Open Writing

What was it that drew me home that evening? I was playing quite happily in the field with my best friend Kathryn. We had been playing ‘catch’ and we were squealing with delight. I stopped - Kathryn cannoned into me.

“What’s up?”

“I have to go home.”

“Why?” - she couldn’t believe that I was going to put a stop to what we had been enjoying.

“I have to.”

I walked away sadly. For just a short while I had forgotten. I had let my mind run away from the burden I had been carrying for so long. I walked slowly. Through the school gate and over the road. Down the path which went by the Bellamy’s house, right turn and up the path to the back door.

I opened the door tentatively. I knew straight away that something was wrong. Everyone was in the kitchen. Joyce, my Dad, Mrs. Gray. They were drinking tea. My eyes looked up. Why wasn’t someone sitting with my mother? She had never been left alone before.

Dad walked towards me.

“Come and sit down, love”

He put his arm round me and led me to a chair.

“Your Mum died at 7.10 this evening.”

I felt my world spin. My stomach came up into my mouth. It couldn’t have happened. I’d prayed about it. I’d made a pact with God. Let my mother get better and I’ll always be good. I had known in my heart, and very strongly, that He wouldn’t let it happen. But He had.

“I want you to go down to your grandfather’s and tell him what has happened.”

It was quite a walk down to the centre of town where my grandparents lived. I walked out of the house feeling numb and shocked. Back at the main road I was conscious of all the things which made up my world as I walked past. Mrs. Metclafe’s house where the nasturtiums had begun to grow, and where she encouraged us to collect the caterpillars which gathered there every summer. Mrs. Steele’s house, where we had tied the door sneck to a stone and knocked and run away on Mischief Night. For which she had still not forgiven us. The field, shielded by a high wall which somehow we never wanted to climb. The fish shop where I could get a pennorth of chips, but which did not draw me tonight even though I could smell them cooking. As I went past, I thought “Why are you all going along as though nothing has happened? My mother has died, and nothing will ever be the same again.”

I thought back to what had happened during the long winter of 1947. The snow had been piled high at the side of the road, and at times nothing could get through. Yet we had all gone on the ‘bus to Leeds to the Infirmary to visit my mother. She had gone in after fighting off fainting fits and exhaustion to have some tests. The showed that she had myeloid leukaemia. And there was no cure. In the end my Dad said that he wanted his beloved wife home, so that he could look after her. And he did. He convinced himself that he would get her well again.

I would come home from school and find him making the most awful concoctions for her to eat. Raw beetroot with brown sugar. Raw minced beef. Medicines which he obtained from the herbalist. I don’t know if she ever managed to eat them but he really tried to help her - he certainly tried. And he wrote all over the world asking if anyone could help him. But nobody could.

In the end he told me “There will be a cure one day, but it will be too late for your mother.”

So all he could do was watch her die - and this she did, slowly, over seven long weeks.

Her room filled up with bottles and pills.

“Come and sing to me, Nancy” she would say weakly.

I would take out the tiny little Methodist Hymn Book she had bought me one year and sing ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘Nearer My God to Thee’. I would watch as the tears trickled down her cheeks, or as she smiled at me. My wonderful, well-made mother was slowly fading before me.

I thought of all this on my walk to my grand-parents on that Spring evening. When I reached the house I knocked on the door and walked in. My grandfather was sitting in his chair by the fire, and my grandmother was by the table knitting. He looked up. Grandma was very deaf and was not aware of me until I moved into her line of vision.

“Mother has died, and Dad sent me to tell you.”

It felt quite dramatic saying it, and I almost stood aside to watch their reactions. I felt relief that Auntie Louie was not in the room. She was my Dad’s older sister, and she generally had the tongue of a serpent. She came in from the back scullery as I spoke.

“Eh, Nancy, I am so sorry.”

Her voice was gentle and I felt tears welling up in me. I had never heard her sound so kind. She had come each week to bake bread for our family in our house, and in all the years I had known her I had only ever received the rough edge of her tongue.

Grandfather didn’t speak. He got up and went over to the cupboard to get his coat.

“I’ll come up with you.”

We did not speak at all as I walked back to our house, Grand-dad at my side. Once we arrived he spoke to my Dad and my sister about the arrangements which would need to be made.

“Would you like to see our Mother now?”

My sister Joyce was standing beside me. Ten years older than me, she looked weighed down with all the worries of the world.

“Yes.”

We went upstairs. I was frightened as I went into the room I had visited only a few hours before.

My Mother was lying very still, clothed in a white, lacey nightgown. Her hands were over her chest and there was a long cloth holding up her chin. She looked scary - like a ghost. She did not look like my Mother.

I ran out of the room, breathing hard and trying to stifle my sobs. What was I going to do? I was only ten years old and my Mother was dead.