It was a bright spring day when my father came through the doors in tears. My mother had cancer of the liver and it had spread. She had three months to live. She lived three months. She’d only gone for an examination of her varicose veins.
My mum was bright, short-ish and stout-ish. She bustled. There’s an image of her and our dog hurrying to the shops before they closed. My mum’s bustling was beautifully complemented by the dog’s rear-end motion. She had white hair shaped just like a pair of bloomers on her back end.
There was always something doing with my mum. She was so energetic. I just stood and watched most of the time. This busyness had a dark side. It kept my father’s scorn and temper at bay, mostly. Kept the eggshells intact for both of us. Hers was a life shot through with a hidden sadness.
She taught me to write. Not the long florid tales of splendid imagination that were my father’s strength and talent. We wrote short, ordinary tales that held laughter and sadness. My father was often away for long periods so there were many such tales. Over the years, I forgot their essence and their doing. Maybe they’re coming back?
Her end was ugly. She knew she had a liver problem but, somehow, never the true extent. I don’t know how that was possible but my father could make strange things happen. It was kept from her so that she wouldn’t buy into the terminal diagnosis and wouldn’t despair (and all those other stages). My father kept that secret. We all did. He held to a hope that her mind could be guided by other miraculous faiths. Well-intentioned but ultimately cruel for her and for me.
She was moved into a nursing home. As the illness progressed, her fear grew. I’m sure she suspected her fate but daren’t voice it and make it real. Everyone was silent. Each afternoon, she had shrunk a little more and yellowed some more. She wanted to know what was going on. Each afternoon for three months, I faked the lie. Each afternoon, I was denied learning more about her, denied saying goodbye.
Then the three months were up and she passed one week after my eighteenth birthday. She was 54.
I determined – I don’t know why – that I wouldn’t cry. Some stupid juvenile macho thing to be different. Crying is essential to grieving. So, I never grieved, I’ve only ached. For 50 years. I do cry now.
There’s something about a corpse – waxy sheen, cold, stiff and shrunken – that puts me in my mind of a window dresser’s dummy. The bits are there but the life that could have filled it, given it laughter, given it tears, has fled except in our memories.
I still see her. Nose to beak with our cantankerous parrot. Dressed up to the nines to visit her boy at university. But, most of all, short-ish, broad-ish, and bright – bustling determinedly to the shops, dog in tow. It’s a bright day and a bright memory.
