To My Mum

Mothers and Daughters. An unrivalled connection, so simple yet so complicated. So common yet so varied. There must be millions of stories the word over, of a Mother and her Daughter, a Daughter and her Mother. But for the most part, we usually only ever truly know one version. Our own.

As I get older, I realise its very easy to see my Mum in me. My Dad too, but that is a story for a different day. Growing up, my Mum was striking, a fierce woman. Determined and strong. Sometimes it felt like she yelled a lot, and I guess she did, but always for what she believed in. I tended to be quite shy, especially when I first got diabetes, and I remember wondering how I was ever going to grow up to be as confident as her.

It's in the way I prepare lunch for the family, in the way I like to organise things, the way I fold the serviettes in quarters but the tea towels in thirds (which confuses the heck out of my partner and he can never quite seem to get right). It's the way I like certain things 'just so'. It's in my face when I stare in the mirror, my hair pulled back, just like she has for so many years. She is in me.

This I have to remember, and this is what I will hold on too, for I don't know how much longer she will be here. About one week after I signed up to the WEGO Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, Mum was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

At first, those three words were deafening, like a punch in the chest followed by the loudest white noise I've ever heard. Everything comes to a standstill, as though a big red flag had dropped from the sky, plummeting into the ground and marking the point at which life had now changed and will never be the same. I lost my voice box the moment I was told. It just completely disappeared. I also seemed to loose sensation. Frozen, I sat in the world's tiniest room (2 metres squared would be a generous guesstimate), mostly likely purpose built for such talks. In the dimmed light, the surgeon explained what surgery he had been able to perform and why he couldn't go any further; very carefully he assured us he would have treated his own family in the same way. Numb and Explosive. How can you be both at the same time? Just when it felt like we'd breathed all the oxygen out of the room, the door opened and the harsh fluro lights of the hospital corridors flooded in. No, it wasn't a dream, its real. I don't know how I manged to walk straight, let alone stand up.

There was life before cancer, and now there's life with cancer. As much as I try, being positive for two diseases can be hard, its draining, and I get tired. Mum with cancer actually makes life physically feel different.

The 'unknowns' seem as draining as the 'knowns'. We've heard 'six weeks to a six years', 'one to three years', & 'ten to twelve months'. Different days deliver different emotions; for everyone. I'll be happy as Larry one minute, and the next I'm stretching at the gym and suddenly I'm overwhelmed and thinking 'Shit! This time a year ago... who would have thought this is where we'd be?'(tears welling up, I made a for a quick exit). This time a year ago, I was watching my Nana struggle through her last days, very unhappily deteriorating beyond recognition in a hospital bed. It seems so long ago now.

I was devastated to know Nana would never see me walk down the isle. I never once thought Mum might not be there too. That's not supposed to be the way the picture looks.

Although I do not know how much longer I will have Mum on earth with me, I do know I will always have her, inside of me. Growing up there's been times when I've been annoyed when people have told me how much I can be like mum. I've fought with her, yelled at her, cried because of her. But more importantly, I am strong because of her. I have laughed with her, cried with her, shared my life with her. I am who I am because I have an amazing Mum who fought for me, who flew the diabetes flag  for me. She made me proud to be me, me with diabetes and me for just me.

I love you Mum.