it is hard to lose your mother

Last Monday it rained ALL day. 

I'd planned to visit Epping Forest, near where my mum lived for 42 years but not fancying a soaking I postponed until the following day. So on Tuesday I traced the journey made on frequent visits during the final months of Mum's life, cycling to Leytonstone tube, traveling 6 stops on the Central Line to Debden, then cycling the mile or so to her home. Setting out on my journey I passed an undertakers and saw a wicker coffin being respectfully transferred from a van into their premises. It was like the one we selected for Mum last year. I felt little. There is a numbness in me at times, where I observe what I could be feeling but the feeling doesn't come. I'm aware of a level of self protection and wonder if the years anniversary of her death will allow a turning of this tide. The feeling is akin to holding my breath, and soon I may gasp for air and grief might bloom.  

Slightly to the side of and separate from reality, I cycled through Debden, turning left and swooping down Willingale Road, swerving to avoid pot holes and cracks in the road. Then right onto Etheridge Road, left along Colebrook Lane, then a final right onto Pyrles Lane. The roads were quiet and clear. I cycled up Pyrles Lane dropping gears on the incline. When passing Mum's house I felt nothing. It is a Council House and we always knew the keys would be handed back one day. The house is so familiar but Mum is no longer behind that door, watching TV in her chair, the memory already feels distant. A quick glance, noticing ornaments on the windowsills, the garden scruffier. While peddling I recalled this time last year and my fears about what I would find, turning the key and opening the door, gently calling Hello Mum, worried that I'd find her in distress, fallen, dead. 

Onwards to the forest, memories of walks over the years. Mum surprised me once by asking to join me on a walk to Theydon Bois and back with Jessie our beloved Battersea rescue dog. A photograph from that day sits in my living room of Mum holding Jessie's lead, posing for this now precious photograph. Climbing off my bike, I wheeled it into the muddy forest. There is a wide path into the woods and I enjoyed its familiar gradient, noticing the still bare trees and dark trunks caused by persistent rain. A tree creeper alighted onto the trunk I was looking at, I knew its name because my sister had told me on a walk in the forest a few weeks earlier. 

Delight! I was alone in the woods and all around me birds sang, revving up, stating claims for territory, for mates. Underneath their song an unseen stream ran at full spate, swollen from the previous days rain. This wood so familiar, a 10 minute walk from my childhood home and still the trees stagger me, old pollarded beech trees, human in their knobbly forms. It is a very special place, unlike any other forest I've experienced. This part of my life is closing down, my links to the area gone with Mum's death, the neighbours we knew gone also. The thing I dreaded has happened and I survive and move on. It is hard to lose your mother. 

A couple of weeks ago I attended a drop-in healing session at the Spiritualist Church in South Woodford. As the healing came to a close a radiant green light filled my closed eyelids and the words, It is hard to lose your mother came into my head. It was an incredible moment and filled me with hope. 

the 'c' word

A year ago today my mum and I went to the doctors on Pyrles Lane for her most recent blood test results. As we sat and waited for the taxi mum applied her lipstick and my heart leapt as I noticed her jaundiced skin against the pink shade. We had to swap shoes, as her swollen feet wouldn't fit into hers, so I unlaced my trainers and she just about got these on. It was a hell of a job getting her to the doctors, her legs so swollen it was difficult to bend them, so getting into and out of the taxi took monumental effort. It was at this appointment that it was obvious she was gravely ill. There were inflammation markers in her blood. The 'c' word was mentioned and I wanted to cover her ears, protect her, for the doctor to tell me and not her. 

My mum died of suspected liver cancer 19 days later. She endured with no complaint and didn't ask for anything. In the final weeks of her life my sister and I took turns staying with her, so she wasn't alone in the house. Her health declining fast we did all we could. She didn't want medical help so it was only when things became desperate that we asked for assistance. I'm still processing the shock of her death, and that she died from cancer. She was tough. She did it her way. She lived for 81 and a half years, just like her own mother. 

In the run up to the first anniversary of her death I'm counting down and remembering the anxiety and fear of knowing she was dying. I've always had a sense of protecting mum, as children, she used my sister and I as a shied against our violent and unpredictable dad, sleeping in our shared room. It was an unusual, topsy-turvy relationship. 

I couldn't protect her from dying, but, alongside my sister, I could be present and ensure what happened around her was the best it could be, especially in her final days on morphine and semi-unconscious. I've felt untethered this year, not part of the world. My life has a different purpose. I can no longer protect my mum and I've lost the job I was born into. 

capturing a robin

The forest opposite my childhood home

I'm reading my favourite book for the third time. It is a buoy in an unsettled and uncertain moment in my life. The story so captures me I forget about this day, and am transported to an age before cars, before World War 1, when a passing bicycle would create such a stir that folk would run to their gates to gawp and wonder. The book is Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. 

