Chapter 1
HiKara,
I hope your keeping well,would have been heart-warming to see you at mums funeral, but I understand that the distance is too far.
Weve always been so close that I thought it might be ok to write it all down. Well actually it was my councillor who has
advised me to do it. I probably wont even send it to you,but here goes. My councillor thinks it will be good therapy, he’s a bit weird
he wears bright clothes, talks very quietly and has a mop of curly hair. Don’t know whose madder me or him hehe. He prescribes
me write it more as a statement of facts rather than a letter to my dearest friend. Oh well here goes.
This is a mother and daughter story, at age forty my mum was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer.
She was born in the thirties to simple country parents the third of seventeen children. Her mother, my grandmother was
Insane in a comical way. When grandad was admitted to hospital with appendicitis, because he was suffering severe stomach
Pain, she imaged he was pregnant. So, from then on, he was nicknamed uncle mum, so by insane I really do mean funny insane.
With them being a financially poor family and gran being gran, grandad got through is day on rough cider known as scrumpy.
With no money which was often the case he would do handstands in a bucket of water in the pub for free drinks. Meaning
He returned home most days as what gran would refer to as half cut.
They were different times, an era when it was socially acceptable to beat your children. One day under the influence of scrumpy and with a wet top half,
From head standing in a bucket of water, He took the fire poker in order to smack my mother’s legs, too inebriated to realise it was hot
from poking the coals in the fireplace. Which explains the scar
On her leg. Being a feisty teenager without reckoning she grabbed a nearby chair and collapsedit on his head. I know what your thinking, this is very serious
But it actually was not as the chair was old, wobbly and already falling apart. It demolished instantly leaving grandad completely unscathed.
They remained good friends and family so no real damage done. The leg scar merely being a family get together story,
although I don’t remember mum including how wobbly the chair was
Only the fact she broke it on his head. I suppose it held some kind of street cred like an ASBO, don’t mess with her she uses chairs.
Gran lived in her own little bubble suspicious and mistrusting of any stranger or new face including all the relationships her children had.
The big outside world was something she feared and sheltered from, wrongly assuming any foreign national would even go as far as eating people.
In her fears a lot of her views were instilled into her children, growing up in such a reclusive situation.
Including my mother, so we didn’t have visitors or family friends we did however clean the whole house and become respectable
for doctors or vicars to visit.
Mum never made friends with our neighbours and if it ever got noisy outside, a neighbour disagreement or something else, mum would quickly demand
“Close the curtains they’ll think were not home” darkness held no fear for myself or my siblings as regular curtain closingimmunes us to the lack of light.
It was a time when DoctorBarnardo’s donated much loved used toys nothing new like nowadays. It is quite frightening to excitedly rip off the wrapping paper
To a game of ludo with no counters or the scariest doll with twisted glass eyes and matted hair.
We cut our own paper dolls from cardboard and made them clothes from wrappers, something my sisters did much better than me.
A fruit and veg man in a van came once a week feeling sorry for our family, he gave us a box of whatever was gone off for free.
I can remember my excitementwhen my dad said he was saving one banana which was running out of its skin just for me.
If I opened my mouth at the dentist I could have a banana, my mouth was open for the whole journey, I sat opened mouthed immediately
In the dentists chair, then at home with my jealous siblings I had a whole black runny banana, best day ever.
I can remember a man giving us some live chickens, dad asked, no not asked told me to hold while he killed one for dinner that night.
The local butcher gave us going off meat, pigs head, ox tail now I don’t know if anyone here has tried hairyox tail soup, if not I would advise do not.
We pushed dads car more than we sat in it, the car had one back door missing certainly a road safety issue given there were no seat belt laws.
Messing about my siblings decided to push me out, which they did achieve, after getting up off the road dad smacked me with a rolled-up newspaper kept in the car for
Messing about issues.
We weren’t abused it was the way of the world back then, perfectly ok to smack your children. We were poor but so was everyone we knew.
Mum bought piles of remnants from the exchange and mart news paper which on her sewing machine fashioned our clothes for best.
By best I mean doctors and vicars visits. Although were now in the 60’s a modern era for most, but oh no not for us. On her sewing machine she made me
A bright yellow, and I do mean bright yellow smock to wear on my visit to secondary school. The other girls wore black skirts and white tops. Alas not I,
my smock encouraged much mocking to the point that a fight occurred. I starting secondary school not knowing my way around as due to fighting on my visit
when I was made stand still in a corridor for the whole time, I didn’t know where any of the rooms were.
Although miming the head mistresses limp kinda made up for that.
Anyhow this story is not about life at school, lets return to my mum. Dad was more outgoing than mum, he accepted the 60’s to a degree, but mum wasn’t able to.
Living much like my grandmother in an era long past, she was a homely woman content with her lot in life. Her life revolved around cooking and cleaning, she exceled in both.
Not so much in dress making or playing her music box. She was a self-taught musician at Christmas her accordion emerged from the cupboard for traditionalChristmas hymns
to almost the right tune.
I am not sure if she wanted children or not, she definitely strived to keep us alive but not sure what for. Neither of my parents told us stories, or gave us a cuddle but then again,
I didn’t know any parents that didthat with their own children. Just a sign of those times, I guess.
Well, that’s not strictly true, when we were teenagers, I can remember dad turning innocent stories into something much darker. He had a quick sense of humour. What he said the wolf did to granny
Was nothing less than sexual abuse. Yet the way he told it was funny. He did this with several fairy tales, I did find it a bit extreme when he started doing it with who begat who in the bible.
And dads begetting made me feel for these character’s. Mum would sit with a very disapproving face, but like I said we were teenagers not little children.
