I feel terrible today. At sometime this afternoon a black dog crept up behind me and now he stays at my heel no matter what. I don’t have the will to shoo him away. I have to lie to people: “Yes, I’m fine.” I’m not fine; I’m in a low. I don’t know if I am coping. What the fuck is coping? I’m scared, I’m alone, I miss my mother. I want her back. Please, someone bring her back. Just one more year, that’s all. Just one more Christmas. Just one more telephone conversation. Please, someone take away the pain. It’s burning inside me and I think it’s slowly turning into anger. But I have no one to feel angry with, except myself. No one loves me as much as she did, no one ever will, and that’s a...
My mother was my home: the stale odour of the room in which she would sit and smoke while watching television, sipping Tia Maria; the piles of un-ironed washing in the hallway, because, as she might point out, it will still be there tomorrow; a greasy pan left on the hob, waiting for Dad to wash it before bed. To my knowledge she never threw out an empty shampoo bottle or newspaper, and there are still things at the back of the pantry that date from my early teens. She kept her purse in her shoppping bag, prefered silver to gold, and would not countenance pasta. My mother had a unique way of yawning. She would inhale in the normal way, but on exhalation she would produce a descending scale of notes not unlike a sarcastic laugh. I remember being rebuked at infant school for attempting to immitate it. “But that’s the way my mum does it”, I said. That didn’t wash with Miss Smith. She takes a few of my secrets with her. And, although I’m not embarrassed to divulge them, I will remain silent because they are hers to keep. A couple of hours ago I flicked through my photo collection, picked out a suitable snapshot and slid it into the photoframe I received last Christmas. Mum stands in pasture at the bottom of Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales. That was when she had frizzy hair and enormous glasses. She is smiling broadly – proof that she is happy. She is flanked by sheep, and is wearing totally inappropriate...
I have sad news to convey. I awoke this morning to a text message from Robert, friend of many of you, and sometimes writer for bullpencatcher.com, telling me that his mother died at 10:10 GMT today. As many of you know she had been recovering from a several-month stay in the hospital after having an allergic reaction to medication for gout that caused her to lose close to 70% of the skin on her body. She was recovering well from the reports I had been receiving from Robert. When I talked with Robert on Friday of last week, he told me that she was going into the hospital for treatment of the skin on her eyes, not a simple and easy procedure, but not one thought to be incredibly dangerous either. Last night I recieved a call from him during which he told me that his father had called earlier in the evening to tell him his mother had turned for the worse and the doctors predicted she would only make it, at most, another week. The loss of her skin had made her very susceptible to bacteria. A staphylococcus (Staph) infection had entered her body and made its way to her heart where it was destroying one of her heart valves. Her heart was, for all intents and purposes, pumping blood back on itself. Robert told me that he and his father had decided not to request more life support once she started to slide. His father told him of the plans he would make for the funeral. Robert was planning to leave Oxford today to go up...
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