Reflections on a well loved parent

This is a reflection on the life and a death of a mother, my only parent during which her last few weeks alive grew closer to me than in all my 18 years. It is an edited story of how, in a mother who once was distant, found love in her heart for me during her twilight weeks. And for me, trust in her. Parts of this may be triggering so if you have lost a loved one recently then please avoid reading.


secrets
I hold fragmented memories of my childhood. Some places containing vivid greenness, like of meadows and wild flowers came bright as the very buttercups and cornflowers that graced the grasses and vetch upon which I used to repose. Sunspots danced behind my blue-grey eyes as I lay on my back chewing a frond of grass; the sound of a lark high up in the sky singing out morning praises; and at evening time, a nightingale would serenade a pinkly rising moon whose rays shimmered on Skalia's painted waters.

But there are memories where only little Poppi hears rainfall. Shouting - raised voices - a door slamming, a woman crying. I see…my mum. Her eyes are sore from crying. Mummy turns away, pretends to wipe something from them. She gives little Poppi Susan. "Thank you mummy" I remember saying. "Will daddy come home soon?"

Silence fell except for rainfall pattering on a window behind. Susan growls comfortingly to me.

Don't worry Poppi, don't worry sweets
I'm here, I'm here,
Always your comforter, always your comforter,
Nothing will harm you, Poppi
You're safe with me, sweets.

I climb onto my bed and sucking my thumb, hug my best friend who seems to know cos I see it in Susan’s teddybear brown eyes. I overheard Lyra once saying "eyes never lie" and Susan's kind eyes never did. For only teddybears hold secrets of the heart.

Dad I've been lost and without your hand to hold
I have nothing except your loving smile held forever suspended between silver;
A precious metal of magical properties.
I cry to you but you can't hear me.
Can't see your light no more.
Can't see your smiling eyes no more.
All but fragmented memories.

I live in hope. Susan Bear waits for you, also, daddy.



Take my hand and gently lead me where we walked before.
Where I laughed and gathered leaves so brown and crinkly.
Where I reached up to you and made you smile when I said, "This leaf is Susan's. It's magical and will make all your dreams come true."

Can't stop the tears from falling now.
Come back to me.
I forgive you but return to me, daddy.



vom
Life and growing up with mummy was difficult for we argued lots and often the scene ended with one of us walking out of the house or not talking for days. There were times when I thought I could walk out and leave her but that was too easy a way out but it wasn’t until I discovered mummy was dying from advanced cancer that she and I eventually became reconciled. True I was close to her but when often two people are the only ones in the same big house, ructions and bitter arguments were easily set off even over little things. And the person one’s closest to often hurts the worst.

But terminal illness makes for great changes and a softening of the heart. I speak only for myself and the terrible memories of her clinging onto dear life, not attempting to be preachy in any way on this thread. Just sharing some of my experiences that when one parent is all you’ve got between a life of arguing and later, six feet under you tend to cling onto anything precious that can be salvaged from such a rocky relationship that was mine with my mum.

But life never works out the way you want. Sure, money never grew on trees for me. But life was to throw a foul curve in my mum's direction and set her health spinning down, down, down into the terrified depths I saw her fallen, one Saturday evening last February.

She lay on a hospital bed, private ward, her face almost unrecognisable. Mum was thin and pallid. Her once shining bright eyes now showing all the pain and vomiting sickness a person being treated with Chemo and radiation therapy would suffer. Inside me I shrunk but put on a brave face. Just so thankful to a family friend who warned me in advance what to expect.

