On the 10th Anniversary of My Mother's Death

I vividly recollect the first conversation I ever had about cancer. It was 2002 and I was watching Kerrang TV with my then boyfriend and his younger brother when an advert came on television alerting us to the news that 1 in 3 people would get cancer in their lifetime. I was adamant the brother was for the chop, and he thought it would be me. Ever the diplomat my then boyfriend said he'd rather it was him as he cared about us both too much. I thought that was clichéd but with hindsight I understand. My first (but sadly not last) run in with the dreaded C came late 2012 when my mother was diagnosed with and very quickly died from lung cancer.

Growing up Mum was never without a cigarette. I never noticed her chain smoking or how the house smelled of smoke because it was something I had grown up with and was used to. I remember her trying to quit a few times; I wasn’t sure if I should let on that I could see smoke pouring from the bathroom window in the dead of night despite her claiming to have successfully quit. I remember hiding her cigarettes in the dog food bag one day. I still wonder why people with children don’t ponder if perhaps it would be best for everyone if they just, you know, stopped. Better in terms of health but also wealth. I dread to think how much money my mother and by default my father squandered on the very thing that would kill her. There’s an irony there that is so maddening, and it took extensive therapy to extinguish the anger I felt towards her for, in effect, killing herself slowly. I’ve since learned no good can come from over analysing every ‘what if’.

 

Mum had MS. There were times when she could struggle though and times when she couldn’t hide how much pain she was in. In the months before she died I remember Mum was more subdued. She didn’t want to go out much and she was struggling to use the stairs so had taken to sleeping on the settee in the lounge. One day her head became very swollen and she was misdiagnosed as having had an allergic reaction to something. Weeks later, after steroids and another trip to the GP (remember the days when you were allowed to actually see a medical professional?!) an urgent hospital referral was made and I decided it was COPD and that years of smoking had finally caused her lungs to give up. Of course, I was wrong: It was Stage 4 lung cancer.

 

In the following weeks we spent hours in the Freeman Hospital waiting for radiation appointments that ultimately were completely useless and really just made Mum’s final few weeks a series of one admin task after another. She stopped eating, saying everything tasted like cardboard. At one point she was hospitalised in Sunderland Royal Hospital. My sole recollection of that time is that she repeatedly asked for a shower and after several days of this seemingly reasonable request being overlooked I asked a staff member if someone could do it. The healthcare assistant snapped at me “you do it, I haven’t got time! Do you know how many people we have to look after?” I felt like I had been slapped. It was at that moment that I realised you can’t call everyone who works in a role a ‘hero’. Now, I’m sure that lady is perfectly lovely, and would be mortified to think that ten years later I still recall her and her horrible words (possibly underpinned by years of NHS under-funding and health care professionals being overworked). But because of her one of the lasting final memories I have of Mum is me taking her to the showers in the hospital and trying to get her showered whilst trying to maintain her dignity. Another memory of her final days includes her not joining us at the table for her final Christmas. She sat in the lounge and watched television whilst my dad, brother and husband pulled crackers and read hackneyed jokes, desperately pretending all was normal in the world. Later that evening I remember her sitting by the backdoor wearing her baby blue bathrobe. I kneeled down and put my head in her lap. “Promise me you’ll all get counselling when this is over”. I wept. I promised her I would, and I did, although it took me far too many years to get around to it.

 

Finally, I think it was Boxing Day evening, she took a turn. Her last words to me were “how’s Buddy the beast?”, referring to my 10-month-old lurcher puppy. I’m not sure she comprehended the answer. Soon, the Macmillan nurses arrived to make her comfortable. One of them saw me crying and gave me a hug, “It’s hard”, she said, “we’ll make her as comfortable as we can.” She looked at me for a long time then added “how are you managing at school with all of this going on?” I was 29. A reminder that humour can be found in even the darkest of times.

 

The next day she was admitted to hospital, thankfully not the one where I felt she had been neglected and treated like a nuisance rather than a patient. At the QE in Gateshead she was unconscious but my brother and I took turns in reading out passages of the Bible that we found particularly amusing. I like to think she could hear us and was thinking how typical of her secular children, wishing she could roll her eyes at us. Soon she was admitted to the hospice. The staff were wonderful. I remember one of the doctors there telling me that it was unlikely she would wake up, asking “do you understand what I mean?” as if I was the schoolgirl the Macmillan nurses assumed me to be days earlier. I’m not one for euphemisms so he seemed a little shocked when I told him I knew she was going to die. She had been unconscious for over 24 hours and was in a hospice – I think it would take someone incredibly naive to not grasp the gravity of the situation.

