Lucy Melford: My abiding memory of Mum

Mum died fifteen years ago today, on 3rd February 2009. It was cancer, first diagnosed in 1975, but defeated for a long while with a mastectomy. It had, however, returned it later life, when Mum was in her late eighties. This time, it was lymphatic cancer. I was never told the precise details, nor about what had to be done at home daily. A nurse would come; and Dad learned to do a lot of it himself. He and Mum were so very, very close. They didn't ask me for help. They didn't draw me into it at all. Both put on a brave face when I visited. My parents kept many things from me. Frankly, I think I was - to them - still a wayward child who could not be trusted with sensitive information and disturbing details, even in my fifties.

Mum actually died of a stroke in her room at the nursing home she had been moved to, five days after leaving the hospice where she had been for three weeks. She'd done well at the hospice. But on the grounds that she appeared to be in remission and couldn't stay there forever, the hospice wanted her room back for somebody else.

The nursing home phoned me when I was walking back to my car, after visiting the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. It was bad news out of the blue on an otherwise sunny morning. News not expected so soon, as Dad and I thought Mum had at least another month to live.

I didn't crumple in the street, just as I hadn't crumpled on hearing that my brother had been killed. I took it calmly, went into practical mode, and never really emerged from that. After a quick call to Dad, to say I'd pick him up and take him to the nursing home, I dashed back to the Cottage, then drove on to Dad's, and from there to the home to see what was to be seen, and say goodbye.

For Dad it was the passing of his life's partner, to whom he had been devoted. He was nevertheless calm, and seemed almost reconciled. But it must have been a savage blow to him.

My own feelings were mixed. I had been half-detached from the whole thing, partly because my parents let it be so, and partly from emotional self-defence. And yet here was my Mum, once alive and full of personality, now this still figure laid out on her bed, with a strange unfamiliar look on her face. My Mum. But also a dead body in a nightdress.

Had I ever seen a dead body before? Face to face? I wasn't sure. Now I was confronted with one. I was in her room alone. Dad had had his ten minutes with the woman who had been by his side - his wife - for sixty-two years. He was strong. If he had broken down and cried at the sight of her, you would not have known it. Now it was my turn to let tears flow - or not. Certainly my heart felt heavy, and my throat fit to choke. I had not been much of a daughter. I'd not been as affectionate as I should have been. I hadn't shared much with her. We had never held each other.

I gazed at her, or what was left of her. I felt no hovering presence. There were only these physical remains; a body that nothing now animated. I was not religious, but I wished her spirit - if there was such a thing - a wonderful onward journey. And even if there was only nothingness now, I would remember her, and cherish all my memories. I promised her that.

Within a week I'd written a poem to encapsulate that five minutes by her bed. It was most unlike me to write a poem. An essay would normally be my preferred way to express in words what I felt. But perhaps, for once, a poem seemed best. Photographically, it would have been a series of blurred and out-of-focus pictures, as if by mistake I'd set too slow a shutter speed, and my hands had been shaky.

Here's the poem.

UNDER THE SHEET

Strange, how a Hand had wiped away

All my engagements for the day.

Strange, how I'd had to drive behind

An empty hearse, with room for one inside.

And in the gallery, as I studied art,

How strange it was,

That feeling I was playing a part.

Then later in your room,

With the white sheet on your bed,

I stood with a bursting heart

While a storm wave broke in my head.

Oh so cold and pale!

Your face averted,

As if a flame had passed too close.

I hoped the bearer of that fire

Had been a winged angel

Or perhaps the Holy Ghost.

The unbeliever knelt and prayed,

And found some loving words to say.

I wished you in Heaven, and said it through tears,

But they couldn't repair the guilt of years.

I wanted to tell you and explain,

I wanted to tell you my real name.

And speak of this, and this, and this,

But all I could do at the very end

Was to give your cheek the softest kiss.

Lucy Melford 2009 0209

Reading it now, it seems very raw and unpolished, but I think my anguish at not ever being close enough to my Mum comes through. We'd had a wary way with each other. Now it was too late to break down barriers to full understanding.

I can see that room now, and her body on it. It must have horrified me. Try as I might, it's the abiding memory I have of her, even though I have many very good pictures of her while alive and kicking. I can summon them up on my phone in an instant, simply by searching the app I use with the keyword 'Mum'. Pictures like these (all of them taken by me) from 1975, 2000 and 2005: