by Tara J Lal
He walked off purposefully, even though he had no idea of where he was or in what direction he was heading. The three of us sat wide-eyed in the back.
‘Daddy, please come back!’ I squealed.
Mum was silent for a while as she contemplated how best to deal with this curious change in her husband’s behaviour. Then she got out of the car and apologized to him, an action that was as uncharacteristic of her as rebellion was of him.
I know Mum had a tender side but she rarely showed it. She could be very funny too. I remember her taking us by surprise as she hid behind a wall during one of our family holidays. We wondered where she’d gone until we saw her head appearing slowly from behind the stone bricks, first a few stray curls of blonde hair, then her eyes, bright and cheeky, followed by her nose and lips, all her features contorted into a cartoon-like caricature, leaving only her head visible.
We kids giggled, desperate for more of our mischievous mum. She paused briefly before sinking slowly once more behind the wall, waiting for a minute before repeating the manoeuvre with another stupid un-Mum-like face, ending the whole show by walking up and down imaginary stairs as per Marcel Marceau, which of course caused us all to fall about with laughter.
I loved to see Mum laugh, but increasingly those rare glimpses of lightness became swamped by the burden of Dad’s illness and the strains of family life. There always seemed to be too much to do.
Then things got a whole lot worse. Mum got sick. I was eight when she found a lump in her left breast. She didn’t do anything about it immediately. She was frightened. My Mum, frightened? It didn’t seem possible. She was too strong to be scared.
She sent us to stay at my aunt and uncle’s place in Northumberland while she had her mastectomy. I sat and ever so carefully made her a Get Well card, drawing little feet all the way across the envelope, tracing a convoluted journey back home.
Did I understand what it meant? No, not really. I knew Mum was ill and I knew she had cancer. I knew people died of cancer. But Mum was okay; she was getting better.
We used to visit her at the Royal Free Hospital when she was having chemotherapy. I would help bake cakes for her and make cups of tea, but I had no real understanding of what was going on. I just knew I should be good and not cause trouble. Mum was ill, and that meant we had to try to help her; so was Dad, but he didn’t look ill. Nothing in his appearance told us he was unwell, so we couldn’t understand. We didn’t know how to help him.
One evening when Mum was in hospital I was at home with Dad. He was working and I was on the couch in front of the television.
‘Tara, it’s time to go and see your mother,’ Dad muttered from the other end of the room, where he sat at his desk. I rolled my eyes. Dallas was on at 8pm. It was getting really exciting. We were getting close to finding out who shot JR Ewing. I’d miss it if I went to the hospital.
‘I’m going to stay here, Dad. Dallas is on.’
‘Are you sure, Tara?’
‘Yep, I’ll go tomorrow.’ Phew, I thought as I nestled into the couch, eyes glued to the television.
Later that night Dad returned from the hospital.
‘Your mother’s upset, Tara.’
‘Why?’ I asked, even though I knew the answer.
‘Because you didn’t go and visit her.’
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling guilty. It had seemed so important to watch Dallas. So I baked a cake and took it up to the hospital the next day. Mum didn’t say anything, but I saw the disappointment in her eyes. From that day on I knew I was selfish.
I can recall random events through the course of Mum’s illness, yet my memories have no emotion attached to them. When Mum had to get a hairpiece, all I remember was thinking that it was way too grey for her. I thought it looked terrible and I was embarrassed by it. It never occurred to me how traumatic it must have been for Mum to lose her hair – or her breast, for that matter.
She got a new swimming costume that had an extra piece of material to cover the side where she’d had the mastectomy. Mum told me that it would look less obvious if the costume had the extra material only on the one side. I thought it looked weird. Especially as, being Mum, she had sewn the fabric piece into the costume herself: fuchsia pink with a white floral pattern, although her costume was navy blue.
Those are the things I remember. The material signs of her illness. Not the symptoms or the trauma.
CHAPTER 4
I was always worried about being in the way or being a nuisance. I saw the burden on my mum and, not knowing how else to help, I shrank. I did everything possible to avoid conflict, to avoid being seen.
At school, I was the ultimate goody-goody. I never did anything wrong or drew attention to myself. When a teacher praised me in class for being picked to train with one of the country’s top athletics coaches I tried to hide my head under the desk. The further I shrank the safer I felt. And the only way I knew how to help was to be good.
There had to be a cost for the load my mother had been carrying and continued to carry. She was not only a mother, but also a father, a worker and a patient. So many things sucked the life from her, and the space for tenderness became ever smaller.
She battled to stay alive. She turned vegan, and suddenly we were eating raw courgettes and spinach salads. One day I ran into the living room and found her perched on a meditation stool. I just wanted to know where my T-shirt was. She drank carrot juice three times a day until her fingertips started to turn orange and the man in the grocery shop at the end of our road asked if we had a donkey. I just thought it was weird.
It was an irony that my father wanted his life to end* while my mother did everything possible to keep hers going.
As hard as Mum fought, she couldn’t stop the cancer and it returned as liver metastases.
We went to Wales on a family holiday and, instead of camping, we stayed in a place that provided meals for us. Wow, I thought. This is fantastic.
