How Coronavirus Is Changing My Relationship With My Mum, And My Daughter

‘I wish I could hug you now,’ says my mum on the phone, her voice cracking. It’s weird to hear her sounding vulnerable. I don’t think of her as vulnerable.

She is the kind of fearless single mum who taught me how to wire a plug with the same casual efficiency that she disposed of massive spiders (as my sister and I squealed from a chair). Also, she is the healthiest person I know, a lifelong proponent of the restorative power of a brisk walk in the fresh air, and capable of whipping up a delicious, nourishing dinner with only an old carrot and some lentils.

So it was a shock when she was hit by a severe case of double pneumonia when I was 13, spending several days in intensive care. At the time, I didn’t know how serious it was until a teacher asked if I needed anyone to talk to. Since then, she has had recurring chest infections, requiring endless courses of antibiotics and steroids. It's been getting worse as she gets older, which makes coronavirus a particular danger.

‘If I got it, I’d just DIE straight away,’ she laughed down the phone a couple of weeks ago, back when we still felt able to make morbid jokes about it. ‘My lungs are fucked.’

Now 68, she is classed as a ‘vulnerable adult’, and is embarking on 12 weeks of isolation. It means that my planned trip to see her in Scotland over Easter, with my five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, has been cancelled. It also means that now I haven’t seen my mum for nearly six months. Why so long? Well, there's no excuse. But I have a busy job in London, and mum has an older sister - with no other family - riddled with cancer in a nursing home, who she visits every day.

I last took the kids to Scotland during the October break last year, my daughter clambering all over my aunt, and my son smothering mum with kisses (try telling small kids about social-distancing). We didn’t make it to Scotland over Christmas, and mum was supposed to visit us in February, but her chest was playing up and she was too ill to come. This Easter break was going to be a long-awaited reunion. But now I don’t know when we’ll see her again.

Despite mum’s lung problems, her dying feels inconceivable. I always assumed she would live to 98 like my nan – her mum – who batted off breast cancer several times to die of old age. But now, with the Prime Minister announcing that ‘many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time’, I’m waking up at 4am gripped with terror that I’ll never see her well again. Why didn’t I make more of an effort to get to Scotland over Christmas, or February half term? Why don’t I call her more often? Why am I such a bad daughter?

If there is a coronavirus silver lining, then it is that now I am calling my mum more often. And, when my daughter hugs me, I imagine us in 30 years’ time being kept apart by a deadly virus, which makes me so aware of my family’s mortality that I’m more patient with her when she splashes all the water out of the bath.

Traumatic times can strengthen relationships. And I’m counting our blessings. I’m grateful that mum is retired, and lives in a small Scottish village, making social-distancing comparatively easy. I’m also grateful that we live in the era of FaceTime and WhatsApp, so we can feel connected digitally, at least.

But it breaks my heart that, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I can hug my husband and kids. Mum is alone – she’s not even allowed to visit her sister now – and will be for 12 weeks. Hugs are a basic human need, and being denied that kind of contact is painful. Psychologists call it ‘touch deprivation’.

So, when she tells me on the phone that she needs a hug, all I can do is end the call before she hears me cry. And focus on the hope that, come late summer, I’ll be sipping champagne with mum as a belated birthday celebration, and my kids’ little arms will be wrapped all around her.

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