Two years ago, on the 14 July 2024, England lost the UEFA Euros final against Spain, their two goals a goal better than England’s one. Gary Lineker closed the broadcast; staring down the camera lens and into our living room, like millions of living rooms, pubs, and bedrooms across the country; intoned that ‘A nation mourns’.

That morning, my mum, having told my dad to not be so ‘stupid. Of course, I don’t need a f’ing wheelchair’ collapsed as she walked up to the entrance reception of Darenth Valley Hospital. She did not wake up.

So no… not really Gary.

There is very little of that day that I remember, although those moments that I do recall, when summoned, live as vividly in my mind as if they were yesterday. Hannah bursting into my room to tell me dad was on the phone, and her being halfway out the door to start the car before I’d even put the phone to my ear. The fear and anger at every red light as I was driven through London. Telling Orla what had happened, the gasping sound of her breath as she instantly came to when she heard the tone in which I managed to whisper her name.

The memories manifest themselves physically too: the sucker punch pain in my stomach as I ran past Steph demanding to know which ward to head to knowing already, I think, that I was too late- the stabbing pain as she told me how sorry she was. When I think about placing my hand on mum, I can still feel the coldness of her arm across my hand where I grasped her for the last time.

There are some things I don’t remember. I don’t recall messaging my friends to tell them, and I quote, ‘I’m really sorry lads but mum has died this morning. I don’t think I’m gonna make it to the pub this afternoon for the match.’ I don’t remember spending the afternoon batch cooking. I don’t remember walking down to Sainsburys to buy a new cycle helmet.

Grief is one Hell of a drug and there are stretches of the past two years that are now, at most, a blur. So much so that I can’t quite believe it has been two years since mum left us. There have been times good and bad in those two years. For the past eight months, I have travelled the World- I have seen incredible places, met beautiful people, witnessed unbelievable batting collapses, drank copious amounts of beer with friends new and old. I’ve been lucky enough to get to know my dad as more a best friend than father.

Charlton got promoted to the Championship- a day that was bittersweet for mum’s not being there. I won King Gong at the Comedy Store. Four days later, I had a colossal breakdown (my fourth on record) and having been talked down from Lambeth bridge by people whose love I don’t know what I have done to deserve, spent months fighting my way out of the deepest pit of despair I hope I’ll ever know.

The story of my mum’s life, of my time with my mum, is one of love.

It’s a powerful word: love. She did not go through the motions of love- it was not a feeling or a word that could be found in the shallowest meaning on a Clinton’s card or as the successor to the words ‘Live’ and ‘Laugh’. All who knew her felt that love manifested in the broadest and deepest way imaginable. There was such joy in my mum, in knowing my mum. There was a righteous anger that came from the love she felt for those around her- wanting everyone, from us as her children to the children she fought for in her work, to get what they were owed merely for existing and being on this Earth.

This love is one that I have been blessed to receive not only from my mum but from so many of my friends- it is a love I have felt even more acutely in the last two years than ever before. From my flat mate Sam who curtailed his holiday to be with me and my family at mum’s funeral, to Travis who travelled further still from Seattle to be with us. From David whose kindness, support, and guidance provided immeasurable comfort to us following her diagnosis, to the many friends whose profound kindnesses cannot be so readily summed up- whether it be forcing me out to run and pound the pavements of London or those who did everything short of dragging me by the collar out of my bedroom and into comedy clubs or theatres of London.

I regret that over the past two years I have been incapable, unable, to come close to matching that kindness. I’ve been self-absorbed (even more than usual) and not centred those friends whose time I owe it to return. I’ve let folks down. I’ve flaked, patched, and vanished for huge stretches at a time. For that I’m sorry.

This is one regret among many that I have from the past two years. It remains the most painful regret to have not told my mum the things which I should have when I had the chance. Yes- the obvious- that I loved her. But more that, despite her own insecurities, she was, remains, one of the most truly intelligent people I have ever known. She possessed a knowledge, an understanding, a feeling for people which is unmatched by anyone I have ever met.

It still frustrates, angers, me when people meaning well tell me that ‘she knew how you felt.’ They’ve no idea what she did or didn’t feel, what she did or did not know. Nor do I. I will never know. And I will never again have the opportunity to have made that certain.

Over the past two years, I have found myself to mourn not only my mum but to consider, and mourn, the passing of the person who I have myself been and become. Some of them have been worthy of mourning: the excited young man who once would have called his mum to talk about all the things he’d seen, experiences had, feelings felt, and that day’s football results (I still can’t watch ‘Match of the Day’ with the enthusiasm I once had and rarely watch it at all now). There are also those versions of myself I am glad are now gone: the man who felt stressed by the enormity of affronts, real but more often than not imagine, which were in fact always insignificant.

Two years on, I am still, much of the time, very much a child. A boy missing his mum. A boy without the confident command of his present or future, a command that is required of manhood.

However, I have now found and possess an uncertainty that is borne of wonder. I have a curiosity and a hope which despite the cruelties of the World in which we live is derived from the kindness and love possessed and shown by more of us than not.

I am not a man who strides the Earth with the power of certainty and control of my destiny. At times, right now as I type out these words, I’m a lost boy who still misses his mum.

And that’s okay. That’s more than okay.