As always, Mum had driven us there.
‘I think we’ll stop and have a rest.’ She turned to us in the back. ‘How would you like a milkshake?’
‘Yes please, Mum!’
This is getting better and better, I thought. We were never allowed milkshakes.
In the service station Mum disappeared into the bathroom. We finished our milkshakes and there was still no sign of her. Slowly my excitement drained away and was replaced by a feeling of anxiety.
‘Why’s Mum taking so long?’
‘Your mother is not feeling so well,’ Dad said.
‘Oh.’
Dad didn’t say anything more but he looked worried and that made me scared. We sat in silence.
After an hour or so, Mum reappeared. It was then that I saw how jaundiced and bloated she had become, how thin and brittle her hair. However much she tried, there was no way now that she could hide her illness from us. It was draining the life from her in front of our eyes.
We got back in the car and continued the journey. Mum didn’t say anything about what had happened. She never complained, not once through her entire illness. When she had found out that her cancer had returned, she sat down with us and talked about death for the first time. I was twelve years old and all the time I was thinking: What do you mean? You’re having treatment; you’re getting better. Other people die from cancer but not you. You’re my mum. You can’t die. You just can’t.
I went to school the next day and broke down in tears. They called my dad to pick me up but he was ill himself, unable to do anything for anybody. I went to bed that night and sobbed. Mum heard me and came into my room. She tried to comfort me but she could not reassure me of the one thing I needed to hear: that she would always be there.
At that moment I realized for the first time that maybe it wasn’t going to be okay; that maybe, just maybe, the world wasn’t a safe place after all. I saw the word ‘loss’ on the horizon and I tried to push it away behind a cloud.
I only witnessed my mum’s despair once in the whole time she w
as ill. My father called us all into their bedroom, where my mum lay curled up on her side. Dad sat next to Mum on the edge of the bed, slumped, resting his hand on her shoulder. I’d never seen my mother like that before. She looked vulnerable. It frightened me.
‘Your mother needs to talk to you all,’ my father said softly.
‘I think I’m dying. I don’t want to leave you …’ My mother’s voice wavered, trailing off.
Our responses said a lot about our personalities.
My sister was strong and practical. ‘Mum, you have to believe you’re getting better. Be strong and fight it.’
My brother stood slightly away from the bed, quietly internalizing it all.
I simply curled up next to Mum and cried.
* The vast majority of people who take their own life or experience suicidal thoughts do not want to die. They want their pain to end. Suicide is essentially an attempt to solve the problem of intense psychological pain.
CHAPTER 5
The phone rang when I was playing a board game with my best friend, Kitty. It was Dad. He sounded different.
‘Uh, Tara … um … I think you should come to the hospital to see your mother.’
Kitty and I walked up the road in silence, two thirteen-year-old girls. I knew; Kitty knew. We didn’t speak, but I had a heavy feeling of foreboding that would become hauntingly familiar to me in the ensuing years, a backpack on my soul.
At the junction, I said goodbye to Kitty and continued up the road to the hospital. I was feeling nervous.
My mother lay in her hospital bed, semi-conscious, drowsy. A nurse drew the curtains around us and I stood beside the bed, distant, watching. Mum’s speech was slurred and she fought to keep her eyes from closing. Still she tried to comfort me. I sat helpless, a blank mind, only tears to speak the language of my soul, for she was leaving me, slipping slowly and helplessly away.
The weekend Mum died Adam was on Dartmoor, participating in the Ten Tors event with his school team. The organizers had to locate the team and then airlift Adam to London by helicopter so that he could get to the hospital in time. He was fifteen years old. The three of us, Adam, Jo and I, went to the hospital. I didn’t realize we were there to say goodbye. Or maybe I did but didn’t want to, or didn’t know how.
That night I awoke, panicking. I couldn’t sleep. Darkness was closing in. What if Mum dies before I have time to see her? I have to see her one more time. I have to say goodbye. I have to …
I got out of bed, agitated. I don’t remember who was there or who took me to the hospital. My recollection of this time is so confused.
I entered the hospital through Accident and Emergency. It seemed different at night, quiet, subdued, surreal, as if it were beckoning death. I do not remember saying goodbye, yet I must have done so, otherwise why would I have gone to the hospital in the dead of night? It seems cruel that I cannot recall the one moment I most wish to hold on to.
Adam remembered saying goodbye to Mum. Much later, I found a scrap of paper, torn from an A4 lined notebook. On one side was a series of maths equations:
x/30 + x = 7/13
13x = 7(30 + x)
13x = 210 + 7x
6x = 210
x = 210/6
On the other side, in Adam’s familiar spindly handwriting:
For all those I love …
The peace of love for my mother
I came and watched; my only contribution to a dying body. In my mind was a deathly emptiness, a tear of confused emotion compared to the reality of the love falling from my eyes. The peace that she held was contradicted by the hoarse roughness of her fight for her very own fleeing life. There before me lay the scaffold of my soul, the support upon which my own life had grown.
