Dear Bel, I was half a world away from my mum when she collapsed from a brain aneurysm. I moved to England from New Zealand in 2001 to be with my partner, so was over here that dreadful night. We were on the next flight to New Zealand on the following day, and the 25 hours’ travelling time could not have been any more of an inconvenience. When we got to Wellington, we went straight to the hospital. I’ll never forget how she looked lying there in bed. She had tubes coming out from everywhere, yet she was still my beautiful mother.
She collapsed on May 25 and was officially declared brain-dead on the 30th. Had she survived she would have been brain-damaged. Her passing was probably the best thing for her, because she was a proud woman and would not have liked to have been remembered like that. I struggle to accept that she is gone and ask unanswerable questions such as: why her?
I know this is what many people say when loved ones die but I couldn’t even begin to describe how wonderful a mother she was to me, my sister and brother, and an amazing wife to our dad. She was the sort of person who always put herself second to her family. My mother was the one true soulmate in my life, and she is gone. She was only 49, and looking forward to turning 50 because she didn’t look it, or feel it.
I can’t believe that I won’t ever see her again or hear her voice. I cry every time I think about how my mother is not going to be there when I get married or give birth. My sister feels guilty for being the only one of us to have had her there for those things. My brother is at home with my dad, and their relationship grows tenser every day, because she was the cushion between them both.
Now I am back in England and feel as if I didn’t appreciate her enough while I had her. The night before she collapsed I was texting Mum but I gave her the indication not to phone me because, to be honest, I couldn’t be bothered to speak to her. What sort of daughter won’t take a call from her own mother? I live with that horrible thought day in, day out. Why is it the most beautiful spirits are the ones that we are robbed of so early?
I know you can’t put a time on the grieving period but what about the guilt? The guilt of not being the best person I could have been to the person it mattered to the most — my mother. How long do I have to live with this feeling and without answers? I don’t know how to look at this situation in a positive way, how to get over or move on from these feelings.
Kay
You put “Unanswerable questions” as the subject of your moving e-mail, so in one sense you predict what I must say. All of us (and I mean all — even those supported by faith) will quail under dark skies and tremble at the rumblings from the universe, feeling so small, so helpless in our abject terror of the unknown. In that, believe me, you and I are not different. When asked about the perennial problem of pain, I confess that ultimately my advice will boil down to one word: endurance. Which isn’t always immediately helpful. Yet I know that writing out a problem is in itself often very useful; the act itself says “Here I am and this is what I feel” and aids acceptance of the situation — if (as in this case) that is what is necessary to move on. For when somebody beloved dies the first step to re-creating the life that’s left is to accept the reality of loss. Only then can it be absorbed, and carried forward with you, as much a part of your being as the smallest marks on your skin.
I talk about acceptance with no glib expectation that it is easy. There are many people twice your age (and more) who are still dumbfounded by the loss of a parent, and live their daily lives half-expecting that dear face to appear somewhere on a street corner or to come through the living room door in the old way. They are still struggling, as you are. And, in truth, I feel it is harder for somebody young, simply because they have no reason to expect death — as the mature person with very old parents must, in the natural order of events. I strongly recommend a very good book by Rebecca Abrams called When Parents Die (1992), which encapsulates the particular nature of your problem: “How to find a place for death in your life at an age when you are expected to be lively, optimistic, carefree; when you are expected to take risks, leave home, get jobs, be sociable, fall in and out of love; at an age when death makes all these ‘normal’ things seem very difficult, impossible even.” With great wisdom, Abrams sums up the dilemma you face: “about living with death at a time when your dead should still have been living”.
Ah, but we know there are no “shoulds” in this issue. Of course we feel them, yet life is never an allotted time, bought with the exact amount you put into the parking meter. Why else was a girl of 12 buried just days after Christmas? Why do some very old people eke out their days long, long beyond their wishing? One of the most testing paradoxes for us is this: to get the most out of our all-too-brief span we do have to live each day (as the truism has it) as if it were the last, and yet if that were indeed enacted, life would become an intolerable round of frantic navel-gazing and “last” goodbyes. We have to assume that the phone call can be taken in a week’s time and that “time” will not be called before that moment. Otherwise we’d all go crazy.
It’s very important for you to come to terms with your guilt, to help you to face the permanent reality of your mother’s absence. You can do nothing about the latter, so your feelings of helplessness must be faced in dealing with the former.
Although you don’t say so, I imagine your guilt is rooted in the fact that you crossed the world, leaving your mother behind, to be with the man you love. Naturally it must have made her sad, and yet you know, a woman possessed of all her qualities would have understood that your behaviour was utterly normal. Young people will leave home and follow their hearts and/or careers. It’s what happens; wise parents know that.
Similarly, we don’t always want to chat on the phone, even to those we love. In the middle of a good programme, selfishly I will let my phone click into answer mode. But what if it was my mother or daughter with a problem? The answer to your desperate question, “What kind of daughter won’t take a call . . . ?” is “Any daughter, any son — sometimes”.
Try to banish this unproductive, negative guilt, for none of us is “the best person we could have been” to those we love. All we can do is go on trying, and even when someone has died we continue the process by concentrating on the very best of memories. You must focus on what shines out of your letter: your enduring love for your mother. Everybody reading this will have gained a sense of what a wonderful woman she was, and nothing can ever change that. She is engraved on your heart like the secret inscription on the back of a ring, and that is what you will carry with you into marriage with another “true soulmate” — knowing that she was indeed the first.
All the qualities she endowed you with will see you through childbirth and motherhood and all the joys and tribulations that await you. In that sense she has not “gone”, for I firmly believe that the spirit cannot die. So now is the time to allow your mother to lighten your heart and help you to live.
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Do you need advice about your relationships? E-mail your problems to: bel.mooney@thetimes.co.uk or write to her at: times2, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Details such as your age are helpful. Please include your real name, but we will use your chosen pseudonym if you wish. Bel Mooney reads all letters but cannot enter into personal correspondence.