A memory was sparked as I read of a village woman catching birds for the sport of it. Hidden, patient, holding the end of a length of string in her hand, the string tied to a stick, which had a sieve propped upon it and a sprinkling of crumbs beneath as bait. When I was small my father taught me how to catch a bird using such a method, just once, crouched behind our honeysuckle hedge, capturing a robin red breast and letting it go. Now I understand, from the vantage point of passing years what he was teaching me. My father didn't give me much in the conventional sense of what fathers are meant to be for daughters but he taught me something beyond words that day, a childhood in rural Scotland, a childhood where he hunted to eat, a childhood of ingenuity, responsibility and patience, of soil, and rain, and cold. 

My dad drew a circle on our dust path once, explaining that the Earth was hot at its core, together we uprooted a dead tree for our fire, we caught a robin and then let it go and all these things cause this 47 year old woman's heart to ache. I was born a month before his 55th birthday. Sieve, stick, string, crumbs. My Dad was odd in Essex, always mistaken for my Granddad, rake thin, venturing into the forest to drag home trees to burn.

At school, I excitedly shared capturing a bird with my father, writing about it or telling the teacher. I remember my confusion and shame as the teacher told me it was a horrible story and cruel, with classmates pulling faces. As is the way of small children I wasn't able to ask why she said that and became withdrawn and quiet, realising something of otherness, oddness and unbelonging. 

two women

As a physically able woman I can't help but notice people struggling with heavy bags or shopping trollies on London Underground stairways. I've never learnt to drive so am used to heaving belongs on public transport, my arms dropping off with the weight, my shoulders aching with the effort of dragging a loaded trolly up steps. Fortunately I am strong enough to do this. Maybe, also, since my Mum died I particularly notice older or elderly solo ladies simply getting on with it, so after a moments observation I offer to help. At Stratford Station recently I assisted a woman navigating busy downwards steps with a trolly. Taking the trolly I lifted it with my right arm so it rested against my back, and the lady walked ahead as I descended the stairs swiftly behind her. When handing her the trolly, she said in an Irish accent, 'Thank you, you are a real lady'. The crowds were swarming around us and we parted, and I wished I'd had the opportunity for a quick chat. Being called a real lady brightened my heart with its old fashioned sound, I felt a harking back to her childhood and family values... and smiled inwardly.

One winter morning while waiting at the bus stop for the W14 I spotted a diminutive elderly woman dressed in black on the other side of the road. Leytonstone High Road can be difficult to cross for the fleet of foot, and this woman had a stick and was unable to rush. She patiently awaited her chance. I watched as a young woman stood beside her and crossed the road, I willed her to notice my lady but she didn't. So I crossed and asked if she needed help. Luckily this timed with a break in the traffic, and as we walked she placed her black gloved hand in mine. Her smallness, her trust, her need of assistance moved me, my eyes became wet and I felt a wave of emotion in my chest... for mothers, for daughters, for trust, for loss. On a later bus journey I learnt that her name is Rosina, and as I approached the bus stop on another occasion I witnessed a young woman with two small daughters giving Rosina and kiss on each cheek. It is wonderful to see that she is connected and known in our community.

cactus

Among the row of plants on my bedroom windowsill is a cactus that has fallen to the floor on two occasions. Each time parts of it have broken away and now it sits, precarious and lop sided in its pot. I've always eyed it with a little sadness, remembering how it was, its potential and promise. My friend saw it last week and called it dramatic. Her clear vision has totally reframed how I look at my cactus, now I see its beauty rather than its missing parts. I've reflected upon this all week, and have observed my joy when gazing at this flourishing survivor. Words are so powerful, my response altered with a single one. 

getting my hands dirty

My day was spent volunteering at OrganicLea, a workers cooperative growing food on London's edge in the Lea Valley. There is a pleasant ache and tiredness in my body after weeding and mulching rhubarb crowns and potting on rooted blackcurrant cuttings. 

Being close to the soil, helping in simple ways, chatting to my companions while working together on a shared goal is mulch to my soul. 

Being the first to step outside after lunch I watched as a fox in beautiful condition sauntered through the grounds. At first it was accompanied by a solitary magpie but this flew gracefully into the bare trees. Walking on and partly obscured by bushes the fox leapt playfully in the grass and then disappeared from view. 

It was a rewarding day in many ways.  

 Blackcurrant Ben Nevis 

 2/2/18

 Rhubarb

  Productive space

 Structure and approaching dusk

 Greenhouses 

Gateway to Hawkwood

hello 2018

Goodbye 2017, you are a year I'll never forget.  Friendships strengthened, friendships lost, standing shoulder to shoulder with my sibling, grief, joy, challenges, choices, doldrums, endurance and a glimmer of hope. The only constant is change. This time next year I'll be in a different place geographically and emotionally. I'm ready for a positive and chosen uprooting into new ground, in hope that I find my home. 

Welcome 2018, you have a pleasing sound and shape.