I had offered to drive my mum to a hospital appointment as parking was always a nightmare. If we could find a spot then I'd come in with her, if not then I'd just drive round for a while and she would just call me when she was done. She was getting the results of a scan due to her complaining of a persistent pulled muscle in her back. It seemed luck was on our side that sunny December morning, we parked straight away.
Mum and I were friends, true friends. We worked together, socialised together and after the recent breakdown in her marriage to my step dad, she now lived in the same cul-de-sac as my husband Shaun and I. It wasn't an effort, it wasn't unhealthy; it was just natural. We genuinely got on really well and loved being in each other’s company.
Mum's name was called. We followed a nurse down the corridor to a consultant’s room. On the computer was a chest scan. As we took our seats the door opened and a lady came in. With a soft smile she promptly explained that she would be sitting in on this appointment in case we had any questions. Something was wrong. My heart started thumping so hard I felt sure that everyone in the now silent room could hear it. I looked at my mum - the face I had looked at for reassurance for the past 26 years. There was no reassuring smile, just a blank stare.
At 51 years old mum was given the news that she had stage 4 cancer. Secondary cancer was highlighted in the scan she had been given for the pulled muscle. THE PULLED MUSCLE!? The primary was at this stage unknown. Mum was straight to the point, not interested in all the finer details. "How long do I have?"…….What??! How could this be happening? Two minutes ago life was good! Four minutes ago we were sat in the waiting room chatting and laughing! The lady who had come into the room turned out to be a Macmillan nurse - now assigned to mum for support and guidance.
The days that followed are now a complete blur. I do remember feeling as though I wasn't in control of my body. My heart continued to thump in my chest, I could actually feel every beat; all the time. Every nerve seemed to be hypersensitive and I physically ached. Looking back I'm guessing these were the symptoms of shock or adrenalin? I absolutely had to be strong and positive for mum. She felt so guilty for all that was happening and what was to lie ahead for me and my younger sister Jodie, I wanted to lessen that burden of worry for her as much as possible. I couldn't fully lift the lid on my emotions as I knew I wouldn't be able to close it again.
The six months that followed were consumed with hospital visits, chemotherapy cycles, trial drugs with horrible side effects, blood transfusions, medication and trying to spend any 'good days' doing nice things. Normal things. Sometimes the normal things were tough though. One afternoon my two year old, Josh, picked a book from his bookcase and took it over to mum who was resting on the sofa, recovering from a recent operation to drain some fluid from her chest cavity. He climbed up on the sofa and snuggled next to her. She began to read to him, as she always had, but her voice wobbled and she started to cry. She was not going to see this little boy she loved so much grow. She was not going to be able to make puzzles, read stories, act out the Three Little Pigs or take him to the farm to see his favourite animals – pigs any more. She would be gone.
I'm not ashamed to confess that my roles as a wife and a mummy took a back seat during these months. My main focus was mum and I was immersed in caring for her. Shaun was amazing. He never once made me feel torn or guilty for the time and effort I was giving mum; although of course I did. At times I selfishly yearned for normality. I desperately wanted to feel as I had felt before that sunny December morning. Five years on I have come to terms that I will never feel exactly that way again. Even though Jodie, or mum's close friend Belinda would often stay the night with mum on a weekend and I was given 'time' when I knew she was in safe hands, I was never free from the anxiety. I had this overwhelming need to be by her side.
By early June mum was really poorly. She now spent every night at our house, unless she had arranged for Jodie or Belinda to visit and stay over. Regular bouts of breathlessness were followed rapidly by fits of coughing, gasping and vomiting. The most horrific sight to watch someone you love go through. I would dash to her room (our spare bedroom) as soon as I heard a noise. 3am, stood helplessly rubbing mum's back, holding a sick bowl and willing her breathing to regulate again.
The last week of June came the point where the pain relief mum had been prescribed for me to administer at home was no longer giving her respite. On 23rd June I helped mum over to her house across the path from ours and we gathered what she wanted in a bag for the hospice. I can't seem to put into words that task. Unbearable. This was it. This is what the last six and a half months had been building up towards. My lovely mum was going to die and no amount of wishing, willing, loving, caring, hoping or praying was going to stop it from happening.
