Mum's List

by St. John Greene

  “Good!” Kate replied.

  “That’s it, I’m going home!” I retorted.

  “Told you!” Kate spat. “You just don’t want to spend time with my family!”

  “I hate camping, Kate, not your family! Give me a break!”

  I’d been there all of twenty minutes, and I drove the two-hour journey home alone, feeling absolutely livid. Kate phoned me later that night, when we’d both calmed down.

  “You probably did the right thing,” she said generously. “I think camping is one thing we have to agree to disagree on.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate. I miss you. Kiss the boys for me. Acres and acres.”

  “Acres and acres.”

  We never went to bed on a row. “Never leave more than a week before making up—life is too short.”

  When Kate put that on her list I promised I would always remember that phone call and teach the boys to kiss and make up as quickly as possible.

  * * *

  Now I packed up the car ready for just me and the boys. The next morning an excited Finn raced into the kitchen at the crack of dawn wearing sunglasses and a cap and with a rucksack already on his back, bulging with books and toys.

  “Can we go now, Daddy? Can we?” he asked excitedly.

  “We certainly can, as soon as you’ve eaten up your breakfast,” I smiled, ruffling his hair.

  Reef appeared, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  “I can’t wait to see Nanny,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “She’s got me a new game for my DS for doing the scan.”

  My heart went out to him. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Reef to talk about scans. He knew more than a child his age ever should about hospitals and cancer, and I vowed in that moment to do my level best to make this holiday as much fun as possible.

  “Come on, happy campers!” I said, and the three of us climbed into the Freelander with a spring in our step.

  Despite our argument, Kate remained a devotee of family camper holidays and “Go camping with cousins or let boys go for long weekends” was right up there at the top of Mum’s List. She had thoughtfully given me a get-out clause, knowing her parents would always take the boys camping with them if I didn’t want to go. It was too soon after her death for that, I thought. I wanted to be with Reef and Finn as much as possible, even if it did mean sleeping in a box in a field.

  The car was rammed from floor to ceiling with kites, snorkeling equipment and buckets and spades, and we played loud music and told each other silly jokes all the way down to Ruda.

  “What do you call a man with a spade in his head?” I said.

  “Don’t know! Tell us, Daddy!” said Finn.

  “Doug!” I said.

  “Da-ddddy, that’s soooo silly!” Reef chuckled. “Tell us another one!”

  The sun was shining when we arrived at the campsite, and the holiday park seemed quieter than I remembered it. I soon realized why; the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano eruption had grounded flights, so the sky above was unusually silent and still. I explained this to the boys, and Reef thought for a moment before saying, “Mummy won’t be able to send us any kisses.” It had become something of a hobby for the boys to spot white kisses in the sky, ever since the day Kate died and they saw the two planes leaving a perfect cross above us. Even so, I didn’t see that comment coming.

  “It won’t be for long,” I said, feeling choked and completely taken aback at how Reef had managed to get me once again, out of the blue.

  The boys and I soon got into a routine of me cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast and the kids invading Nanny and Grandad’s camper and playing with various cousins, aunts and uncles before we flew kites together or headed to the pool or the beach.

  Kate’s family were brilliant. We had about eight campers between us, and there was always a familiar face around. Everyone offered practical help and support, and I was rarely alone, but I still felt incredibly lonely without Kate.

  “Mummy took us down there,” Finn said, pointing to some rock pools on the beach one morning.

  “Mummy was very good at catching crabs,” Reef said.

  “I know,” I said. “Do you remember that day when we all went rock-pooling at Llantwit Major and Mummy picked up that really big crab?”

  Both boys nodded. They were only little when we did that, I thought. It was well over a year ago, and perhaps they remembered the fantastic photograph we took that day more than the day itself, as we had it framed and displayed at home.

  “We have to take the boys to Llantwit,” Kate said. “I can’t wait to teach them how to crab.”