Enough of this lets get on to my mum, at forty she was told she was dying, myself and my siblings had never spoken to mum as young adults as to her we were still her children.
Even though I had a 38-inch bust I was still wearing a vest with matching knickers as she thought us to young to wear woman’s clothes. So, I think we were all to nervous to ask questions
About cancer, as she would say, “ little children without a beard should be seen and never heard”. We knew by this she meant we were children who should notask adult questions.We
Spoke about garden flowers as we knew that was ok as one of our chores was the garden. There were so many chores to do every day it is a good job none of us cared about school homework.
As there was never time to do any, we were all in school detention every week hey howhat’s yet another slap on the face gonna matter.
She lost lots of weight, looked greyish in colour, very much unlike her she asked to be in hospital.
Walking the hospital corridor at visiting time I could hear this unsettling noise, a patient groaning quite loudly. On arrival to the ward, it was mum, she had deteriorated
Very fast, no longer speaking or recognising us, the hospital staff assured us she could hear so we spoke about planting some polyanthus when she gets home. There was huge gaps
In conversation where we just sat silent not sure what else to talk about , the next day at visiting time her bed had been moved down the ward beside the door.
She now lay the first bed as we arrived in the ward. The doctor explained that was because
She would die that night, and it would not be upsetting for the other patients. They would be able to just wheel her out, as night approached, we were told only two at a time beside her bed.
We took it in turns of sitting with mum, then swapping over and sitting in the visitors room. While I was sat one side of her bed and a sibling on the other some thick smelly
Liquid rolled off her bed on to the floor, from her bowel cancer, I think. We were asked to go to the visitors room while the nurses cleaned her.
“I am aware I just write a sibling throughout this account, but as you know I am one of twelve, it is just easier than remembering which one it was at that time” Although I do remember the event itself
In much detail.
All cleaned up a sibling and myself went back to mum, the others had fallen asleep in chairs in the visitors room. At three am Sat talking quietly as most patients were asleep
Mums body jolted quite violently a few times, the noise she was making ceased, and she was gone. My first response was numbness like I was on an Archimedes
screw turning in silence going nowhere. My sibling ran just ran and ran up hospital corridors and around the hospital car park. Mum’s illness from diagnosis until death had lasted exactly
five weeks. How could someone forty years old with a family that loves her be dead. It did not make any sense to me at all, my mind kept going blank like it was denying me the chance to process
it all. There she lay on a hospital bed in front of me dead, gone! But gone where? Gone why?
Family in the visitors room where gently woken and informed, together we said goodbye to mum, then walked the corridors to the car park in total silence, siblings but I don’t know which ones
Supported dad to walk. We with some gentle persuasion convinced our runner to stop running get in a car and we all went back to mum & dads house.
Their house felt so empty, its family atmosphere had gone, we all looked deflated and the only air to blow us all back up was gone. After about an hour someone,
I don’t know who suggested we all go home and get some rest. I don’t know about the others, but I did not rest, I never slept for two days, I had to make sense of it.
But I could not, a gypsy friend told me that because she had one eye slightly open, that it meant there was something she wanted to do before she left us.
Filled with hope I search out sooth sayers, I find one with the best reputation who claims that she even predicts for famous people.
I sit in a small room in her house, there is a couple of chairs and a few dangling wind chimes above a crystal ball on the tablebelow them.
She never told me a thing about mum, I was so disappointed, numb, broken.She never wore make up, she looked different laid in a pink lined coffin in the chapel of rest.
Her short hair was brushed differently, bright red lipstick adorned her thin lips complimented with a light blue eye shadow going right up to her eyebrows.
There she lay looking dressed for a pantomime with one eye still open. Around her lifeless wrist a bracelet given to her on her 16thbirthday.
It was of no value, I had never seen her wear it but had seen it before in her white leather jewel box filled with cheap trinkets.
Her funeral was attended by about 25 – 30 people, it was a rainy windy February day,
The wind so strong people adjusted their footing to avoid being blown over. The vicar spoke of God and a little about mum,
the local gazette printed a bit in their obituary column.
We returned as a family minus one the next day when the hole was filled in together read messages on cards attached to flowers.
Six months later again we return to view the erected black headstone, which apart from memoriesis all that is left of her.
I was left with a cold matter of fact emptiness, people said things like sorry for your loss which I did not acceptas that is just lip service.
Comments like I know how you must feel and the worst one it will feel better in time. Oh great, so what your telling me is in time
That fact my mum died young at age 40 will not matter, the fact we need her our mother, wife, friend, but hey ho in time it will not matter.
Although it was a short illness she died in great pain, but goody cos time will heal that.
My mothers death belonged to me I had no intention of sharing it with these people. Then there are the other people who consciously
talk about the weather or anything non death related. Strangers in town do not see your pain, one might say morning as they pass you in the
street, or say I see you have only got one item in your basket would you like to go in front of me in the supermarket queue. You just do what you have to do in town
in an empty daze. How small she really was and how little missed, she wasn’t a pop star or celebrityshe was just a no one. I wonder as people walk in the graveyard
if any of them read her headstone, and just in passing for a moment in time know her, oh bless she was only 40 years old, a wife and a mother.
Saddest thing is they were right, in time the pain does subside, as the years pass my siblings and I wonder what she would be like now,
or what she wouldthink of her grand kids.
Were all certain the death of the queen would have definitely upset her. We made a pact that none of us would celebrate our birthdays until we were 40.
A pact we never kept, anyhow my lovely I write this letter 50 years on from that eventI have struggled to be back there in my thoughts to grasp the
emotions that we shared at that time, but alas I cannot. I might send a copy to my councillor to see what madness he’ll prescribe me as having.
I hope all is good in your part of this crazy world, will write again soon. Always your sibling Amor. xx
