The evening Mum died, I stayed with my younger siblings. We had all just lost our mother, and for that night at least, we were together. There were seven of us kids altogether, although by then our lives were already beginning to head in very different directions.

Afterwards, I drove back across the Kaimai Range and returned to the farmhouse near Matamata alone.

I had already been living there by myself while Mum was sick, but walking back into that house after she died felt completely different. It was dark, empty and somehow quieter than it had ever been before. Until that night, there had always been a part of me that believed Mum would eventually come home. Now I knew she never would.

Everything was still exactly as she had left it. Her clothes and belongings were still there, and I couldn't bring myself to go into her bedroom. I left her room untouched. I didn't sit there crying or allow myself to fall apart. In truth, I didn't really feel much of anything. I was numb, and I tried as hard as I could not to think about what had happened.

I was fifteen years old and alone in an empty farmhouse after losing my mother. Looking back now, I realise how extraordinary that situation was, but at the time I simply did what I had already learned to do. I carried on.

Mum's funeral was held at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tauranga. There was a decent turnout, although even at fifteen I noticed that many of the people who attended had been noticeably absent while Mum was sick. I remember looking around and thinking they were hypocrites. Perhaps that was harsh coming from a fifteen-year-old, but I couldn't understand why so many people could suddenly find the time to be there after she had died when they hadn't found the time while she was alive and desperately ill.

All seven of Mum's children attended the funeral. My father was there as well, although under circumstances that probably say something about how unusual our family life had become. Dad was in jail at the time and had been given clearance to attend Mum's funeral.

I stood beside him at the burial. Dad was never someone who showed much emotion, and that day was no different. I don't remember some great emotional exchange between us or words that changed anything. We simply stood there together as Mum was buried.

My aunty and grandmother had arranged much of the funeral, including decisions about the coffin. Mum was buried in a plain plywood coffin. It was simple, inexpensive and without anything elaborate about it, which was exactly how Mum would have wanted it.

After the funeral, everyone eventually returned to wherever their lives had taken them, and I went back to the farmhouse.

I remained there alone for the next few months while I finished the school year. During that time, I slowly packed up Mum's belongings and the things my younger siblings had left behind. Most of those possessions eventually went to my siblings. There wasn't one particular object that I remember holding onto or some treasured possession that became symbolic of Mum for me. I simply packed things away and did what needed to be done.

The farmhouse itself was pretty run down, and we would be the last people ever to live there. After I eventually left, it was demolished. The building disappeared, but strangely, a couple of pieces of that part of my childhood survived.

Two large weeping willow trees that marked opposite corners of the property are still there today. One of those trees held the tyre swing we played on as kids. Even now, if you know where to look and look hard enough, you can still see the old rope that held that swing hanging from one of the branches.

There is something about that which stays with me. The farmhouse is gone, Mum is gone, and all seven of her children grew up and went in different directions, but those trees are still standing. Somewhere among the branches, an old piece of rope remains from a childhood that sometimes feels like it belonged to someone else.

Despite everything that had happened, I finished the remainder of the school year. I had missed plenty of school while Mum was sick, and education had never exactly been a strong foundation in my childhood. Between homeschooling, isolation and the upheaval of the previous years, there were enormous gaps in what I had been taught.

Somehow, I discovered that I had passed a couple of my Fifth Form School Certificate subjects. I was genuinely surprised. It probably wouldn't have seemed like an extraordinary academic achievement to most people, but to me it meant something. After everything that had happened, I had managed to pass something.

I had also applied to study automotive engineering at polytechnic in Tauranga and was accepted into the pre-trade course. For the first time in a while, there appeared to be some sort of direction ahead of me.

Once the school year finished and everything at the farmhouse had been dealt with, I left Matamata and moved to Tauranga to live with my much-loved grandma.

Grandma was a funny old lady with a great, and often fairly crude, sense of humour. She had a chuckle and a grin that I will never forget. Whenever she really laughed, her eyes would squint up, and just thinking about it now can still bring a smile to my face.

She was also incredibly methodical and particular about everything she did. Today, I would probably describe some of her behaviour as obsessive, but to me it was simply Grandma being Grandma. Every time we left the house, the front door would be locked and unlocked several times so she could make absolutely certain it was locked. There was no point trying to rush the process. We weren't leaving until Grandma was satisfied that door was secure.

