Mum's List

by St. John Greene

  I thought about Kate kissing the boys for the very last time. She hugged them tight as she lay in her hospital bed the day before she died, not knowing if it would be the last chance she would ever have to kiss them. Still, she kissed them as she always did, with joy and affection, and love in her heart, making them feel like the most special little people in the world. The boys had no idea it could be, would be the last time. Their brave mum looked into their eyes and smiled like she had done so many times before.

  “I’m going to have my handprints put on to a canvas,” she told them. Pausing to pull in some breath from her oxygen mask, she added: “I thought it would be nice if we all did it, and made a family handprint picture.”

  “What color can mine be?” Reef asked.

  “You can choose,” Kate said.

  “I want green,” Finn said.

  “I would like red and blue,” Kate said.

  I took a photograph, not realizing it would be the last one of Kate and the boys together. Only Kate knew that; at least, I think she did.

  Now I had a very powerful feeling that you never really know what’s round the corner. Anything could happen, at any time. Reef’s cancer could come back, or I could be run over by a bus on Clevedon High Street tomorrow. Who knows? All we can do is try to live each day as if it’s our last.

  I wasn’t looking forward to delivering the bad news about the boat to the boys, but it certainly wasn’t the worst news I’d ever delivered, and when the moment came I just told them straight.

  “Look, boys, I am really sorry,” I said. “The boat got hit by a lifeboat, and it’s a bit smashed up. It was an accident, and it can be repaired . . .”

  Reef burst into tears on the spot, while Finn shrugged his little shoulders and stomped off in a sulk.

  “When can we have it back?” Reef sobbed. He was absolutely distraught, and I felt tears pricking the backs of my eyes as I looked at him like that.

  “Reef, we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can. I can’t say exactly how long it will take because there’s a lot of damage to be fixed, but I promise you we’ll get it back, and when we do it’ll be better than new.”

  “How can it be better than new?” Reef asked, reasonably.

  “I’m going to get extra gadgets put on it, like radar reflectors and a radio, to make it safer in future,” I explained.

  Finn reappeared a couple of minutes later and gave me a little cuddle, which helped lift my mood.

  “Don’t get too upset,” I told them both. “It really isn’t the end of the world. I’m cross and upset too, but there’s no point in us all being cross and upset for ages and ages, is there?”

  They both looked at me and shook their heads, and I vowed to myself to draw a line under the whole sorry business there and then. Finn was starting school in less than two weeks, and we had plenty to do back home in preparation for the new term. I reminded the boys of this as we said our good-byes to the grandparents and headed home. Finn was all ears as I told him we still had a few items of uniform to buy and needed to go shopping for school shoes.

  “It’ll be good having you at my school,” Reef said, slipping his hand into Finn’s hot little palm. I seemed to have succeeded in pacifying the boys and changing the subject, but deep down I was still gutted about losing the boat myself. It was a gift from Kate, bought on her birthday, the day we now called Mum’s Day. It symbolized a new chapter in my life with the boys, and now it was all smashed up.

  I felt sorry for myself if I’m honest, and once the boys were in bed that night I started rooting around my bedroom for memories, not quite sure if I was trying to cheer myself up or indulge in a bit of self-pity. Most of Kate’s things had gone now. I’d packed up all the clothes and shoes I didn’t want to keep or give to friends and sent them off to the charity shop. Her old makeup and cosmetics were gone, except for her last bottle of Charlie Red perfume, which I still sprayed on my pillow at night to help me get to sleep.

  The room looked a lot more like a bachelor’s bedroom now, I realized. There were no soft, floaty skirts and tops peeping out of wardrobes, no sweet-smelling lotions and potions on the dressing table and no dangly earrings discarded on the bedside table. This was my room now, not our room.

  I looked at the bed and thought about how even that was mine and mine alone. Kate had ordered it when she got ill, when our waterbed was too soft to support her sore back. She wanted it to be her nest, somewhere the boys could snuggle in with her when she was too weak to get up. I imagined us making love in the new bed when Kate was better. We had to wait weeks for delivery, and in the meantime Kate had to use her grandmother’s old electric bed that had a memory foam mattress. When the new bed eventually arrived, Kate was in hospital, never to return. She never slept in it, not once. If she was looking down on me now, I could imagine her thinking the timing was a blessing. I didn’t have to lie alone in a bed we’d made love on.

  At the foot of the bed stood the treasure chests stuffed full of memories. Recently, Kate’s mum, Christine, had handed me copies of an e-mail diary she kept during Kate’s treatment, which she used to inform close friends and family of her daughter’s progress. I’d been asked to do another newspaper interview, following on from the coverage of Reef’s birthday party, and Christine thought the detail in her diary might help. I hadn’t wanted to read it until this point, but I guess I was in the mood for a good cry that night. I took the printed papers from their envelope and looked at the top page. The date on the first entry jumped out at me. It was written exactly two years before.

  August 20, 2008

  I am sorry to have to pass on some unpleasant news—Kate has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is having a mastectomy next Wednesday, August 27. She has two lumps in the same breast, one 1.9 cms and one 4 mm so a lumpectomy is not an option.

