Your relationship with your mother might not be perfect, but most of us have been lucky enough to bumble through our teens and 20s safe in the knowledge that, regardless of how catastrophically we mess up, our mums will always be there to help us through. Which is why it’s such a game changer when you realise that mum might actually not, as predicted, live forever.
I found out that mum had breast cancer six years ago, around the time when I was in my first year at university. It was stage two and she was going to have to have extensive courses of both chemo and radiotherapy, several painful operations, including one that would remove her breast, and a hefty course of hormonal treatment. She was going to lose all of her hair and likely a worrying amount of weight.
I wish I could say I took the news well, or like a grown-up. But while my dad took time off work to support my mum at her first vital doctor’s appointments, I was taking time off work and university to nurse the increasingly ghoulish hangovers I was giving myself as I spent every spare minute drinking to forget about what was happening to my mother and, by extension, me. I should have been phoning my mum every day and going back to London to support her through this life-altering (and threatening) illness she was dealing with, but the truth is in those first few weeks and months I’d often be ‘too busy at uni’ to pick up the phone and mainly communicated with my family through texts and emails. I did eventually sort myself out, but thinking about those first few months still fills me with deep shame, even now.
I slowly realised how much she was going out of her way to put my emotional well-being before her own
The turning point came three months in when I eventually went back to the family home in London for my mum’s birthday and she’d come to pick me up from the station (even though I could very easily have made it home on the bus). But, when she wound down the window things looked different. Where once there had been a shock of black hair artfully framed into a bob, on top of my mum’s head there was an auburn and blonde highlighted cropped wig. She wore it because ‘she might have to wear it soon’ and it was best me and my brother and sister ‘got used to it’ as soon as possible. As the shock of seeing my mum look drastically different began to wear off, I slowly realised how much she was going out of her way to put my emotional well-being before her own – why the hell wasn’t I doing the same for her? It was the shock I needed to stop the three-day benders and actually step up to the plate and be there for my mum.
At first, all she needed was someone there to do the girly things that my dad was a bit clueless at. Like buying her first eyebrow pencil and showing her how to use it. Once her hair started to fall out I took her to luxury hat shops to figure out what her ‘look’ was going to be. My mum has always been stylish, so I knew how important it was to get this bit right – not as important as meeting the surgeon to discuss reconstructive surgery like my dad was doing, but just something I knew would make my mum feel a bit more like herself. This was tricky, because she felt most comfortable wearing a wig, but it was boiling hot and irritated her scalp, so we settled on silk scarfs (which were amazingly glamorous with statement earrings) around the house and cashmere beanies during the winter. It was hard not to cry when I saw how difficult it was for my mum to ask me for help, but seeing the difference subtle changes like using an eyebrow pencil or wearing a trendy hat were doing to her mood was rewarding in a way I could never have imagined before.
That process of readdressing our relationship didn’t stop when my mum entered into recovery and her hair started to grow back either. For a long time, I took over a lot of the ‘life admin’ roles in the house as much as I could so that my parents had enough time to concentrate on hospital appointments and time for themselves, which means I’m now pretty adept at looking after school-aged children, dealing with workmen, making sure bills are paid and that all the pets are properly looked after. When people used to ask me what mum did for a living, I used to say ‘she’s just a housewife’ without any real understanding of how much actual graft that entails.
When people used to ask me what mum did for a living, I used to say ‘she’s just a housewife’ without any real understanding of how much actual graft that entails.
What that’s also meant is that we’ve basically fast forwarded from a ‘kidult’ relationship to an ‘adult’ one and I now see my mum more as a peer and friend than I do my care giver. This is great in one sense, because it means I can talk to her and her friends about anything on a level, but can be difficult at times when you just want your mum to be your mum. Sometimes I want to give her a call and rant about how ‘difficult’ I’m finding dealing with an idiot boy in my life, for example, and she gently reminds me that there are more important things in life to worry about, a thinly veiled reference to the big ‘c.’ Nothing can make you feel sillier.
And sometimes I’d love to stay out all weekend and bail on seeing my parents like some of my friends my age do, but I know the guilt of letting my precious family down would make the whole thing not worth it. What this has meant is I’ve bent over backwards when I probably didn’t need to, travelling long distances over the country and sometimes bankrupting myself to rush home when all my mum meant by ‘it would be nice to see you soon’ was ‘it would be nice to see you soon.’
We’re still figuring out what our relationship is post cancer – are we mother and daughter? Friends? Sisters? A combination of all of them all? But it’s getting easier all the time.
And of course there are moments when I realise that nothing has really changed at all. At 26, I still find £20 notes in my handbag she’s slipped in over lunch, she still phones me a least three times a month to ask me about my teeth and she still worries that I’m staying out too late and getting with boys who are ‘beneath me.' Cancer may have changed the course of our relationship, but its essence is still there. In a strange way, I think we both feel lucky to have gone through this enormous trauma and make it through the other side because, yes, she’s my mum, but now I can honestly say she’s one of my best friends as well.
Sophie’s top tip for supporting a parent who has cancer:
*It’s a cliche, but it’s so important to remember that time heals. If your mum is ill, there’ll be a lot of times when things will seem too much for you to handle and it’s easy to slip into a (somewhat self-indulgent) pit of self pity. Don’t let yourself fall into depression, it’s vitally important to remind yourself that things will get better no matter the outcome of your mum’s illness and that this too shall pass – if you don’t let yourself believe that you’ll be miserable and you’ll never muster the strength you need to properly support your mum. For more tips and inspiration on how you can support someone you care about with cancer, visit **The Source. ***
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Picture: Li Hui
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.