky, blisteringly hot, and I remember having a weird gut feeling – three weeks into a stateside tour of Macbeth – that I wouldn’t need to do the show that night. I remember the whole day quite well: the old man dripping with sweat in John James Aubodon State Park; the disgustingly jammy Amish fruit pies; the carpeted bathroom with the automatic bidet. Mostly, I remember looking down at my phone to a million missed calls. From then on, everything unfolded in one slow, hazy motion.

In a blink, I’m sitting alone on the train back to Hitchin, my black matriculation dress folded into a bag of weekend crap. When I arrive home, the house is quiet. I watch Nativity on the TV and, after a rudimentary food shop, tend to a bubbling pot of chicken stew. Later, I eat dinner candlelit while sipping from a large glass of fancy pinot; such are the joys of home ownership.

“For a moment, I’m weightless; the next, completely submerged”

My mum and I discussed her funeral a lot. I said I’d buy a fancy dress with the inheritance, and we joked about stiletto heels, mourning veils, and elbow-length black gloves. She told me what songs to play, and I insisted on it being held far away from the Vale crematorium, where we’d seen off my dad, grandparents, and assorted great aunts. “I don’t mind whatever you do,” she insisted. “When it comes, that day is all about you”.

What she didn’t tell me was how exhausting grief would be, and how normal things can weigh you down. It’s hard to explain how I’m feeling; it’s like I hover on an extended inhale, a big wave that carries me through my day-to-day life. For a moment, I’m weightless; the next, completely submerged. I was setting a print edition of Varsity when Hole’s ‘Malibu’ came on, a song I used to play driving back from the hospital, beating my fists against the wheel and sobbing. It’s these kinds of things that catch me off-guard, the memories yet unrecalled. Before my nervous system nullifies the threat, they snag.

“There is nowhere I would rather be than Cambridge”

What I find myself repeating to friend after friend is that it hasn’t destroyed me. Actually, I find the notion that I am somehow irrevocably changed absurd; I woke up the day after she died just the same as I had the day before, resolutely myself. After that call in Kentucky, my friends drove me eight hours across several states for a last-minute flight from Pittsburgh. By the time I landed in Heathrow, I’d been awake for almost 28 hours, and the first thing I did after collecting my baggage and hugging my friend’s parents was message my DOS. “Please,” I begged, “don’t make me intermit”. There is nowhere I would rather be than Cambridge, back with friends who would drive all night for me to reach the airport, and who’d take a cross-county coach if it meant they could sit with me at the wake.

So I plod through supervisions and seminars. In a lecture on modern tragedy I pick the funeral flowers from a selection sent by my aunt. Amidst discussions of Orestes’ matricide, I scroll through pictures of coffins and click on templates for the order of service. When Santander block the life insurance from coming through to my card, I hang on the line with their fraud team from the English Faculty foyer.

Simple, silly things now astound me: the fact I can plug my phone in to charge before bed – reach out, grab it, stick the plug in the socket; all quite gruelling but I do it every night regardless. People confuse themselves by calling me ‘strong’ when, every morning, I make the same tiny decisions that each of us do: I shake off the duvet, I brush my teeth. In doing so, I participate in the basic rituals that compose all of our waking lives. It’s hardly revolutionary.

“I took a BeReal in the funeral car, and spent the drive playing I Spy with a friend”

Mostly, I seek comfort in the words of others. I’ve read The Year of Magical Thinking more than I can count, but I now consult it like a sacred text. Together, Joan and I yearn for the satisfaction of closure, and sit hand-in-hand as we wait for the pin to drop. I conclude that her grief is far worse than mine; I have a whole life ahead of me, and, unlike losing a husband or child, it is right and just that our parents should die before us. Still, I can’t claim to be wholly rational: like a toddler rattling the bars of her crib, most nights I ask where my mummy has gone, and plead for her to come back.

The funeral went off without a hitch. I took a BeReal in the funeral car, and spent the drive playing I Spy with a friend. In honesty, I laughed more than I cried. For the duration of the service, I was distracted by my rumbling stomach – presuming, I suppose, that I’d be surrounded by people, nobody came by that morning to ensure I ate. Stripped of my dignity, I scoffed sausage rolls at the wake while strangers clutched my face and called me “magic”. The love was as abundant as it was overwhelming.

I am, to many eyes, a monstrous apparition. I embody many people’s greatest fear, and I suppose there’s worry that my bad luck will rub off. I don’t blame them – I used to watch Children in Need and think mine to be the worst conceivable fate. But it’s really not so bad. Like every day before, I’ll wake up tomorrow and put one foot in front of the other. I’ll partake in my little rituals. And those tiny moments of joy and certainty – the waking, the coffee, the laughter – will somehow be enough. It’s what makes it all worthwhile. It’s why we keep plodding on, and it’s how we stay alive.