Balance September 2019 - 31

PSYCH
LIFE LESSONS

DEALING
WITH GRIEF

(WHEN LIFE TURNS UPSIDE DOWN)

Even when the end is near, no one is ever fully prepared for the death of a loved one.
Writer Emma Kennedy reveals the profound effect her mother's passing had on her life

I

had a year to prepare for my mother's death. We had been told, one
warm spring morning, that her cancer had returned and this time,
nothing could be done. She was going to die and that was that. In the
room, I had reached for her hand. My father pressed himself into the
back of his chair as if trying to get as far away from what he was being
told as possible. My mother had tried to make the doctor feel better for
having to break such awful news. The bottom had dropped from our world.
It was like a slow drowning.
When the time finally came, on another warm spring day a year later,
I had five days to prepare the barriers for the oncoming flood. I was shocked
at how broken I felt on those long days waiting
for her to slip away. She was in terrible pain.
I wouldn't have wished that last week on a dog.
It's difficult, when you know someone is
suffering. The last year had taken its toll. Mum
had breast cancer and lymphedema had swollen
her left arm to such an extent it looked like a
bin bag filled with water. Large, bloody lesions
were scattered all across her chest. They looked
like shot wounds. She had been an extraordinary
beauty in her time, and she found the disability
an affront.
I wanted her to die, for her suffering to end,
but that's something you can't admit. All the same
when she slipped away, I was devastated. I held on to her, as if I were trying
to stop her disappearing down a well. The district nurse came and cleaned
her up. She'd wet the bed as she died, a final indignity. I remember resenting
this small embarrassment and wishing she had been spared it. It turns out
most people wet the bed when they die. Nobody ever tells you that.
The extended family who had been with us left and my father, my wife
and I got three beers and sat with my mother. It was the first drink my father
had had in seven years. He hadn't been an alcoholic; he'd stopped drinking
to support mum after her first cancer diagnosis. I stroked her forehead and
her hair, and we remembered funny things she'd said and done.

The undertaker arrived, a man bedecked in a very smart three-piece suit.
He was respectful and kind. My wife took charge and told me and my father
to go downstairs to the sitting room. She didn't want us to see my mother
being taken away in a bag and to this day, I am beyond grateful that she did
that for us.
From the moment I went home to be with my mother, I cried for 11 days.
She died on the fifth day. I have never experienced sorrow like it. It was
deep and heavy and painful, but perhaps the most difficult thing to deal
with was the lightness we now faced. My father, a carer for seven years,
could now live his own life, but there was another sense of relief. We no
longer had to deal with my mother's madness.
When I came along, my mother experienced
what would now be called postpartem psychosis.
She received no help and it changed her
forever. I have no doubt that my mother had
an undiagnosed mental illness, not anxiety or
depression, but a serious personality disorder that
should have been treated. What I struggled with
most when she died, was the sense of immense
relief that I no longer had to listen to her telling
me the neighbours were trying to steal her house,
or that my father had secret families he crept off
to, every time he went to Waitrose.
What I regret the most, in the months and years
since, is that I did nothing about it. She was a wonderful, brilliant, funny
woman. She could make me laugh like nobody else. She was also incredibly
disturbed. Yet nobody, while she was alive, discussed whether she might
have a treatable disorder. We were hostages, not wanting our captor to fly
into a rage. If she was in a good mood, don't risk it.
We spend so much time with our parents, it's a shame we don't really get to
know them. My mother was a one-off. I will never know anyone else like her,
and I just wish I had tried to find out what made her so sad. I miss her terribly.
Emma's latest book, The Things We Left Unsaid, (£12.99, Century) is
out now B

I HAVE NEVER
EXPERIENCED
A SORROW LIKE
IT: DEEP, HEAVY
AND PAINFUL

31
Balance September 2019

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