His words captured the moment of disconnection so eloquently. One brutal cutting of the cord that binds you to life, the cord that connects you not only to the one you love, but also to the world around you and to yourself. When slashed it leaves you flailing, floating, ungrounded, disconnected. Two entwined souls separating, brutally wrenched from each other’s grip. Therein lay the foundations of grief, captured in an instant yet valid for a lifetime.
I woke the next morning to find that Mum had passed away in the early hours. Her brother Michael had been with her when she died. Dad wasn’t coping. Once again, I don’t remember who told me she was gone: was it my uncle, my sister, my aunt? I only remember my reaction to the news.
‘I’m glad.’
At thirteen years old I thought this was the mature thing to say. Mum was not suffering any more and I should be happy for that. How could I be glad that I had lost my mother? I didn’t know how I was supposed to act or to be. When would I be allowed to smile again? What were you supposed to do when your mother died? No one told me that.*
The days after Mum’s death are hazy, blurred and lacking in continuity. I don’t remember the pain, only random meaningless instants in time. Like Suzy, my aunt and uncle’s dog lying growling at the base of our stairs, making it impossible for anyone to pass. I was only concerned about acting grown-up, wearing something nice to the funeral. How come it was okay for Jo to wear red to the funeral, but not for me to wear electric blue? What was the difference?
I only remember two things from the funeral (and I wasn’t wearing my electric-blue top). Firstly, I recall trying not to giggle as I heard my aunt, who is tone deaf, singing next to me. I was supposed to be sad and my suppressed laughter sat awkwardly within the grief. I berated myself. Secondly, I remember the crematorium. I stood and watched as the coffin moved along the conveyor belt through the curtains and into the fire. I wanted to run to it, to reach out and pull it back. I looked desperately around at all the people. Why did no one stop it? Couldn’t they see that she was leaving, that I wasn’t ready to say goodbye? Why are you all just standing there doing and saying nothing? I screamed a silent ‘Noooo … come back, don’t leave’. I wanted to run to it, to her, to hold on to her, to go with her into the fire. Anything but lose her. But no sound came from my mouth, no movement from my body. I remained paralysed, locked in emotional chains, a straitjacket of fear. I stood and watched, helpless, yearning, grief-stricken.
* It is important that children are supported through the grieving process in a developmentally and age appropriate way. I highly recommend you refer to the grief resources at the end of this book for guidance on how to talk with children about death and grief.
CHAPTER 6
Dad was acting strangely. He was the most joyous I’d ever seen him, possessed by a manic happiness. He talked incessantly, ranting and excited. He didn’t seem like Dad at all. It was as if Mum’s decline was the best thing that ever happened to him, filling him with superhuman energy and charisma. He was planning a new life of restaurants and freedom; how to spend his money. I had never seen him like this.
The mania could tip into paranoia. I remember one day sitting at the top of the stairs, hugging my legs, chin resting on my knees, listening to Dad’s voice, which was raised in a howl.
‘They’ve been following me. I’m telling you, they are! They think I don’t know but I do!’
Then the confused voice of our neighbour, ‘Who’s been following you, Shev?’
‘They’ve been tapping my phone. They’re all in it. They’re listening.’
‘No one’s following you, Shev.’
I went back to my room, feeling sick and confused. Later I found out that this paranoid fancy that he was being followed by Russian spies was just one in a series. Jo, being seventeen, heard much more: he had told her that he was going to move to the country and become a reclusive alcoholic (strange, as he didn’t really drink) and that he was going to sell the house for virtually nothing because ‘it didn’t matter’ and would give the proceeds to an Indian charity.
When Dad’s brother came over from Canada for the funeral he took one look at my father and immediately had him admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Over the next year Dad was allowed to come home for weekends at firs
t, which became longer stays over time.
Mum had done everything in her power to organize things so that we were supported after her death. We were all minors and she didn’t want us separated or looked after by strangers. She had been frightened for our future, knowing that my father would be unlikely to cope. None of us knew or could possibly guess how he would react when she died.
She had arranged for us to have family therapy. I found the sessions weird, as if the therapist, a large lady with a bun on top of her head, was trying to invade our family. She was adamant that the three of us should be farmed out separately to different families. I was to go to my best friend Kitty’s family; Adam was to go to our next-door neighbour; Jo was to go to a family that lived round the corner with whom we used to go on holiday.
I remember being asked if I wanted to go and live with Kitty and her family. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to offend anyone, but inside I screamed ‘No’. It wasn’t going to be the same. They weren’t my family. I just wanted my family. I wanted my family to be together again like it used to be. Why couldn’t it be the way it was before? But I said nothing.
Thankfully, not long before she died, Mum had asked her brother Michael and his wife Margaret to take care of us in the event that Dad wasn’t able to. Mum was close to my aunt Margaret. They had been friends for years, and in the months leading up to my mother’s death they had spoken every day.
Although my aunt and uncle became our legal guardians they lived in Newcastle, several hours away, and had their own children to care for. Luckily for us, though, they fought tooth and nail for the three of us to stay together, even taking the case to the High Court.
At last, a plan was made. As no one knew how long Dad would be in hospital, and as Jo was seventeen and a minor, it was decided that a room in our house would be rented to a lodger and we would go to our neighbours for dinner every night. Wednesday evenings I would spend with Kitty’s family.
