My Mom

Those of you who have read my Blog regularly (thank you faithful friends) will know that my mum is no longer alive. It is now 8 years since she died of breast cancer. I have written about many members of my family, but not her. Not yet. 


Mum was 67 when she died - only 2 years older than my darling hubby. Too young. Too soon for someone so youthful and full of energy and life. Perhaps she used it all up too quickly. Perhaps she had had enough.


The daughter of my centenarian Grandma, she was every bit as lively and eccentric in her way. I remember her when I was a child - always baking, always a spoon to lick and something delicious to eat afterwards. Meringues were a speciality - every kind from mint to haselnut. As were peanut cookies & chocolate shortbread & apple pie. No wonder I had no interest in eating normal food. Although she was equally good at cooking that.


She was a cross between Mrs Beaton and Raquel Welch - tall and tanned and toned from endless yoga and dog walking. All done in impossibly short shorts (to make the most of the sunshine) and oblivious to the accompanying wolf whistles. She had beautifully long legs, finished off with equally beautiful long, slender feet. Her size 9s defined her - at once the bane of her life (especially as a War Baby) and her abiding passion. Rayne, Ferragamo, Manolo Blahnik - she is the reason I now stock big shoes. 


I was a good child - apart from my refusal to eat. My older brother was a different matter. On becoming a mother I discovered for myself the benefits of embarrassment as a way to control errant children. He and his friends will testify, I'm sure, to the times she burst through the kitchen door in nothing but a leotard - screaming like a banshee because their incessant cacophony was disturbing her yoga session. Then there were the occasions (numerous) when she carried out her threats to disgorge the untidy contents of my brother's bedroom out of the window. Often we would return from school to find the garden strewn with clothes and teenage paraphernalia. 


Her love of language inspired all of us. The dictionary was a staple part of our lives. Not only English, but Scottish and French words would be banded about. If we didn't understand what she was saying we looked it up. It was mum who taught us to swear - words, all words, were of value to her.


As her precious only daughter I was loved and cherished, encouraged and showered with affection. A decision to give me all that she had been denied by her own mother, I later learnt. Why I should grow into the insecure, over-achieving woman I did, God (and my therapist) only knows.


I took her nurturing, loving ways for granted until she left home when I was 16. I still have the letter she wrote to me, explaining her feelings for my soon to be Step-Dad and her need to be with this man she loved. I remember being both devastated (for myself) and elated (for her) that this glorious woman was strong enough to follow her heart.


She spent 25 years with Tom and loved him passionately - something that was hard to understand for my brothers and me. Hadn't our parents been happy? No arguing, no raised voices? No voice at all. My brilliant, scientific father with his fierce intellect was (by his own admission) somewhat lacking in social skills, and refused to behave in any way that was not reasoned. Mum, by contrast, was ruled by her heart and led by her passions.


Despite the disapproving tongues & slighting comments of small minded neighbours & family,  she created a home that brought together us mismatched crowd of siblings and friends. Always a meal, a shoulder, a wise, comforting word and much laughter. Again I wonder at my own inability to recreate her sense of family in my younger life. I do better now as I grow older. But sadly too late for my own child.


A lioness in a fur coat and high heels, she brought glamour to my student years (however inappropriate her attire to my vegetarian friends). I remember her marching into the bleak hospital room where Max and I had been abandoned on the morning of his birth. Clutching a giant teddy bear and a bottle of champagne, her fur coat billowing, she swept us along in her joy and reminded me of who I was. She even allowed Max to puke on her brand new Ferragamos.


A lioness who would fight to the death for her child. At the end of her first lunch with Chris she smiled and said: "It's been lovely to meet you...and if you ever do anything to hurt my daughter, I will come after you." The following day I remonstrated with her. Hurt, she said defiantly: "I thought I was very restrained. What I really wanted to say is that I will come after you and rip your bollocks off."!


Thankfully, by the time of her death he had gained her approval. I knew he had won her over when he danced down her stairs wearing nothing but a towel and one of her hats, singing along to "You Can Keep Your Hat On". Her laughter told me that she knew I had found my soul mate.


After battling her illness for four years with her usual grace, aplomb and humour, I was called back from a disastrous holiday in Greece to her death bed. On my arrival she roused herself enough to hear that Chris had saved my life in a horrific motorbike accident. All she needed to know in order to move on.


I am honoured to have been with her in the wee small hours when she left this world. I had made the decision to sit with her through the night - not wanting her to be alone if she awoke. Desperate to find some comforting words, I had turned to a book that she'd first given me as a teenager - The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.


I'm sure many of you will know this famous work. And if you don't, then I reccomend you look out for it. I knew that there was a chapter on death and I hoped that the words would offer some comfort to us both. But on the night it seemed too bold a passage to contemplate in isolation. And so I started at the beginning and read the book whole: Read to her of life and love, of children and marriage, of loss and joy, while she laboured to breathe beside me.


As I finished the last sentence of the chapter on death, her breathing changed - slowing and becoming more shallow. I continued to read until the book was finished (and, yes, I was freaking out inside!) My teeth were chattering so hard I'm not sure how I got the words out. But once I'd finished The Prophet I called the doctor who told me that her death was imminent.


There wasn't time for for my family to be with her. It was just mum and me. I stood holding her hand in that darkened room and told her to let go, leave her addled body behind, dance her new dance. And she did. 


I had prepared myself many times for her death, grieved for her as she'd struggled to live. But nothing prepared me for the power of that moment. I'm sitting here, once more in the wee small hours, trying desperately to think of the words to describe it. But I have none. It was beautiful, truly beautiful. And I am grateful, so grateful to have been given that precious experience.


The knowledge that we had shared her end, just as we had shared my beginning, gave me a profound sense of peace that has never left me. Her death changed me - as you would expect it to. But for the better. As The Prophet spoke of joy and sorrow: 


"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. 
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? 
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."


Now you'd think that this would be the end of my mum. Yes she lives on in my heart and my DNA, in my values and views. But my mum has done a little better than that. Always a strong spirit and sensitive to other souls, she was not to be defeated in death. No, it seems that a little thing like not having a body was no barrier to my communicative mother.


About a week after her death, as I lay in bed one night, she whispered in my ear. I kid you not - I nearly shit myself! "I love you" is what she said. She met me soon after in my dreams. She stood, clear as day, on the steps of the Rodin Museum in Paris - a place I'd always promised to take her. I must admit I reacted badly, screaming out in confusion.


And now she is still with me, influencing my life and coming to me when I need her. My doubting Thomas of a step father took more convincing of her continued presence. Every time she contacted him he rationalised it away. Not one to be put off, she left him a phone message.


My step brother found Tom rooted to the spot one night. On asking what was the matter, my step dad played back a message. White noise - and in the midst of it the words: "I love you Thomas Davidson." Too spooky!


Ah, but still not enough proof for my desolated step father. And so she left him a gift, something to remember her by. Twenty years previously she had given him a Tigerseye signet ring. The ring had been lost for two decades. One night Tom opened his much used bedside drawer and found the ring.


And as my darling mother continues to influence and entertain, I am reminded once more of the wise words of The Prophet. On Death:


"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then shall you begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."


Amen