  It was spring 2009 when the four of us went there. Kate was flying through her chemo and was already talking about when her treatment would be over, and how she couldn’t wait to have her long-awaited reconstruction.

  “I’m not going to put my life on hold,” she said so many times, and she was true to her word. If Kate wanted to do something, there was no time like the present. She told the boys all about her childhood trips to Llantwit on our journey there that spring.

  “Me and my cousins and your Uncle Ben would walk down the path from the campground to the beach,” she said. “It was a long path and would take us about half a day, but it was always worth the walk. When we got to the beach we went rock-pooling for hours and hours, catching lots of crabs and shrimps.”

  I chipped in. “Mummy is too modest to tell you she was the champion crab-catcher,” I told the boys conspiratorially. “Just you wait ’til you see her in action—she’s awesome!”

  Kate laughed.

  “I had my own rock,” she went on. “And I’d sit on it for hours and hours, catching crabs. I hope we can find it.”

  For old times’ sake, we decided to park up at the campsite and follow Kate’s well-trodden path down to the beach. We took the stroller for Reef, worrying it would be too far for him to walk. Much to my amusement, we’d only been walking for about ten minutes when we reached the beach, and I teased Kate mercilessly.

  “A half-day trek, you said! It’s a hop, skip and a jump!”

  She was amazed. “Honestly, it felt like a major hike back then,” she laughed. “Isn’t it funny what time and age does to you?”

  It was very easy to find Kate’s old rock, as the patch of beach the path took us to didn’t have that many rocks to choose from, which was another surprise. From Kate’s starry-eyed description anyone would have expected a vast, rambling landscape filled with rock pools galore as far as the eye could see. Kate was very excited when she sat on the old rock and crouched down over the pool of cloudy water, and Reef and Finn were as captive an audience as anyone could wish for.

  I loved her so much. She had no hair but was wearing a wig, and she had a “Picc line” tube dangling from her arm, which led up her arm and across her chest to a large vein just above her heart, to deliver chemo and other drugs. When she had the alarmingly long piece of tubing inserted under local anesthetic, just thinking about it made me cringe and cower. Kate shrugged and just got on with it, accepting that with the amount of drugs she needed, it was the most efficient method of receiving them, and there was no point in worrying about it.

  “Wait for it, wait for it . . .” she cautioned, before expertly scooping up a wonderful specimen of a crab.

  The boys shrieked with glee.

  “Daddy, look what Mummy’s caught!” said Reef.

  Before he knew it she’d scooped up another crab, which she gave to him to hold, carefully showing him how to handle it.

  “I told you she was a champion,” I said, smiling at Kate as I got the three of them to pose for a photograph.

  I absolutely love that photo. Kate was in her element, and she looked so well and happy, her eyes glowing with love for her little boys as she shared t
heir fun. Nobody could have guessed she had cancer, and I felt that day was a great landmark in her recovery. We had an ice cream, and Kate said: “We must do this again next year.” To anybody watching we were just a normal family on a day trip to the beach; a happily married couple with two cute little boys wearing matching grins and T-shirts.

  Soon we really would be normal again. Soon Kate’s treatment would be over, and soon we would be lying on the beach, just as we did when Reef’s treatment had ended the year before, saying: “We made it!” At least, that’s what I hoped and prayed and fully expected would happen.

  * * *

  I managed to give the boys a good holiday at Ruda, but it wasn’t easy by any stretch. After our falling-out in 2008, Kate had done the trip on her own with the boys in 2009. Now it was my turn to be on my own, and I had a constant feeling that I was walking in Kate’s footsteps. “Would like you to take them for walks along Mummy’s favorite beach where she used to go as a child,” Kate said. She had several favorite beaches as well as the one at Llantwit Major, and Croyde Bay near the campground was one of them.

  I took the boys there and felt bereft. I had some bubble gum in my pocket, and this felt like one of those moments when we should all have a piece.

  “Why are you sad, Daddy?” Finn asked, when he saw my face flush with emotion as I dished out the gum.

