At Eric's Christening in Feb last year, my Nan asked the question, in not so many words: which way is worse, losing Dad the way we did or losing Mum the way we're going to?
Well I've been thinking on that question since that day last year. And today I can answer it.
This way is worse!
I don't know whether that's because I was only 4 when my Dad died so I just accepted it or whether it's because this way actually is worse.
People say "but when someone goes suddenly and unexpectedly you don't get chance to say goodbye." Very true. And I hate that fact (although Mum has told me that on the night Dad died he had tucked us 3 in and given us a kiss and said goodbye, I assume I said it back if I was awake and if I was asleep I assume I said goodnight when I went to bed, so I suppose I did say goodbye, I just didn't realise at the time that it would be the proper goodbye!) But this way we've been saying goodbye for too long. Since we were told about Mums prognosis, every time I say goodbye I hug a little tighter and hold on a little longer, just in case. You'd think this was a good thing, that I'm being given the chance to hug tighter and longer, but it's not. Because every time I do I wish I didn't have to!
Watching Mum deteriorate the way she has and then beat the odds the way she has, seeing her really good days and then some not so good moments (Greg is the one who sees it all and I don't envy him one bit!) keeps us all on this shitty emotional rollercoaster that we were put on, on the 4th January 2016.
I literally cannot explain how hard it is to look at my Mum now. I have set the memory of Mum at her 50th birthday in cement in my head because that's who my Mum is to me. That's how I want to remember her. I want to remember her as the Nana whose house we invaded for Kovu's 3rd birthday party (and the others, but this memory in particular) and filled her house with exotic animals. I want to remember her as the Mum who fought my corner with my Uni accommodation, who fought my corner with a certain nursery who nearly destroyed my career before it even began, who taught me how to be assertive and independent because you're the crazy lady who drives to Cornwall and goes to see the Eden project on her own because her man said he didn't want to go anymore, who gave me roots and wings (teeny tiny wings but wings nonetheless!) who let us have duvet days when life got a bit much. There's so much more to my Mum than what is happening to her right now but I'm so scared this is what I'll remember. That her hands are so tiny my child size ring fell off her little finger when she took her shawl off. That her legs struggle to hold her tiny body up because there is no muscle left. That she is the shape of a Bergen because of her tummy (lol!). I don't want the memory of walking in to our home and seeing the figures packed in boxes with people's names on them to make it easier to sort things when she's gone. I don't want the memory of walking back from a quiz while on holiday in Cornwall to see my Mum heaving over the side of her wheelchair. I don't want the memory of watching my Mum having to crawl to the bathroom 8 feet away from her because she was in so much pain. I don't want the knowledge of what happened in that doctors room when my Mum was told her diagnosis. I don't want my boys going through a bereavement like this at the ages they are and then them ending up like me. I'm broken. And I don't want to watch my babies break too.
My hero has already surpassed the expectation of her prognosis but now her Macmillan nurse is talking about making arrangements for the future and we're all being hit by the reality again, and so now we're kind of preparing for the worst, again. We prepared for it last year and it didn't come so now it's like we have to readjust and prepare again.
You were supposed to be old. You were supposed to have a runaway room for my babies. You were supposed to be bag lady at Disney World when we all went back with our babies. You were supposed to carry on fish and chips once Grandy and Grandpa couldn't do it anymore.
For all of these reasons, I can promise you, this is harder.
