Mum

It's hard to look at this official summary of my Mum's life.

Just two months short of her 52nd birthday and 11 months to the day before her first grandchild was to be born.

She died holding my hand and I felt so guilty, so so guilty and I will never forgive myself.

Mum had first been diagnosed with cancer about four years before. The late diagnosis was in itself tragic and should not have happened. She underwent surgery which seemed to have been successful and I was lucky to have her around at my wedding on her birthday in 1977.

However in late 1978, the cancer returned, she typically bit on her very upper stiff lip and made out it was trivial and would be sorted. Over the coming months in my sadly seldom visits from Sussex up to Norfolk, I could tell she was afraid and very afraid as she went through chemotherapy treatment. Always religious but not strongly so, she sought strength from the nuns at the nearby Quiddenham monastery but never when I was about.

When she was admitted to the hospital, she said on the phone, it was simply a bit of surgery to clear out a few bad cells and she was in excellent hands. No problem.

Then the call came from my father today and I drove up to Norwich getting there in the early afternoon. My father sat at her bedside holding her arm and stroking her forehead and cooling it with a moist cloth. He looked almost as bad as she did.

On talking it transpired he had been there for the last 24 hours and I insisted he went home for a couple of hours sleep and a bite to eat while I stayed until he returned. He refused, I insisted and so it went on for ages until finally, a nurse managed to persuade him to go.

He had probably only been home an hour or two when Mum managed a few words with me, opened her eyes and tried to smile while squeezing my hand and slipped away.

I dreaded the moment when Dad arrived back in the room. I left them for alone for a few moments.

Of course, my father didn't blame me but I knew he thought that he had failed her at the last moment. He hadn't, he adored her.