  This has all happened so swiftly and she is having the op at Weston General. Reconstruction at a later date and no knowledge of chemo or radiation until biopsies done from the operation. At the moment they are not up to communicating with anybody, but the little boys are fine. Kate is very positive about it all and thinks: “It’s just a nuisance and if Reef didn’t cry, I won’t either!” It’s been found early so fingers crossed.

  August 27, 2008

  Katie is as amazing as ever and is sat up in bed as though she has only had a wart removed. She reckons the small boob she had taken away was only about the size of Reef’s tumor, so what the heck! She consumed soup and two rolls and has been up and out of bed a bit. Her main discomfort at the moment are the cannulas (little tubes) inserted in her hand.

  Any ideas as to the answer to Reef’s questions: “How will I recognize if you’re my mummy if you don’t have your hair?” I would suspect the boys will be busy on her head with yellow felt tip pens!

  Singe has survived his side of the ordeal and stayed with her all day. Reef went off to the zoo with Lynne, his Disabled Team aide, and had a lovely time. Finn stayed at home with us and enjoyed playing with Reef’s toys while he had the chance

  August 29, 2008

  Katie is being discharged from hospital today and is hoping (!!!) for lots of rest. She will be attending a clinic Monday week for results and future treatments.

  August 31, 2008

  Katie is being so positive and even went to a birthday party with Reef on Saturday!!! She has good movement in her arm and is managing without painkillers at the moment. All she wants to do is get on with life and bugger what she looks like!

  I stared at the page in disbelief. It reminded me how hopeful we were at the start, how we fully expected Kate’s treatment to work and for her to emerge out of the other end of it with a breast reconstruction.

  “Who’d have thought this was how I’d get bigger boobs?” she laughed wearily. “Remember when I was a teenager and I kept thinking they’d get bigger? They never did, did they!”
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  Despite the fact Kate had always been flat-chested and the removal of her breast really didn’t look that obvious, she was very self-conscious after the mastectomy.

  “I don’t feel like a real woman,” she told me afterward.

  “Don’t be silly,” I soothed. “You’re still sex on legs!”

  “No, Singe, I’ve lost a part of my femininity and I need to put it back,” she replied.

  I told her I loved her however she looked, but Kate wasn’t comfortable in her skin, even when she had healed. If I touched her where her breast had been, she moved my hand away.

  “It feels kind of exposed and sensitive,” she said. “It’s weird seeing my ribs closer to the surface.”

  Inevitably, I suppose, our love life suffered. The passion of the past had already been sidelined by the stress and exhaustion of parenthood and caring for a sick child, and I missed the intimacy.

  “It won’t be like this forever,” she said.

  “That’s good, because I’ll love you forever,” I said.

  September 8, 2008

  Kate has been told she has Stage 2, Grade 3 cancer and is now classified as “common!” Thank goodness she found it early! The prognosis is 80 percent survival for ten years, but improving all the time. It had only spread to one lymph node. She will have chemo and radiation, starting in one to two weeks’ time. Reef started school this week and had a wonderful time. He likes using the “pewter” (computer to you and me).

  September 15, 2008

  Kate at last got to see the consultant. Her cancer is triple negative, which means it is not responsive to the easier hormone treatments and she will need to have the full whammy of strong chemotherapy and then radiation. She may also participate in a clinical trial for the drug Avastin, which they hope could reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence, but it does have to be taken three times a week for a year. Tough times ahead!!

  September 23, 2008

  Kate has been undergoing ECGs, echoes, blood tests etc at Weston and Bristol Hospitals to see if she is acceptable for the clinical trial of Avastin. At least she is able to drive again now following her operation and her arm movement is almost 100 percent, so the school runs are a little easier. The boys have settled into school happily now that they have got used to being split up at different schools, with Finn at the Montessori nursery. Although they are different personalities they get on well together—Reef is more thoughtful and imaginative than his hooligan little brother! Chemotherapy starts in a couple of weeks and I am not sure that the long blonde wig Singe fancies won’t make Kate look like a Barbie Doll. Roll on next summer!

  October 16, 2008

  Katie had her first chemotherapy today and had no problems. As she has been allocated the new Avastin drug as well as three different chemotherapy drugs, it took quite a long time. She arrived at 9:30 a.m. and left at 4 p.m., but hopefully it will take an hour or so less on following visits. Staff nurse Jamie who was on Children’s Ward 34 all the time Reef was on treatment popped up to see and reassure her, which was very kind.

  Katie will probably have a special cannula inserted in her upper arm next time for administering the chemotherapy, which will remain permanently in place for a year.

  Reef had a satisfactory check-up with his professor too today and came out with a special sticker for being a good boy. We then took him to the museum to see the dinosaur bones. Finn was at nursery in the morning and then went to Puxton Park Play Barn with the disabled team care worker.

  Katie came home feeling tired and a bit woozy but ate a hearty tea (homemade special lasagne—thank you, Ruth!). She has an armory of tablets to counteract all manner of side effects from chemo, but fingers crossed she won’t need them too often.

