My mother and I
I am 14 and my mother has just been given three months to live. She was diagnosed with severe stage four ovarian cancer, that has spread around her entire body.
When I was two my mother developed schizophrenia and I went to live with my grandmother on my her side. I was unable to live with my father as he was a recovering drug addict and was in a rehabilitation centre, also for depression. His mother had just died from cancer. I saw my father every weekend, and I can remember our trips to my grandparents' country house; feeding the donkeys, going on country walks, warm crumpets by the fireside. I was my daddy's favourite, his little girl, and he was a sentimental man who loved me very much. To this day, I have not met a man as deep or caring as my father.
I didn't see my mother for four years and when I did finally see her, she was still not well, mentally. She was a gentle and frightened schizophrenic, not violent or dangerous, as they are depicted in films or the media. I loved her so very much, but there was nothing she could offer me at that age; She was unstable had nowhere to live.
At six or seven I went to live with my father, as he and my stepmother were expecting a baby boy, my brother Cedric. I began to see my mother every few months or so, and went to my grandmother's every weekend, as we were very close. My stepmother was dreadful towards me (and still is!) but in a discrete way, so as my father wouldn't notice. I gave up on telling him what she did to me, after all, who would believe a nine-year- old over a thirty or forty- something- year-old? Certainly not my father. When I was nine my little sister Esme was born. I began to see my mother more frequently, as she now had proper medication and lived in a small house with a lovely garden where she could grow vegetables and flowers. My mother had green fingers, and her garden was always bursting with colour and scents of exotic things she’d bought from various garden centres.
At eleven I was sent off to boarding school with an academic scholarship, and things had never been so wonderful. I was away from my terrible stepmother, and spent more and more time with my mother. By twelve or thirteen, it was as though we had never been apart. I told her everything, spoke to her most days on the phone, and stayed with her in the holidays and some weekends. She was wonderful. She had a job, and also sold her paintings as a hobby. She was now exactly how she had looked in all the pictures that I had seen. She was very beautiful, and had been a facial model in Germany for creams and make-up when she was in her twenties. I loved her so very much.
One Saturday, not long ago, my grandmother and my mother came up to my boarding school to take me out to lunch. She was looking as normal as ever, but whilst we were having lunch they told me that they had really come down to tell me of my mother’s newly discovered condition. I cried for hours on end, but mostly once I was back at school. I knew that if I got very upset then it would only upset my mother. My friends were very supportive and it was lovely to feel that I had so many people there for me; my housemistress, matron, grandparents, father, aunts, uncles, and so many more.....more than necessary really, but I suppose one can never have too much love.
My mother is so gentle about the whole thing; she sometimes likes to talk about when she’s gone. Instead of talking about dying or passing on, she calls it flying away. It’s a beautiful way to put it, and that’s just like my mother. Maybe she has had a hard life, maybe she has had a difficult past, but whenever I will remember my mother, I will remember her beautiful words and ways, and how wonderful the little time we spent together was.
Here is a poem I wrote about cancer. It is called 'The Tumour'.
A small, most significant thing
Consuming all hope and all dreams of time to come
Shrinking wishes
Shrinking happiness
Aiding love to flourish once more
The fingers stretching out from an anxious heart
Desperately trying to tighten their grip
Losing all tangible love
Grasping memories and feelings like a hungry child
See the sunken eyes and drawn face?
Believe the glowing skin and flowing hair
No longer there
But remaining there in the eyes of me
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder
So behold her
No longer there
Story shared: 06/11/2009 12:09:46
#556 View the comments about this story Cancer - tumour - poetry - Childhood - schizophrenia - drug addict - mother - love - sadness - stepmother - grandmother - grief - death - rehab - gardening
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