Secrets My Mother Kept (32 page)

‘If it is just a fibroid, I can do a myomectomy, which means that you will keep your womb, and can continue to have more babies if you want – although I have to tell you that the fibroid will probably grow back and you will have to go through the operation again at some stage in the future. If your family is complete, then I can just whip out your womb once and for all, and ‘‘Bob’s your uncle,’’ no more problems.’ He smiled. It sounded so easy. He patted my hand, ‘You have a chat to your husband outside and let me know before you leave,’ and with that he ushered me to the door.

Colin was waiting patiently outside. I wasn’t crying when I joined him, but my hands were trembling. He put his arm around me.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘What did he say?’

I told him that I had a choice: have a myomectomy, which would leave my womb intact but meant that I might have similar problems in the future, or undergo a full hysterectomy. Of course, if the lump turned out to be malignant my choices would be narrowed even further.

‘I think you should just have it finished and done with,’ Colin said, his blue eyes searching my face. ‘We’ve got two children now, our little boy and our little girl.’

I gave him a watery smile.

‘Sam was born ill; Jo was born early. I’m not sure I want us to take any more chances. Perhaps we are only meant to have two children,’ he said carefully, watching for my reaction.

I nodded reluctantly, feeling worn down by it all. The most important thing was to be around for Sam and Jo as long as possible. I felt as though I had this malevolent growth inside me, and I just wanted it gone, to be able to get on with my life if I could.

That evening after the children were in bed, Colin and I went out into the garden. He put his arms around me as we looked at the sky. The smell from the early lilac blooms swam around us and the stars were very bright. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing upwards, ‘it’s funny isn’t it? The light that we are seeing now was shining thousands if not millions of years ago. It makes you feel very small and unimportant, doesn’t it?’

I snuggled into him, strangely comforted by the thought that we were just small dots in a vast picture.

I returned to that moment many times over the weeks while I waited to be called in to hospital.

51

Mum’s Illness

‘Kathleen, will you help me clear out the cupboard in my room?’ Mum asked softly watching me with her blue eyes that had faded now to grey. I had popped round with some fresh scones, to find her ill in bed. With her wispy white hair spread across her pillow she looked older than her seventy-three years.

Mum had asked me about the cupboard several times over the past few months. Surely she didn’t feel up to it at the moment? It was becoming an obsession with her.

‘Mum, I can’t do it tonight,’ I said, ‘the kids will be wanting their dinner.’ She looked away and I thought I saw tears in her eyes. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

She nodded sadly, ‘Yes, but I’m not well, Kath,’ she whispered.

I stroked her head; it still felt alien to kiss her, but I did. ‘I know. I’ll come back at the weekend,’ I promised, packing up my things. ‘I’d better get going. You never know what the traffic will be like.’

I looked back from the doorway, and saw Mum, a shadow of herself, melting into the bedclothes.

‘Try to eat something, Mum; you won’t get better unless you do,’ and with that I left Valence Avenue and drove our little 2CV back to the cottage, Sam and Jo squabbling in the back over the Matchbox cars that Pat had bought them, my thoughts back on myself and my own fears. I pushed Mum out of my mind. I would worry about her after my operation, I thought. I couldn’t worry about everything at once.

The next morning I got the letter through with the date for my operation. As I opened the envelope my hands shook. I gave it to Colin when he got home. ‘I have to go in on the 7th May,’ I said flatly. I was trying hard to hide my emotions.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘it will be over and done with and you will feel better’.

I nodded. ‘I hope so.’

Mum continued to struggle to eat, so shortly after my visit she was taken into hospital.

Margaret and I met outside at visiting time and walked to the ward together. We saw Mum propped half up in bed looking very frail.

‘Mum,’ I said kissing her lightly on the cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’

She just looked at me with a faraway look in her eyes.

Margaret gave her a kiss and held her hand.

‘Oh Margy.’ Mum said softly, and her eyes took on a wistful look.