My visits to mum were difficult. I helped her in the bathroom when she had to chuck up... and cried some. We cried together. I sat with tears in my eyes holding her hand while she dozed. Then she felt ill and vomitty again and I’d help her out of the bed into a wheelchair and back into the en-suite bathroom. But she fell off the toilet only to vom all over the floor. And in all this it was just me and mum, occasionally my special family friend Boo helping because she'd been through all this before when she fought back leukaemia. I felt - I felt as if my heart had been ripped out. My very soul in torment from mummy's sobbing. My tears mingling with hers; her vomit spattered down my clothes. I kissed her all the same, I said, "I love you mummy." It was a far cry from months previous when words tumbled out in the heat of argument, “I hate you mummy!” In the following weeks I cried boxes of Kleenex.


letters
During the last few weeks when my mum lay dying of advanced cancer I discovered to my horror she had withheld all my father's letters, birthday and Christmas cards from me since he left when I was just 2 years old. I went crazy at her. I was furious of being betrayed. Except she will have had a reason to withhold, so my girlfriend Lyra said, therefore my trial at the time was to wait until mummy felt better to talk about it. It was not right at the time for she was really sick after the chemo followed by the radiation therapy, so it was not the time to discuss why, for that came later.

But when the time came mummy wasn’t sweet about why she withheld all of my father’s letters and festive cards. She said dad had been in jail and that if I had contacted him in America he’d have stolen me away from her, and then when I was older like now, my father would have found ways of getting back to swindling her again. In turn, my girlfriend Lyra said sometimes mums make what they truly believe is the best decision. And that was why my mother never told me about my father, who had robbed her of money and swindled her savings, for she was protecting me from dad and his evil ways. So was that the right decision my mum made? Yes, and I think she tried to do what seemed best at the time in withholding dad’s correspondence from me. So I learnt to be more gentle with myself and not get beat up about it. I know it was hard, but that is what I accepted to be right, ambivalent feelings aside.


* * *

One evening I was sitting in an empty house drying my tears away after another onslaught of my mother vomiting and sobbing, swearing away effing and blinding to herself and the cancer that has wreaked havoc in her ravaged body. I was sat there thinking lots of things; feeling lots of doubts while feeling guilty for not listening to a friend’s suggestion of how laughter can be a healing thing. But then, I would have laughed with mummy if I could have conjured up a joke to crack, trying everything into making an effort to help lighten her load, and mine.

In those last days so much happened. Mummy found out I was gay and raged at me with a fury I had never experienced. I was more frightened of her than defensive on my part. Pale faced in fury she raged and I stood there in her hospital room feeling humiliated all because I had summed up the courage to tell her of my preferred lifestyle. Then as quickly as her temper flared she sank back into the pillows to fix me with a wan stare.

Another mood swing, then: In mummy’s cold steely grey eyes I saw nothing of even so much as pity; not one shred of understanding, neither compassion. Her eyes bore right through me. As if looks could kill for my choosing the lifestyle I wanted to live and enjoy.



clouds
From outside the hospital entrance I turned to see Lyra gazing steadily back at me. I saw my girlfriend’s loving smile, felt her arm that felt warm around my cold shoulders as I shivered not from the chill night air but from the very fear of fear itself: fear of my dying mother and my being cruelly rejected by her. And how I would cope, I thought, with her dying a hard, difficult death, very likely as the cold grey light of dawn seeped through those forbidding hospital steel cased windows?

Slowly I stretched. A stray tear had worked its ways round to below my chin. I let it fall to the pavement and walked home.

From her bedside mummy did not hug me but held my hand and spoke tonelessly about her illness being terminal and that for the first time she was not in the slightest bit of denial about it. I told her that I loved her whether she was dying or not and whether I was gay or not. That I'd been hoping and praying she would live, but even if it was not to be - still I would love and hold onto her to the very bitter end I would hold her close. Because when she was well and happy, mum was so different and never swore or deliberately went out of her way to hurt me. I could not stop the tears and the jerk in my voice when I said that I loved her so deeply, that it hurt. But at times mummy just coldly stared back. And that often is the effects of what advanced cancer can do - create mood swings: Dark and Light; happiness then remorse; tears of anguish, tears of joy and sometimes mirth. …

The slow, almost imperceptible slide towards passing away, mummy's twilight days were marked on the side of a urine bag attached to the side of her unforgiving, cold steel bed. Looking outside her bedroom window I glimpsed the cheerful cotton-white clouds that wandered slowly by, then looking down felt the warmth of mummy smiling lovingly back up at me.