My mum died of breast cancer nearly 19 years ago. I've now lived over half my life without her, yet every day she still influences the person I am, the way I act and how I live my life.
All the best things I've done in my life came after she died; her death was the spur to get on with life, live every day and make the most of my opportunities.
She didn't get to see me pass my A-levels, travel the world on my own, get into Cambridge, work for the Guardian & the Observer, live in Barcelona, meet any of my girlfriends, speak Spanish, run a youth camp in Chile, buy a flat, lift a cup, finish a triathlon, become a managing director or, for that matter, stand on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. But I couldn't have done it without her.
What breaks my heart is that she knew that she wasn't going to be around for these milestones and just got on with the time she had left anyway.
Honestly, I don't think about her that often, this isn't a conscious thing, it's just that I've closed that part of my brain down over the years. Sitting on the top of the mountain looking out over the glacier, exhausted and slightly hollow it did allow me to think about her again and what she meant to me. It allowed me some space to re-engage this buried part of my head. Sometimes you have to push yourself to the edge to rediscover what's at your core.
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