It was right at the end of the summer holidays in August 2011 when Mum, Dad and I took my two youngest children to Legoland, Windsor. It was to be our last outing with the children and sadly the experience was bittersweet. The kids of course had a great time and were hopefully, due to being young and having an exciting day, were mostly unaffected by the events. Unfortunately mum had a funny ‘turn’ when she went to the toilet and Dad had to seek medical assistance. The episode eventually passed and we arranged to get her a wheelchair for the rest of her time there. I could sense an unspoken fear between me and Dad and most of that day is a blur, to be honest. The presence of children having fun forces you to carry on but in a rather robotic fashion. The part that makes me saddest is that my mum would have hated the indignity of it all. Even now it breaks my heart to think about that day.
The next few weeks changed our lives forever. I was sitting in the cinema one afternoon for a children’s film and I got a text from my mum. She’d had a hospital appointment and the only bit I can remember word for word on the message was “…..nothing more they can do for me”. The treatment hadn’t worked and the cancer had spread to her liver. I honestly don’t know how I sat through the rest of that film without breaking down. I kept my composure for the sake of my young son and, as if I was on auto-pilot, managed to get us both home without giving anything away.
My mind went into overdrive. How could this be true? “You won’t NECESSARILY die from the cancer”. That’s what the oncologist said. Now I understand the importance of that particular adverb. It was in that sentence for a reason. We were now faced with that ‘reason’.
There were so many things to feel sad about and our children were most prominent in my thoughts. Randomly one of my first thoughts was that Mum would never see our daughter in a prom dress (or wedding dress). She was only 12 at the time but girls start dreaming of their prom VERY prematurely! Not only was Mum one of her two Godmothers but she was also her biggest fan. I also couldn’t contemplate how my little boy would understand that he wouldn’t see his Nanny again. He was with her almost as much as he was with us and their relationship was incredibly special. The older two boys would be a worry in that they might find it harder to seek support and comfort. At 13 and 16 and particularly being boys, it could be more difficult for them to give way to their emotions. Mostly though, how was I going to manage without my best friend – the daily phone chats, mainly about quite trivial little things, the shopping sprees, coffees, lunches, talking about what books we were reading, laughing about nothing….the usual everyday stuff that we take for granted? We had this ability to hold several conversations at once and hop from one topic to another aimlessly while others around us were like “Huh?!” It’s a skill learned from a lifetime of practice!
The idea of this loss was simply inconceivable.
There was later talk of chemotherapy to prolong my mum’s life but she was simply too weak and it would likely have been hopeless anyway. She was prescribed steroids which I understand were to improve her appetite. She was worryingly thin by this stage and was already being encouraged to drink appetite stimulants as she wasn’t eating enough.
Even with this devastating news we assumed we had at least a few more months with mum. However, she went downhill rapidly from that point.
One Friday evening we attended a family quiz night to raise money for our daughter’s dance school. Mum and dad came but mum was very tired. She was also starting to look very yellow-skinned and I distinctly remember asking a close friend afterwards “Do you think my mum looked yellow last night?” and she agreed that she had. Dad had organised a wheelchair from the Red Cross so he could still get her out of the house. She had become too weak to walk far by then.
We had also planned to go to the local bonfire celebrations the following night with our neighbours and were hoping mum and dad could join us. Mum just couldn’t manage it though so they declined the invitation. It was all becoming very real and I knew in my heart of hearts that it was not going to get better. Still we tried to hang on to some hope….
Over the next couple of weeks when I wasn’t at work I spent as much time as I could at my parents’ house and picked up bits for mum while I was out. Dad asked me if I could get some new pyjamas for her as she wasn’t getting dressed much. I remember carefully selecting pretty ones as I knew she would still want to look nice. They had a lot of visitors to the house and I specifically remember one morning when the lounge was full of people and mum looked like a small child sitting on the big sofa. She was just under five foot and I wouldn’t even like to imagine what she weighed at that point. Her skin had become even more yellow, almost neon. She was still independent about taking herself to the bathroom but now she relied on a frame to walk. Although she was fully awake and aware of friends and family being around she wasn’t very chatty and she seemed distant and very lost. Maybe it was just all a bit too overwhelming but, despite everyone’s efforts to be ‘normal’, there was an underlying sense of desperation…..
Hoping for a Happy Ever After 