 

The hours spent in that hospice went so slowly but nowhere near slowly enough. We watched an old Western on television. I forget its name, but it was on for hours. We found funny spelling errors on signs in the communal kitchen, rushing back to tell Mum because we knew she was a stickler for grammar. I hope she heard us. We alternated between chatting quietly about mundane things and having to leave the room to ball our eyes out. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I went to the cinema to see A Monster Calls that I could finally explain how the time in the hospice made me feel. In the film, a young boy is helped to cope with his mother’s terminal illness by a giant tree voiced by Liam Neeson. The crux of the film is that the tree wants him to ‘speak his truth’ but he can’t. His truth, when he is finally pushed to the edge by the giant tree monster, is that he wants his mother to die so she doesn’t have to suffer any longer. And that, folks, is how I felt. After many hours of sitting, waiting, pacing, crying, I went home for a nap. I woke up with a physical jolt, sat bolt upright in bed and I just knew she had gone. The phone rang; I was right. I like to think that she knew I couldn’t cope with those final moments imprinted on the inside of my eyelids for eternity and waited for me to leave.

 

Death is nothing like on television or in films, the soon to be deceased sitting up in bed giving their loved ones some final words of wisdom before gently slipping away, a slight smile on their face. Their hand falling softly to the bed. No, it’s often long and arduous for all concerned, listening for hours as each gasp gets more laboured and rasping, the time between each breath more prolonged. A wonderful friend who recently lost her father summed up the divergence of fact and fiction by pointing out that you “lose the person before they pass” and this isn’t something you’re prepared for.

 

So, ten years later here I am. I spend a lot of time thinking about death. I’ve had therapy at least three times to deal with my feelings surrounding death. I have come to terms with losing my mother at a younger than expected age, but the issues have manifested in other ways. I think about my own funeral a lot; what songs will be played, who will turn up, what will they say about me. I don’t think there is a day that goes by where I don’t think about someone close to me dying and honestly, it’s quite tiresome.

 

Having said that, I don’t consciously think about Mum every single day. I see people write about how they miss (insert relative here) every day and think about them all the time and wonder if I’m the unhealthy one or they are. At first I felt guilty that I didn’t think about her all the time, but bereavement counselling helped me realise this is perfectly normal and most likely very healthy. One thing I will admit is that I don’t really remember her voice any more. I can sort of recall her Derbyshire lilt and her mannerisms but nothing more. Not remembering her voice does upset me, but I know that searching for a recording would probably upset me more and then what if I lost the recording or it was damaged? I’m not too sure I’m ready for that even after all these years. You know when people say they would give anything for just five more minutes with someone they’ve lost? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t do it. Five more minutes followed by so much more pain. Nah, I’ll pass thanks.

 

There are some moments when I am blindsided by memories of her, simple things like going to a garden centre or seeing a black cat. For several years after her death I would see something cat related and for a split second consider buying it for her for Christmas. Sometimes I see women who look like her and do a double take. Last year there was a woman standing outside my local shopping centre who looked so much like her that I felt sick. She looked upset so I asked her if she was alright, perhaps because subconsciously I hoped she would sound like her too. She didn’t. She was lost and I gave her directions. The whole time I was trying not to hug her.

 

Seeing people with their mothers was, for a long time, very difficult. I didn’t even want to hear that they had a mother. It wasn’t that I begrudged them that relationship, but that something visceral would awaken inside me when I saw mothers and daughters together. Shortly after Mum died I went on a weekend trip for a friend’s hen party. It was absolute torture seeing the bride-to-be with her mother and I had an anxiety attack. I was envious. I was sad. I felt alone. My dad drove 90 minutes very late at night to pick me up and take me home. An acquaintance called me selfish and told me I always had to make things about me. I hope that person now realises that we all grieve in very different ways and nobody should be encouraged to “suck it up” as she said I should.