‘Have the doctors been round yet?’ Margaret asked, her nurse’s training kicking in. ‘I’d like to have a word with them.’

Mum shook her head. ‘No they’ve been round already today.’ She spoke so quietly I could hardly hear.

Margaret turned to me, ‘I’m just going to see if I can have a chat with the nurse,’ she said, and I stayed with Mum, holding her hand and stroking her arm. Although she had lost all the plumpness from her body, her skin was still soft as silk. ‘Don’t worry,’ I joked, ‘Margaret will get you sorted out, you know what she’s like.’

Mum tried to smile, but I could see that she was very weak, and I was getting worried.

The staff nurse was talking to Margaret, and I watched them out of the corner of my eye trying desperately to get a sense of their discussion from their faces. Margaret glanced over at Mum and I and then turned back and continued talking to the nurse. She came back with a thin smile on her lips. She looked paler than usual, but had a slight red flush to her cheeks.

‘Everything all right?’ I asked as brightly as I could.

She nodded unconvincingly. ‘Yes fine. Let’s grab a drink.’ She looked at Mum, who was starting to close her eyes, and whispered, ‘Mum, we’re going to get a cup of tea. Do you want us to bring you anything back?’

Mum shook her head almost imperceptibly and drifted off to sleep.

The hospital café was starkly lit and almost empty.

‘Why is it that hospitals always have the same sticky, antiseptic smell?’ I asked, stirring the grey liquid.

‘Mum’s kidneys are failing,’ Margaret blurted out.

‘Is it to do with her diabetes?’ I knew that she had been warned over the years to control her diet more carefully, but she had never been very good at being told what to do, and this had resulted in her being put on insulin a while ago.

Margaret nodded. ‘I would have thought so. The doctors want to run some more tests.’

‘Does that mean they’ll be keeping her in for a while longer then?’

Margaret looked down at the remains of her coffee. ‘Kathleen, I don’t think Mum will be coming home for a good while yet.’

‘Well I must admit that’s a relief. At least now she’s getting the attention she needs, and it will get sorted once and for all.’

Margaret just gave me a strange look and pushed herself upright. ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to go and pick up the kids. Can you say goodbye to Mum for me?’

I nodded, swigged down my horrible coffee and tried to put on a cheerful face for Mum’s sake.

52

Falling Apart

The following week was busy. I was desperately trying to get everything ready for my impending hospital stay, and I was also aware that I would be incapacitated for a while after the operation. That was going to be tricky to manage with two young children. None of this was helped by my secret conviction that I was never going to come home again, and the deep, debilitating depression that was beginning to overwhelm me.

I went upstairs to make sure that Sam had not thrown his school uniform on the floor again. He was almost eight and had recently had a growth spurt, so looked even skinnier than usual. His hair had lost its red tinge very soon after he was born and was now a pale golden blond, the same as his sister’s. Sam had always been boisterous and lively, and Jo emulated him – she was a real tomboy, and wanted to be with her brother and her cousins at every opportunity. They were always together, the six of them, running around outside, climbing, making dens, playing at pirates, racing drivers, explorers, anything where they could let their imaginations fly. We were so lucky to live out here, with a wild garden ripe for exploration.

Just then the telephone rang and I heard Colin’s key in the door. As the kids ran to meet him, I picked it up.

‘Oh Kath, is Colin with you?

My stomach lurched. I tried to speak but my throat felt tight, so that I had to cough before I could respond.

‘Pat?’ I didn’t want her to say anything else then. Until I heard the words, life would be the same.

‘It’s Mum,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, she died this afternoon.’

And there it was – boom – the explosion that rocked my core. The floor beneath my feet shifted, and I involuntarily sat down on the bed, hands shaking, barely able to hold the phone.

‘Kathleen?’ Pat said. ‘Kath, are you all right?’ I could hear the concern in her voice, but couldn’t answer at first. Why wasn’t I crying? My eyes stung with the unshed tears.

‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you phone?’

‘The hospital didn’t let us know until after,’ she said, her voice heavy with sadness, ‘Josie and I had been up to see her this morning, but she slipped into a coma after we left.’

‘Who was with her?’ I wailed. ‘When she died, who was with her?’

Pat didn’t answer at first but then said, ‘The nurse held her hand; she went in her sleep. She didn’t know anything about it.’

Then the next explosion happened, this time it was more like a powerful thud. My mum, our darling mum, had died alone, with just the nurse to see her out of this world. Not one of her ten children there with her to hold her hand, to stroke her silky soft skin, to touch her wispy white hair, to kiss her cheek, to say goodbye. None of us . . . none of us.

Then the tears came, sliding slowly down my cheeks at first, and then the wracking sobs that hurt my chest and throat with a welcome pain. I wanted to hurt.
I wasn’t there . . . I wasn’t there . . .

Colin was standing watching me from the doorway, not knowing what to say or do. He was never very good at emotions. ‘Just like Mum,’ I thought as he came over and tried to comfort me. Sam and Jo had crept into the room now and were peeping round the door at us.

They didn’t ask what was wrong. Children have a knack of knowing when not to speak, when words would be out of place. There were a lot of tears then. A week full of them. All of us, desperate that we hadn’t been able to say goodbye, angry that we had been cheated of our chance to tell her we loved her, that despite everything, anything that she had ever done, we adored her. Those tears were full of regret, of unsaid words and unasked questions. Mum was dead, and there was an empty space in our hearts where she had once lived. The finality felt too much to bear, and it plunged me even deeper into depression. My world started to crumble and there was nothing I could to do to halt the disintegration.

I had lost my way, and I didn’t believe that I would ever find it again. The world had shifted, and didn’t make any sense any more; nothing did.

Then there was the funeral.

It was a strange ceremony, so different from Aunty’s; a solemn and desperate day. My mum’s remaining siblings were there, as were our cousins. My dear friend Anne, who had loved my mum as her own, came and we clung together to withstand the tempest that was blowing through our family. But I took no comfort from it. I was surer now than ever that it would be my children’s turn to grieve soon, to feel this same bereft sorrow, because I knew that I was not going to survive my operation, and I would never be there to see them grow up. So I cried my tears with my brothers and sisters, but I cried them for me, not for Mum, and the guilt made it even harder to bear.

53

Saying Goodbye

I looked at the letters I had written before placing them in a box covered in paper flowers. ‘These are for you,’ I told Colin, the night before I was due to go into hospital.

‘What is it?’

‘Letters for the children,’ I explained, feeling the tears that had become as familiar as old friends to me slip down my cheeks, ‘and one for you.’

‘Oh Kathy,’ he said, taking the box hesitantly, ‘you’re going to be fine, I just know you are.’

I looked away. ‘Please make sure you don’t lose them,’ I asked plaintively, ‘and remember to look after my babies, give them an exciting life, do lots of wonderful things with them, and be patient – they’re only little you know’.

I tiptoed into their rooms, Jo’s first. It was a blue room. She had chosen the colour herself and had been very clear about what she wanted. She was only three, and still had tiny plump baby hands and feet, but had a strong personality. She was my little fighter and I gently stroked her cheek, and bent to kiss her. Her hair was a little damp still from her bath, and had formed tiny tight curls that stuck to her baby soft skin. She was beautiful, so perfect, like a little doll, and I tried to pour my love into her so that it would sustain her after I was gone.

Then I moved into Sam’s room. On the shelf above his bed were the beginnings of his football trophy collection. He loved football just like his dad and played it at every opportunity. I looked down at his sleeping frame, and remembered the heartache of his babyhood. It wasn’t fair, I thought, that he was going to be unhappy again. Hadn’t he had to go through enough? I bent and kissed his cheek, and he stirred.