I used to post on here a lot when Iain was dying. I don't think I could have survived it without you. I got no help at all from either my family or Iain's family. Not one shoulder to cry on, and not one loan of £1 to help keep us afloat. The only help I got was that my Mum helped me to keep my old banger (£400 on eBay) of an estate car running so that I could get him to his chemo appointments. They all acted as if cancer was catching.
All his mother did was to pay for a quack "cure" called "nonny juice" which he ordered online, a false hope which just upset his stomach. And now he has gone they all care even less!
He expressly said that he did not want a funeral of any kind. I could not afford one anyway. We lived together for almost 25 years but were not legally married and so I was not entitled to the grant most widows get. My brother offered to pay for a funeral but Iain's wishes were, not to have one.
At the hospice I just walked away and left his body with his family. I was too upset and too exhausted to fight with them. His sister's partner, an army captain I only met twice in 25 years, said to me and to our son that Iain's death would be "for the best". He used to say "How's the begging going Iain?" because Iain played beautiful music in the street for money. He gatecrashed on our grief and said the worst thing possible. Our son was 22 at the time. He came home and smashed up the place, such was his anger at the words that man said after he had watched his beloved father take his last breath.
They had a funeral. They had the funeral they wanted. Me and my son, we did not go. We went to Roe Deer Valley on the day, with our dogs. There is a special oak tree there, where Iain used to sit. The sister googled the Hare Krishna way to have a funeral, and I think they did that, because he was a devotee although had stopped going years ago. He said he wanted his ashes scattered half in the River Ganges and half on Cairngorm mountain. The sister paid for a Krishna devotee to do the Ganges trip. Then she organised a trip for herself and Iain's mother to go to Scotland to do the Cairngorm mountain part. She booked a holiday home in Aviemore. She just did it without consulting our son. He was invited but he didn't go because it was too soon for him to think about ashes, and he was offended that they did not let him decide when and how it was done.
My son has found it really hard to see them at all ever since. But they believe I have turned him against them. When they speak to him on the phone they never ask how I am. They do not speak about me at all except to make him feel that he has a terrible mother he would do better without, and to encourage him to live with one of them instead. Why would he want to live with a family who are so emotionally bankrupt they don't even know when they have done or said something so insensitive it has upset him to the point of making him feel suicidal? Their suggestions and advice and ideas about what he "ought" to be doing, and untimely interventions in his life over the years, have never helped him in any way. It is me who always holds him in my arms while he weeps over yet another lecture from Iain's mother when she has managed to get him on her own. He is not stupid. Why would he turn to them now?
They have money. But that is all they have. They try to use it like a carrot to draw him in, then they get frustrated when it does not work and they can't turn him against me because our bond of love is greater. Cabling £400 to a suicidal young man who feels like running away. What a great idea! Then they blame me for him keeping his distance.
Just as they blamed me for Iain's alcoholism, which began roughly ten years before I met him. He was a sensitive boy too, shoved into the army to "make a man of him". That's how well she understood her own son! All through our life together I tried to encourage him to do things which would make him proud of his achievements. He went to College to learn welding. After he passed with flying colours, what did she say during their weekly phone call which always made him so depressed? She was a master of the casual put-down. "Doesn't sound hard", she said.
And then, the final insult. After his death she came to our house and offered to give Iain's bagpipes a good home with "someone who wanted to learn to play them". The British Airways Pipe Band wanted donations of pipes, she said. For beginners, she said. "It's what Iain would have wanted", she said. I might have handed them over on the spot but for my son's reluctance. Afterwards I contacted the secretary of that pipe band myself. She said they NEVER accept donations of bagpipes because the pipes have to all look uniform, the same. Then I got in touch with some bagpipe experts in Canada. Those bagpipes, which belonged to Iain's grandfather, which I thought might be worth a few hundred pounds, are worth about £4,000. She was about to go to stay with a friend who lives near Aldershot. We know of a bagpipe repairer who lives there. I expect she was going to get them valued and then sold through him. She is one of those people who has always hung around the dying hoping to get left something in their Will. I didn't know she could stoop so low as to do this to Iain! They are the only thing of value which Iain had to leave to his only son. And she knew it, and tried to take them, after the disappointment of her brother leaving her nothing in his Will. We will never sell them. Never.
White lies, she calls them. But I have seen very big lies. About me. In black and white. In my medical records.
They have no power over me any more. I thank the Lord God and all his Angels and Saints for that! But for all that they have done and said or not done and said for the 25 years of his life, my son still loves them.
I am afraid of him seeing them on his own. And he is afraid for me to see them at all.
Thank you for listening.