  “It’s special to come to one of Mummy’s favorite places,” I explained.

  He nodded and scampered off along the shore to find crabs with his brother.

  “This is how you do it,” I heard Reef saying to Finn, who had begun splashing around like a maniac in a rock pool, no doubt frightening off every crab on the coast.

  “You’ve got to be gentle and quiiiii-et!” Reef shouted as they both grabbed at the water.

  “Come on, boys, let’s try another pool, how about that one over there? Can I have a try this time?”

  I could just hear Kate saying that, but the words came from my mouth. For an uncomfortable moment I felt I was trying to actually be Kate, and I didn’t like it. Even her family expected me to be like Kate and do exactly what she did or might have done; at least, that’s how I felt.

  They knew Kate as the perfect daughter, the devoted mother, the caring, fun-loving sister, cousin, niece or auntie. She was all of those things, but I knew a Kate nobody else did. She was my blonde, passionate, gorgeous wife and lover. Nobody else knew that side of Kate, and nor should they. That was our private life, but on that holiday it made me feel slightly disconnected from the rest of the family. I could join in when they occasionally shared an old family story about Kate, but they didn’t know the half of my life with Kate and all the wonderful memories we had. Only I and Kate knew; and now I had nobody to share them with.

  “Come back, Kate, all is forgiven,” somebody said one day when I spilled sun cream on Reef’s T-shirt. The words were meant as a light-hearted tribute to Kate, praising her skills as a mum, but they shocked me. I knew it was just a way of remembering Kate, of referring to her without really talking about her. I could see that, but I didn’t like it. I would have been much happier to have a heart to heart, to sit down and really reminisce about Kate, than to hear obtuse references about what a great mother she was.

  I bit my tongue and rather begrudgingly accepted I had to fit in with lots of other people, all of who loved and missed Kate in their own different ways. The last day was the worst. We visited a dinosaur park, where we quite literally retraced Kate’s footsteps. It felt like the boys spent the entire day saying: “Mummy did this” and “Mummy did that” as they worked their way around the attractions, and it was draining.

  I could clearly envisage Kate explaining all about meat-eaters and plant-eaters, calling the boys over to look at the dinosaur eggs and fossils and laughing her head off when the giant model velociraptor shook its head and roared angrily, making visitors jump out of their skin.

  There was a bit of light relief at one point, when Reef was so desperate for the loo he had to nip behind a bush. Hilariously, he waited until the model T. rex was looking the other way and whispered conspiratorially: “Hope he doesn’t turn round now or we’re all in BIG trouble!” It was a funny moment, and I laughed. It reminded me of a similar occasion, during Reef’s treatment, when he had made Kate laugh on a camping holiday to Wales, as he tiptoed into a wood and spent ages picking out a suitable bush, where nobody would see him.

  I realized so much of the pleasure of family days out came from seeing Kate’s reaction to the boys. Normally on days out like that we’d hold hands, walking just behind the boys so we could keep an eye on them and enjoy seeing their reactions. Now I felt lonely, smiling away to myself.

  In the restaurant the boys and I sat at what turned out to be the exact table Kate had sat at with them the previous April, practically a year to the day in fact.

  “Mummy had a HUGE strawberry ice cream!” Reef remembered when he looked at the menu card.

  “Mummy catched a butterfly,” Finn said later. “Can you catch one, Daddy?”

  “No,” I said instinctively. “Mummy was really good at catching butterflies, much better than me. I can’t do everything as well as Mummy did, you know.”

  There was a slightly awkward silence and both boys studied my face.

  “That’s OK, Daddy,” Reef said eventually. “You are still cool, you know.”

  “Gimme five,” I said, grinning as I raised my hands. Both boys gave me a high five, and we climbed in the car.

  I felt relieved as we drove home. I’d not only survived the holiday, I’d learned from it. I didn’t have to be a clone of Kate to keep the boys happy. In fact, it wouldn’t be right if I tried to copy Kate. She was their mum, and she was a hard act to follow. It was right to keep her memory alive, but it was also right to let the boys know things were different now.