The hospice and its staff were beyond amazing. They gave us 9 days of mum; pain free, whilst keeping her alert and awake. They took over caring for her and we just enjoyed her. Absorbing every moment. We laughed, we cried, we talked, we hugged and we listened to Elton John and Robbie Williams. Mum peacefully slipped away at 10pm on Sunday 3rd of July 2011. She was surrounded by people who loved her and whom she loved.
Numb. That's all I remember initially. So completely and utterly empty and lost. Driving away from the hospice late that night, leaving mum there was horrible. I missed her already and she had only been gone a couple of hours. How was I going to cope after a day? A week? Months? My whole life never seeing or speaking to her again?
Auto pilot kicked in. As mum had separated from her husband, dealing with all her affairs fell to me and Jodie. Jodie had only just turned 20, and herself having a two year old to care for on her own, I felt the most tremendous responsibility. A funeral to arrange, phone calls to make, mum's house to empty and sell, probate forms to complete. Between Shaun, Jodie and myself we accomplished all of the above and more. I'm now not quite sure how. In this time - I think it was about four weeks after mum died, a week or so after her funeral, I took a basket of wet washing upstairs to hang out in the spare room. This was almost a daily occurrence in our house - two year old boys seem to produce double their weight in washing every day! As I put the basket on the bed, the bed that mum slept in all those nights over the past months, I lost my breath, completely out of nowhere. I can only describe it as feeling as though I'd been hit by a train, right in my chest. Panic; complete and utter panic. I sobbed. I melted into a pathetic mess on the floor. It seemed the magnitude of what the last seven months had entailed had just hit me. Literally. The sadness, loss and utter devastation were too much to bear. If there had been a button to press at that moment that could have removed me from this earth, I would have pressed it. I didn't want to continue. I had never experienced a panic attack or any sort of loss of control before and it scared me. I was losing the plot. I had to fix myself; I had to get a grip. Shaun and Josh didn't deserve this, and in mum's last few days she had asked me to promise to one day be happy again, to enjoy the life she would never see - for her.
The next day I managed to function enough to find the leaflet the hospice had given me, offering bereavement counselling and I phoned and made an appointment. I again had never had experience of counselling. I naively thought it was a bit 'hippy' - going for therapy. Why would someone want to talk to a complete stranger about their innermost feelings and thoughts? But I was desperate now, grasping at any hope of something that might help me to feel remotely like my old self. I felt like I was outside looking in on myself. To visualise, I had dropped a glass vase that represented my world and it had shattered into thousands of fragments; I was madly scrambling to collect them all but my hands weren't big enough to gather all the pieces and I kept dropping bits as I tried to pick more up.
Raw grief messes with your mind. It is so incredibly lonely and brings raging anger. It's dark. The physical pain was real too. How can something in your mind give you real physical pain? I don't know, but it can. My shoulders hurt and my head ached all the time. I was tired, so tired. I would dread going to bed because my thoughts would flood over me 10x faster and 100x louder when the quiet and darkness of night came. By far the worst though was waking up, and for that first split second feeling 'normal' then BAM. It would hit me all over again. Mum is dead.
My first session with Pam was exhausting. To verbalise my feelings was hard work and often difficult as I just kept crying. Pam was not what I expected a counsellor to be - I was thinking a softly spoken 'poor you' approach, but she was quite the opposite. She was to the point and sometimes quite hard on me. She was amazing at rationalising my feelings and would put a perspective on situations I hadn't even considered. Maybe I wasn't 'losing the plot’; maybe I wasn't a useless wife and mummy. Maybe I was grieving. A journey I had never taken before but have since learnt, is a completely normal and natural process. I had to go on that journey no matter how painful, to get to where I am today.
I had almost eight months of counselling. I am so thankful to the hospice that looked after mum so well for reaching beyond patient care to offer support to families left behind. Pam didn’t ‘fix’ me, she didn’t make it all better, but she did help me to understand. She helped me to embrace my feelings and encouraged me to indulge in my grief when I needed to. My life is busy. I’m a working mum of two boys now but I often make time to ‘indulge’. I put on home movies to see mum and to hear her voice. I get the photo albums out and reminisce. This has been a great healer.
When I think of mum I feel proud; strong; honoured; loved; brave; inspired. I feel all these things because I was lucky enough to call her my mum.
Life is here to live, so I will live it for the both of us.