 

Another time I was suddenly besieged with grief was when I traded my beloved Kia Picanto in for a new car. Mum had nicknamed her ‘Pixie’ and had been the one to suggest I test drive the car in the first place. It was the car I drove to take us to salon appointments, when we would sing the opening ‘do-be-dos’ from Annie Lennox’s No More “I Love You’s” as a sort of ritual every time we drove past the Angel of the North. It was the car I had taken her to countless hospital appointments in when she was ill. It was the car that had driven us to visit my maternal grandmother in Derbyshire. She always, without fail, would get in the car, pat the windowsill or dashboard and say, “hello Pixie”. So, when it came to trade her in I was a wreck. The salesman handed me a bouquet of flowers and I broke down. He kept looking at my husband for an explanation. I’m sure he’s never had anyone react the same way to getting a brand-new car before or since!

 

When you lose a parent before you expect to it isn’t just the big things you miss like special occasions, birthdays, anniversaries, but the mundane things like being able to give them a call and ask how to remove a grass stain from a white top or having someone to take to the garden centre with you. It’s the little things you miss like popping in after work to collect a parcel or a last-minute lunch at the Toby or spending hours writing their Christmas cards every year. Those routine, ordinary, everyday things that you take for granted can be gone in a split second and it takes time to rebuild and reshape a new routine, ordinary, everyday existence.

  

There are so many anecdotes I would like to share, but this essay seems to be becoming a treatise and that was never my intention. So, I’ll leave you with this:

Mum taught me to be progressive. It wasn’t in words; she never said, “Simone be liberal, be a socialist, be a feminist”, but it was in the comments she made about the news and current affairs, and the actions she took like taking me to vote for the first time. Her actions shaped me subconsciously and the crux of all this, if I had to sum up all 2390 words written here, is that I'm devastated that Mum isn't here to see the woman I've become because of her.

Mum's Eulogy

On Saturday it was exactly 18 months since my mother passed away. She died aged 55 from the happiness ruiner that is cancer. Even writing those facts brings tears to my eyes, which is why I haven't written publicly about this before now. Instead of telling you all about the gaping wound that still inflicts my life daily I'm going to share the eulogy I wrote for my mum's funeral that was shared with her nearest and dearest. Thank you for reading.

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Growing up I never really thought I’d be without a parent. Of course, nature designs it that way but in all my thoughts of the future, in all the imaginary musings of things to come I always pictured both parents, alive and happy, offering moral guidance and endless cups of tea. I thought they were invincible.  I hoped they were.

Since mum passed away people have been asking me what kind of childhood I had, what kind of mother she was. I pity anyone who can’t answer as I can; that I had the kind of childhood that I wouldn’t change for the world and the kind of Mum who, along with Dad, taught me that life isn’t black and white.

Mum encouraged me to question the world around me and not to blindly follow the crowd. She nurtured my individuality and even when I’m sure she disagreed with decisions I made she supported me fully, something which can’t always have been easy.

Mum was one of the most intelligent people I knew and I will miss not being able to turn to her for a swift dose of reality or a chat about our shared disdain for poor spelling and grammar.

I will miss calling her every day from work and us greeting one another in French. 

Whenever I neglect to do the housework I will remember it is because I inherited her belief that a tidy home is the sign of a wasted life.

When I go to the dentist I will smile when I recall how she’d tell me to pull myself together if I said I was scared although we both knew she was really the one in need of a hand to hold.

Mum was full of wisdom; “Youth is wasted on the young”, “always bend your knees slightly when standing”, “drink more water”, “be kinder to people Simone, you don’t know what’s happening in their lives”.

Mum always put her family first and in the weeks before she passed away she was more concerned with how her illness was affecting her family than about herself; were work OK with the amount of time I was taking off, did I have enough petrol, could I please sort out Sean’s tax return, is Dad getting enough sleep? Mum asked for very little but gave so much.

There will never be enough time to tell you how much I owe to my mother and how much pain her loss has caused me, but it is said that happiness is the art of never holding in your mind the memory of any unpleasant thing that has passed, and so when I remember mum I will remember her love of cats, and the colour orange and Maltesers.  I will remember her beautiful smile, her honesty and her integrity.

Finally, to my mum I say this; everything I am, I am because of you.