Daily Mail, Monday, August 19, 2019 Page 45M
y mother died in
the early evening of a
warm spring day.
She died in my child-
hood bedroom, the
windows open to let in the breeze,
to the sound of wood pigeons
and blackbirds that had far too
much to say. It had not been a
happy week.
I work as a scriptwriter and was in a
Writers room for a new Danger mouse
series, surrounded by funny people, when
I got the call to come. I made my excuses,
got into my car and drove back, dreading
every mile I got closer.
my father, when I arrived, had been
given a job by my mother. I wasn’t allowed
upstairs to see her before I had watched
a small DVD they had made. he sat me
down and put it on. It was a black and
white film of my parents on their wedding
day. they looked glorious.
my mother, a natural beauty, was in a
short Sixties dress knocked up by my
aunt on a Singer sewing machine the day
before. my dad was in his shirt sleeves, tie
still on, and they were dancing together
in the back garden of a Welsh miners’
terrace house.
I could see washing on a line behind
them. What struck me was how happy
they looked. It destroyed me.
my father broke the news. this was it.
the end had come. We had all sat in a
consultant’s room a year before listening
to a handsome man with salt and pepper
hair tell my mother her cancer had
returned and this time, there was nothing
to be done. She was going to die.
I remember reaching for her hand and
holding it and feeling numb. I was 46. She
was 70. We’re all going to die. there is still
something shocking about being told
when. She smiled at him. She hadn’t
wanted him to feel bad.
It was an odd thing. my mother was
adored by the nurses and doctors who
looked after her. She had had the same
effect on the thousands of students she
taught during her career as a teacher.
my mother was sociable, outrageous,
wickedly funny and deeply charismatic
but she had a darker side; she was quite
mad, but I’ll get to that.
H
aVIng watched the DVD, I
made my way up the stairs.
my legs felt like lead and yet
there was still a small voice
saying it wasn’t true. my indestructible
mother wasn’t really dying. But then I
saw her and I collapsed and I don’t know
if I will ever know a deeper sorrow.
She was lying on her side, reduced
beyond all recognition and I tried to smile
for her but all that came out was a noise I
had never heard before. I was making it. I
apologised. ‘at least I know you love me,’
she whispered. I’ll get to that later, too.
agonising
grief of
things left
EMMA KENNEDY
had a difficult
relationship with
her mother — but
felt a searing loss
after her death.
Now, in a deeply
affecting
elegy she
describes...
by Emma
Kennedy
Childhood memories:
Emma with her motherFamily members came and went
at the house. She told a distant
cousin to ‘have a nice life’. When
she slept I lay next to her and
filled the time. I wrote a script for
Danger mouse. I finished a
chapter of a book. Women from
the hospice came each morning
and washed her. I cried every time.
every act of kindness was some-
thing I felt unable to cope with.
Friends rang. the sun shone.
She was having trouble eating
and, during a morning visit from
the district nurse, I had tried to
give her some apple. She couldn’t
swallow it. the nurse, sitting on
the bed packing her things,
looked up at me and said, ‘give
her something soft. Something
like yoghurt.’
I remembered there was ice
cream in the freezer and my moth-
er’s eyes, for the first time that
week, lit up. I brought her a bowl
and she ate every last bit of it. I
actually jumped for joy. ‘She’seaten something!’ I told my father.
For 20 minutes I allowed myself to
think she might be getting better.
and then the vomiting started.
I have emetophobia, a profound
fear of vomit, which began when I
was seven and saw my mother
throwing up after being
admitted to hospital with
renal colic.
now I was unable to go
to her. Looking after her
was left to my father and
my aunt and cousins
who had arrived that
morning. It was a Sun-
day, beautiful. But my
mother was vomiting
and couldn’t stop and
I was told to ring the
district nurse.
She came and I stood
at the bottom of the
stairs. the nurse gave
her an injection to stopthe sickness and another to help
her sleep. I was called up to look
at her. ‘She’s all right,’ said my
dad, with a hand on my arm.
I just felt ashamed. I stood chat-
ting to the district nurse and we
went back to look at her again.
her breathing had changed. the
nurse shook her arm and called
her name.
my mother didn’t respond
and the nurse turned to me
and my father and said, ‘It’s
going to be today.’
my mother never woke up
again. We all sat round her,
the people she loved the
most, and watched as her
breathing shallowed and the
blue inched up her arm and
her fingers turned the colourof a dusty sky. at the moment of
her death, my beagle, who loved
her, appeared in the doorway of
the room. She had stayed away,
which had surprised us all, but
now she came. She nuzzled my
mother’s hand and that was it.
She was gone.
grief is a difficult business. my
mother had been an extraordinary
woman. She had been a whirlwind
in my life. I had loved her but I
had struggled to like her because
there was one great unspoken
truth that had hung over all our
lives. my mother had an undiag-
nosed mental illness.
When I was born, my mother
had what would now be called
postpartum psychosis, a psychiat-
ric breakdown that affects around
one in a thousand new mothers.
She changed for ever.
the only version of my mother I
knew was the woman who was
brilliant, wonderful and utterly
terrifying. When she was good, she
was very, very good, but when she
was bad she was horrid.
She was able to fly into a rage at
the click of fingers, scream in
shops, smash things, throw books
at heads, embarrass me anywhere
and everywhere. I resented it,
deeply. It took me over 30 years to
realise there might be something
medically wrong with her.
In an age when mental illness
was not discussed, I simply
thought she was awful, but as her
behaviour worsened and became
more erratic I realised she wasn’t
awful. She was ill.B
y her mid-50s para-
noia had crept in.
She would tell me her
phone was bugged,
neighbours were trying to steal
the house, my father was having
affairs with every cashier
in Sainsbury’s.
When she was 60, I sat in another
consultant’s room and listened to
her tell him she had been given
cancer by a CIa operative in a
bookshop in Cambridge.
nobody batted an eyelid. We
were used to this but we were so
scared of her, neither I nor my
father ever dared ask her whether
she thought she might need help
or medication.
We were so weary of the rages,
we dared not risk one.
It seems impossible but I never,
not once, asked her whether she
thought she might have a mental
illness. I never asked her what
made her sad, or what made her
happy. I never asked about who
she was before she had me.
I never asked her what her
parents’ divorce, at a time when
the shame of such things hung
heavy, did to her. I never asked her
about her.
We are with our parents for so
long it’s a shame we don’t get to
know them but I know this: I
failed my mother and I wish I
hadn’t. I wish I had asked her
what made her unhappy, I wish I
had asked her if she needed help,
I wish I had discussed her behav-
iour with a doctor.
I wish I had done something for
her that might have made her life
a little easier. there were so many
things I should have said. But I
didn’t and I feel a loss beyond the
grief of what might have been had
I had the courage.
my father and I eventually had
the strength to discuss her having
a mental illness, but only after
she died.
never leave things unsaid.
Because after they’re gone, you
don’t get the chance to put
anything right.
O The Things We Left Unsaid
by emma Kennedy (Century)
from August 22, £12.99.The
UNSAID
Hidden struggles:
Emma and her parents