Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Thursday, January 2, 2020
The agonising grief of things left unsaid.
- The agonising grief of things left unsaid | Daily Mail Online
She was able to fly into a rage at the click of fingers.
My mother died in the early evening of a warm spring day.
She died in my childhood 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.
She was able to fly into a rage at the click of fingers.
My mother died in the early evening of a warm spring day.
She died in my childhood 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
