Kelly Pegg is a Journalist and Broadcaster working in radio for more than 15 years. She is a Mum of two who was born and raised in the East Midlands and loves living in Nottinghamshire with her family. She hosts the podcast The Hot Mess Mums' club with TV Presenter Jenny Powell, supporting and empowering women everywhere. You can find it on Instagram @thehotmessmums
I often watch my toddler in envy. I would love to be able to drop off to sleep anytime and anywhere. I’d love to have that feeling of wonder and excitement where anything is possible and life is just a constant joy.
Once we become adults responsibilities seem to stack up and very quickly we realise that the independence we craved for when we were younger is actually not that great. And it’s weighed with even more responsibilities, rules, endless tasks most of which are thankless once we become parents!
All of a sudden we are in charge of someone else, their whole life depends on us protecting them, caring for them, and getting it right. Alongside that enormous role come all the really boring chores like paying bills, washing, ironing, and emptying the dishwasher.
Just recently something happened which made me wish I was still a child, care free and without responsibility…my husband arranged a call with a Will Expert through work.
As soon as he mentioned it I felt sick and I’ve spent way too much time working out how I could keep getting him to move the date of the call because I really didn’t want to face it.
I must have been told by every family member, friend and neighbour that “It’s the right thing to do” and “Everyone has to do it” but Death and I don’t mix. I don’t like to talk about it, I don’t like to think about it, and I find it profoundly hard to deal with.
From the very start I was difficult, the meeting had started and I was still pretending to be in the shower when in fact I was cowering on my bed hoping that zoom crashed so we would have to rearrange for another month or year if possible!
When I eventually dragged myself to the kitchen table my husband was in full swing, it was clear he’d given everything a lot more thought than me even down to small details like how he was leaving his watch to our son. I could feel my anxiety starting to spread everywhere and I didn’t realise it until after the call but I had scratched a part of my scalp continually throughout the meeting to the point that I’d made my scalp bleed, that’s how on the edge I felt.
There were questions after questions - who knew making a will would be so complicated?
As I hadn’t made any decisions a follow up email was sent to us and as my husband puts it “We need to sit down, make some decisions and get this sorted”.
Of course I’m still in denial and refusing to discuss anything to do with it in the hope that it will just go away and my husband will forget about it but we know he won’t right? Because in this case he’s the adult and I’m the petulant child refusing to do something that really has to be done.
