A powerhouse who could command the attention of any room, my mother had buried inside her the type of belly laugh that would strike like lightning across the late night sky. And a wit just as fast.
Cancer killed her. She was young, 59, too damn young. But she died with the kind of courage, grace, and humour that I have never witnessed before or since.
We had a tempestuous relationship. She’d easily complete the toughest crosswords in the newspapers every day, even progressing to those impenetrable ones with the abstract clues, and then, afterwards, she’d reverse engineer the process to explain how she had deduced the correct answers. I’d sit in awe of her, pretending not to be seething with jealousy at her infinitely superior intellect.
Acerbic and articulate with a hunger to swallow life whole, she had a temper so powerful even the dogs would whimper. When she fixed you with those dark green eyes the fear in your twisted stomach would teach you that there is a third place between fight or flight called shite. And she didn’t just have the capacity to make you soil your pants, she’d make you look up an encyclopaedia after you wiped to find out who had invented toilet roll.
When the palliative care team was called in, she was at home. They got together as teenagers, yet, over the years of the cancer, and the unimaginable horror it causes, my mother and father had somehow became closer. As her husband, her carer, and her friend, that remarkable man became her rock.
While death was drawing closer, she was still completely lucid. She had no belief in the afterlife, yet when I asked her if she was afraid of dying, she said no. But she did say she was afraid my father might not find somebody else afterwards. Maybe it was because my mother was saying it about my father but it was the most romantic thing I had ever heard.
It was a Saturday when they told us she wouldn’t make another day and it was time to say our farewells. My sister went into the room first and closed the door behind her. All my brother and I could hear from outside were the muffled sobs of a mother and a daughter who knew they would never talk again.
When my sister came out a long time later she couldn’t look at me or my brother as she walked away. Now it was my brother’s turn. Despite being a giant of a man who won countless trophies for his country, when he closed that door behind him, and he and my mother began to softly speak, it sounded like two tiny children sobbing at the cruelty of life.
My brother stayed even longer than my sister. When he came out his swollen eyes looked like someone had beaten him in the face with a hammer. He tried to say something, but as his voice broke again, he too couldn’t look at me, and he walked away.
I hesitated before stepping in. My mother whispered my name. We both knew Death was standing in the room. You could feel him; patient, respectful, inevitable.
I knew it was time to tell this woman who gave birth to me how much I loved her. My mother. The woman who granted me life. It was time to tell her how I had marvelled at her bravery in confronting her cancer. How it had somehow brought out the absolute best in her. How inspiring it was to witness that courage. How humbling it was to be the son of such a warrior. How I regretted the wasted years fighting over bullshit long since forgotten. How she had taken me home after being in an incubator in the hospital for seven weeks after the doctor told her I was going to die. How she bandaged my head everytime I fell because my legs were all messed up. How she brought me to doctors to get special shoes because I couldn’t walk properly. How she spent years fixing my stammer because I couldn’t speak properly. How she came up to the school to tell some teacher she’d crack his skull open if he ever laid hands on me again. How she did a hundred million things that I knew I had to tell her about there and then, including confessing the seething jealousy of her crossword skills.
I sat beside her on the bed and tenderly took her hand in mine as I saw the salt of too many tears burned into the skin around her eyes. But just like she had done with my brother and sister, she was determined to be strong in our final conversation. I looked at my mother, this incredible woman who would be dead by tomorrow, and I tried not to break as I brought my mouth close to her ear and whispered, ‘Is this a bad time to hit you for a loan?’
My mother squealed and snorted slightly as she shouted in a tiny whisper: “Don’t make me laugh, you bastard, it hurts!” She looked up at me, pleading, but still smiling, like a child begging you not to tickle them but hoping that you will.
I looked at her with pure love and said, ‘I swear I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’ She squealed again and said, “Stop, I’m serious!”
I squeezed her hand knowing she would be dead by Sunday and said, ‘Or if the palliative care team are wrong, I’ll definitely have it back to you by Monday.’
That was the clincher. Another thing I have never seen since is a person simultaneously laughing and crying and cursing and dying. All at once.
We both sighed into silence and looked at each other. I tried to find a way to tell her it all, tell her everything. But only two broken words came out. ‘You know.’ It was her turn to squeeze my hand. “I know.”
We sat in the silence that comes from surrender. She smiled, more to herself than to me, and she whispered, “Thank God for that. I couldn’t take any more fucking tears.”
The chemo took her hair but the cancer couldn’t take her humour. I held her the next day as she died. She wasn’t afraid.
Terry McMahon