Thirty-nine years ago today my mother committed suicide. It was the week after her first grandchild, my son, was born but they never met. She was 54.
The last time I saw Mother was in October 1971. I lived in North Argyllshire but had travelled south to Croydon with my (first) husband for my younger brother’s (first) wedding. I was five months pregnant and it hardly showed. Mother, it transpired, was suffering from secondary cancers and her distended abdomen made her look more pregnant than I was and we told her so. But we didn’t know she was ill.
Her primary cancer was breast cancer and she had had a lump for a while before any medic took it seriously. So, when they decided to give her a radical mastectomy, in 1966, it was obvious that it had spread.
In 1969 she was found to have a benign brain tumour and the resulting operations left her suffering regularly from horrendous headaches. And she was never quite the person we had known all our lives, after that experience.
On 29 March 1972 – the day my son was born in Inverness – she was content. Her first grandchild had arrived safely, all three of her children were, it seemed, happily married, and she had met and approved of my father’s mistress and told him that he should marry her (which he subsequently did).
But Mother knew she was ill. And, after waiting for my son to be born, a visit to her GP confirmed it. He arranged for her to visit the breast clinic at Guys Hospital and she knew she would be admitted immediately. So she made her plans.
Choosing a day when my younger brother and his medical student wife were visiting, she locked away her diamonds and, leaving notes about an outstanding grocery bill and some knitting she had been doing for my baby, she made her way to the attic spare room. With her she took her late mother’s sleeping tablets, a glass, a jug of water, a bucket, a pad of paper and a pen. She climbed into the bed, took the tablets, and fell asleep as she wrote. The note was addressed to her husband, my father, and told him how much she loved him.
My brother and his wife found her which was her plan – she didn’t want my father to do so on his own. The coroner’s verdict was suicide due to cancer because the autopsy found she was “riddled” with it.
But I like to think it was self euthanasia.
Today I visited the local cemetery for the first time ever taking my younger daughter with me. My mother has no grave – she had no funeral and was cremated – but the one we visited is that of a neighbour who was a beloved grandmother, mother, and the teenage sweetheart of her grieving widower. She died last November and yesterday her family marked Mother’s Day by visiting her resting place together. I was unwell on the day of her funeral and I chose today to pay my respects to her because it has been a special day for me too.
I am not religious and never have been and probably would describe myself as an agnostic, if I have to say anything. But the truth is that none of us know what happens next when we die, if anything. However, I would love to think that somewhere out there, somewhere in the ether, are those people whom we have loved and lost patiently waiting for us to join them. But I shall have to wait and see, won’t I? As will you!