  Taking Reef for hospital appointments while Kate was still undergoing treatment brought it home to me how incredibly unlucky we had been, both then and now. When Kate was first diagnosed we debated how to tell the boys without frightening them.

  “I suppose in a way we’re lucky,” Kate said, with astonishing good grace. “I mean, we can tell them Mummy has a lump just like Reef had a lump, and that mine will be taken away just like his, and I’ll have the same nasty medicines he had, and then, hopefully, I’ll get better like he has.”

  I agreed, even though in my heart I was thinking that, although I had every faith that Kate would survive, I was still scared stiff that Reef’s cancer might come back someday. His initial prognosis was much worse than hers, and he had still not been given the official “all clear.”

  One of the cancer charities gave us a colorful story book called Mummy’s Lump, which was really helpful. The illustrated family looked a bit like ours, and they even had a dog and went to the beach, so the story was easy to identify with. When Kate lost her hair we looked at the mummy in the book, who had also lost her blonde hair, and it helped us explain things to Reef and Finn. Reef barely remembered losing his own hair, bless him, which fell out when it was still baby hair. When Kate’s hair got so thin and wispy she was almost bald, she asked me to shave her head.

  “I feel terrible doing this,” I told her, as I wrapped a towel around her shoulders and got to work with an electric shaver.

  “Why? I want you to. I’m fed up of all these bits of hair falling out all over the place. I’m molting more than the dog! It looks a mess as it is, I’d rather get rid of the lot.”

  “OK, whatever you want, Madam,” I said jokily, but I still had a bad taste in my mouth. I adored Kate’s blonde hair. It was a part of her, and being a part of taking it away felt wrong.

  “Can I try on Mummy’s wig?” Finn asked a few weeks later.

  Kate overheard him. “’Course you can,” she said.

  She had agreed to have a wig made to match her own hairstyle as much as possible, but it looked a bit synthetic and made her head sweat and itch, and she never really got on with it. She’d decided against cold-cap treatment, reasoning that the ice-cold treatment that could potentially save some of her hair follicles was painful and had no guarantee of success. She figured she already had enough treatment to cope with, without volunteering for more, and I fully supported her decision.

  Both boys tried on the wig, giggling their heads off while I snapped away taking photographs. Kate’s brother, Ben, turned up in the middle of the photo session, and he tried the wig on too.

  “What d’you think?” he said, flicking his head back.

  We all screamed.

  “Take it off, you look exactly like Kate!” I said.

  Kate had hysterics. I think that was the only good thing about the wig, in fact. It gave us all a much-needed laugh. That night the boys had a bubble bath together, and I found them making wigs for each other by piling up the bubbles on top of their heads, then knocking them off.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, winking at Kate. The boys had a big plastic toy called an Airzooka, which fired out a really strong blast of air. The next time they had the bubbles piled high on their heads, I darted in the bathroom and fired the Airzooka at them, completely obliterating their bubble wigs in the blink of an eye.

  Kate had tears rolling down her cheeks as she took photos on my phone.

  I could see my old Kate standing there. It didn’t matter that she had lost a breast and lost her hair. She was still my giggling, vivacious Kate; cancer could not take that away.

  December 18, 2008

  Katie had her fourth treatment today in spite of a nasty cough and is feeling rather sick and poorly. Reef and Finn are on antibiotics too with chesty coughs. Kate managed to see Reef as a “king” in the school nativity play and was delighted at his newfound confidence. No such problems with Finn who is always up at the front! Fingers crossed that Kate will not be in hospital for Christmas.

  December 21, 2008

  We took Reef and Finn to a big family do at Tortworth today and th
ey had a super time, especially seeing Father Christmas whom they assured that they had been good boys. They stayed the night with us to give Kate a rest (a “sleepover” as they now call it!) and luckily didn’t wake up until 7:30 a.m. They then chatted and ran around ALL DAY—who says children around keep you young—we are worn out!

  Poor Kate is trashed at the moment following last Thursday’s treatment but at least we know it is doing the business. Her chemo gives her bad aches all over and the usual sickness. Hopefully she will be back on her feet for Christmas Day but if not we will drop them off a picnic lunch. We are going to the pantomime on January 2, blood counts permitting.

  January 5, 2009

  Katie managed to have Christmas at home in spite of having to dash into hospital twice over the festive period with high temperatures. She will be having her 5th chemotherapy session this Thursday.

  Reef is having an MRI scan on January 19, followed the next week by a consultant’s clinic.

  We all enjoyed the Bristol Hippodrome Pantomime Cinderella, especially Reef!

  January 14, 2009

  The Disabled Children’s Team is chasing for an additional aide for Reef at school, especially at dinner times, as he seems to be falling quite a lot during the usual rough and tumble of the playground. Other than that the little boys are in fine fettle and full of mischief!

  Kate’s last full treatment is on January 28 (the same day as Reef’s MRI results), followed by nine months of three-weekly intravenous treatments of Avastin. Her five weeks of daily radiation are programmed to start on February 26.

  March 3, 2009