  Chapter 6

  “Mummy liked walks along the beach and Mendips, rockpooling and walks in the woods and finding creatures of all kinds”

  “How long before I start big school, Daddy?” Finn asked one morning.

  He was still at the lovely little Montessori nursery Kate had first chosen for Reef in Clevedon, but he was desperate to join his big brother at All Saints School.

  “Well, it’s nearly June, and you start in September,” I said. Finn looked a bit blank. “It’s lots and lots and lots of sleeps—about a hundred,” I explained. “There are about eight more weeks left before the summer holidays, and then about six weeks off, and then you start big school.”

  Finn’s face fell. “That’s aaages and aaaages,” he complained. “Why can’t I go now?”

  He raced off up to the spare room before I could answer, and I heard him batter his toy drum kit for all it was worth. It had been given to him as a gift from a neighbor who had heard about Kate’s wish for him to learn drums, and he absolutely loved it.

  “Be quiet, Finn,” Reef shouted from their bedroom. “Why are you always so LOUD?”

  Reef was reading a book, and I realized how quickly both boys were growing up. It didn’t seem five minutes since they were crawling around in diapers and now, to my delight, I suddenly saw them as two little men who were developing their own amazing characters. I thought about Kate’s list. I’d done so many things already, but I wondered now if I was ticking things off quickly enough. Even some of the simple things hadn’t been arranged, like recorder or guitar lessons for Reef and drum and keyboard classes for Finn. When Kate was alive I always wanted to be the perfect husband, because Kate was such a perfect wife. Now that she was gone I still wanted to be her perfect husband, but was I managing it? Reef and Finn would soon both be at school, and before I knew it they would need me less and less. What if I actually didn’t complete the list before the boys grew up? I couldn’t live with myself if I let Kate down.

  I went upstairs and picked up the copy of Mum’
s List from my bedside table. It was the first time I’d really studied it in months, and I scanned it quickly at first, before savoring the words. I looked across to Kate’s side of the bed.

  “Always help them if they ask,” she said.

  “Of course I will,” I said, feeling slightly puzzled. I thought what an obvious thing that was to ask me to do. She knew I would always help them, even without them having to ask, and certainly without the need for it to be spelled out on the list. Now, though, I saw a deeper meaning. The boys would always need me. I would still be their dad when they were grown up and had children of their own. I realized lots of other things on the list would always stay with us too, no matter how much time passed.

  I looked at the little things Kate had detailed that she liked and disliked. “Loved guinea pigs and butterflies, Walnut Whips, strawberry cheesecake.” “Did not like windy weather.” “Like wild flowers—red campion, cuckoo spit, daisies, primroses and flowers in wedding arrangement.” “Mummy loved moths, snakes and slowworms, orange Club biscuits, jam and jelly, lemon curd.” “Did not like tomatoes unless in sauce or soup.” “Mummy loved ivory roses, ivy, gypsophila.”

  I stared at the words and they became images, projected on to my brain like video clips, showing Kate cuddling our guinea pigs in the back garden, then peeling the wrapper off an orange Club biscuit and picking up a knife to spread lemon curd on her toast. I saw Kate getting all annoyed on the beach as she tried to pack up the jet-ski and the wind blew her hair in her face. She hated the wind, she really did. In the next clip I saw her holding her wedding bouquet, which was packed with the prettiest ivory roses and gypsophila I’d ever seen, and Kate gave a broad, contented smile as she leaned forward and breathed the sweet perfume of the flowers.

  When she wrote those things I saw them as touching, personal details of her life, but I didn’t view them with the same importance as the instructions and requests she included. Now I saw them in a different light. They were incredibly important reminders of Kate that might otherwise have been lost and forgotten in time. They were things I could tell the boys any time I wanted, poignant reminders of Kate that would stay with us throughout our lifetimes.