Her arthritis was severe, particularly in her knees, and walking was difficult and painful. Before we went anywhere, I would sweep the path outside the house to make sure there were no loose stones or pebbles. Even a small stone under her foot could jar her knees and cause her considerable pain.

There are sounds from childhood that somehow stay stored in your memory, and Grandma walking down the hallway is one of mine. I can still hear the thud of her walking stick followed by the shuffle of her feet as she slowly made her way along the hall. She talked to herself constantly and would stop at different photographs hanging along the hallway to say hello to the people in them before continuing on her way.

Grandma wasn't particularly affectionate, at least not in the traditional sense. We weren't constantly hugging each other or talking about how much we loved one another, but I never doubted that she loved me. I also knew, perhaps with a little bit of pride, that I was her favourite grandchild.

In many ways, Grandma and I looked after each other. She gave me somewhere to live and somewhere I belonged at a time when I desperately needed both. In return, I helped with the chores and the physical things her arthritis made difficult. More importantly, we gave each other company.

She didn't drive, so she absolutely loved our outings together. Getting her out of the house could be a mission because of how difficult walking had become, but once we were in the car, she loved going for drives. Sometimes we would head out towards the Kaimais, and other times we would go out for dinner at Cobb & Co. They weren't extravagant adventures, but they meant a lot to her, and looking back now, they mean a lot to me too.

Strangely, despite both of us grieving the same woman, Grandma and I didn't really talk about Mum. We didn't sit together discussing our emotions or trying to make sense of what had happened. That simply wasn't how either of us dealt with things.

There was one exception that has stayed with me. Grandma once told me that the song Kiss from a Rose by Seal reminded her of Mum. She didn't need to explain why. That was probably about as close as we came to sitting down and talking openly about the grief we were both carrying.

After losing Mum and leaving my friends behind in Matamata, Grandma became the most important person in my life. We were two people from completely different generations, both dealing with our own difficulties, and somehow we fitted together.

Contact with my younger siblings became less frequent. They had been placed into care around 130 kilometres away from Tauranga, which made seeing them difficult. After growing up together, distance and circumstances were now separating us. Their lives were taking one path while mine was heading down another.

Through all of this, I was still receiving the Independent Youth Benefit. Starting the automotive engineering pre-trade course felt like an opportunity to build something resembling a future for myself. I wanted to succeed, and when it came to the practical side of automotive work, I enjoyed it. I had always been good with my hands and mechanically minded. If something needed to be pulled apart, fixed or figured out physically, I could usually make sense of it.

The academic side was another story.

Maths and some of the classroom subjects were incredibly difficult for me. I was suddenly expected to learn alongside people who had spent their entire lives receiving a conventional education, while I was carrying enormous gaps from mine. I could understand the mechanical work in front of me, but putting calculations and theory around it was much harder.

Instead of telling somebody that I was struggling, I became embarrassed. I didn't want people discovering how much I didn't know, so there were days when I simply wouldn't turn up. Asking for help would probably have been the sensible thing to do, but at that age I saw admitting that I couldn't understand something as exposing a weakness.

Looking back, I can also recognise that I was struggling with what I would now describe as depression. At the time, I didn't have those words for it. No one had offered me grief counselling after Mum died, and nobody sat me down and explained what losing your mother at fifteen could do to you emotionally. I had never even heard of grief counselling and wouldn't have known where to begin looking for help.

So I dealt with Mum's death the only way I knew how. I tried not to think about it.

I wasn't processing what had happened. I was burying it and getting on with life. At the time, I thought those were the same thing.

For a while, living with Grandma gave me some stability. I had somewhere to come home to, someone who needed me and someone whose company I genuinely enjoyed. After years of upheaval, there was something comforting about the predictability of life with her. I knew there would be the thud of that walking stick coming down the hallway, the shuffle of her feet, conversations with photographs on the wall, the front door being checked several times before we could leave, and another path to sweep before one of our drives.

Those ordinary things became important to me.

Eventually, though, it was time for me to move on again. My attempt at the pre-trade course hadn't worked out the way I had hoped, and I needed to figure out what came next.

I left Tauranga and moved south to Lower Hutt. There, I found myself living in a little room at the back of my older brother's garage and working as a service station attendant.

Once again, I had left behind someone I loved, moved somewhere new and started another life.

By then, I was becoming pretty good at starting over.