Rising Reef

RISING REEF:

Written as a letter from Reef to her mum.

Dear Mummy,

I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe that’s the hardest part - trying to put words to a grief so loud it’s swallowed my voice for months.

Do you remember how I never liked alcohol? How I used to joke that I was “the boring one,” always with a ginger beer in hand? I liked being clear, in control. I liked knowing I could drive us home safe. I never understood how people used it as an escape.

Until the day you looked me in the eye and didn’t know who I was.

You’d always called me your anchor. But that day, Mum, something snapped inside me. I saw the confusion flicker in your beautiful, brown eyes, and I wasn’t your daughter anymore. I was just… a face. A stranger.

“You look like someone I used to love,” you whispered, gripping my hand, trembling. “I just can’t remember your name.”

And that was it.

That night, I drank my first full glass of wine. Then another. Then another. I told myself it helped me sleep, but really, it helped me forget.

The diagnosis came soon after. Vascular dementia. I felt the air leave my lungs when the doctor said it. It sounded so cold. So final.

I moved back into the house, the one you’d filled with waiata and the smell of roast chicken on Sundays. I set up my little desk in the corner of the living room, half-heartedly working while you faded before my eyes. You stopped humming in the kitchen. You stopped smiling at birds. Some days, you didn’t speak at all.

Every time you screamed in fear or cried because you couldn’t remember how to make tea, I poured another drink.

At first, it was just evenings. Then, it was midday. Then, it was just… whenever. I started to live in a haze. The bottles piled up. I told myself I was coping. That I was strong.

But I wasn’t strong, was I, Mum? I was drowning.

The worst part was watching you vanish by degrees. The woman who stayed up with me when I had nightmares. The woman who stitched my school uniforms by hand. Who whispered prayers for me at night. Who held me through my first heartbreak.

You were everything. And I watched you fade.

When they moved you into care after your fall, I felt like I was handing you over to the inevitable. I visited every single day. I sat with you. I read aloud. I played you your favourite hymns, even when you stared through me.

Sometimes, I’d leave the hospital and cry in the car, then pour wine into a takeaway coffee cup and drink it in the carpark. I’d chew gum so the nurses wouldn’t smell it on me.

Then came that early morning. Quiet. Still. The nurse called and said you’d gone.

I held your hand. It was already cold. I waited for the tears, the screaming, the breakdown. But nothing came.

I just drove home. And opened a bottle of whiskey.

Grief, they say, is like the ocean. But mine was like a black river - slow, suffocating, constant. Days passed. Then weeks. I forgot how to answer the phone. Forgot to shower. The house became a tomb. Friends reached out, then gave up. My inbox filled, then faded.

Once, I found the front door wide open and had no memory of the night before. Another time, I vomited blood.

But it was the mirror that finally did it. I saw myself - pale, hollow, lifeless. Wearing your old cardigan like a shroud. I didn’t even look like me. I looked like someone barely hanging on.

I dropped to my knees in the hallway and screamed. A real, raw, guttural scream. And then, through the sobs, I whispered, What are you doing, Reef?

I didn’t know. But I knew I couldn’t do it anymore.

Three days later, I checked into a clinic in Auckland. I didn’t tell anyone. I packed a bag, locked the door, and left.

Mum, the first week was brutal. Tremors, sweats, nightmares of you lost in hospital corridors calling my name. But for the first time in months, I wasn’t alone. There were others like me - haunted, hurting, healing.

The counsellor, Moana, she said something that cracked me open. She said, “You’re not broken. You’re grieving. And grief needs space - not alcohol.”

And I cried. Really cried. For the first time. For you. For me. For the years I lost numbing the pain.

I stayed. Even when I wanted to run. I stayed.

I started writing again. Journaling. Reflecting. And finally, one night, I wrote this letter. To you.

Mum, I miss you more than I ever thought I could survive. But I’m still here. And I’m going to make you proud.

I sold the house. Too many ghosts.

I moved to Wellington, by the sea. I found a little flat with white curtains and a crooked bookshelf. I started volunteering at a dementia support centre. Then they hired me - now I run support groups for people like me. Carers, daughters, sons, partners. I tell them your story. Our story. I tell them it’s okay to break.

Sometimes I laugh again. Sometimes, I even dance. I started surfing - can you believe that? I, who almost drowned in grief, now ride the waves you used to love watching from the beach.

I keep your photo by my bed. The one of you in the pōhutukawa dress, smiling like sunshine.

I haven’t had a drink since the day I walked into that clinic.

And when people ask me what saved me, I always say the same thing:

“I let myself grieve. Then I let myself grow.”

Mum, I’ll always carry you with me. You were the roots beneath me, the hands that steadied me, the light that stayed even when you couldn’t remember who I was.

Now, I remember for both of us.

Love always Reef xx