{"id":3432,"date":"2026-02-12T23:17:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=3432"},"modified":"2026-02-12T23:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:17:02","slug":"the-year-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/the-year-after\/","title":{"rendered":"The year after"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3433\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3433\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3F5DB826-5DC6-4D3C-B0F0-DF04CFDFD5CE_1_105_c.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"525\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3F5DB826-5DC6-4D3C-B0F0-DF04CFDFD5CE_1_105_c.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3F5DB826-5DC6-4D3C-B0F0-DF04CFDFD5CE_1_105_c-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3F5DB826-5DC6-4D3C-B0F0-DF04CFDFD5CE_1_105_c-768x576.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3433\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mum in New York in 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Tomorrow, mum&#8217;s house will change hands. A year to the day since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/nota-bene-a-letter-to-my-mother\/\">she died<\/a>. My brothers and their family have valiantly been dealing with all of that while I check-in from abroad. We talk about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/worklife\/article\/20210128-why-the-sandwich-generation-is-so-stressed-out\">sandwich generation<\/a>, but what I am? The beef patty generation? No kids, no partner, no parents, just the daily grind. I&#8217;m glad I didn&#8217;t have a &#8216;proper job&#8217; to go to for a while because I felt untethered for months. I had to get used to a life where I don&#8217;t call her most Sunday nights to hear about her week. I don&#8217;t send her postcards from my travels or photos of the art I think she&#8217;d like (she was an avid amateur artist). I stop myself from thinking about the places we could go on holiday next. But most importantly, I had to take in the fact that I didn&#8217;t die when she died. The training wheels are off, that&#8217;s all. Someone told me (in greek) &#8216;may you live to remember her&#8217;, so I&#8217;ll do that. I&#8217;ll remember her and keep going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow, mum&#8217;s house will change hands. A year to the day since she died. My brothers and their family have valiantly been dealing with all of that while I check-in from abroad. We talk about the sandwich generation, but what I am? The beef patty generation? No kids, no partner, no parents, just the daily&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/the-year-after\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The year after<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-Tm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3434,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3432\/revisions\/3434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}