Loss and Mother's Day: 'Life goes on but it will never be the same'

It’s the soundtrack to my own childhood and brings back memories of sunny days and adventures in my mum’s battered VW Beetle with a mossy hole in the floor.

A progressive, self-confessed hippy, she guided my sister and me through a frugal 1980s childhood with lots of music and not a lot of money. There were black bin bags instead of curtains, the sheriff knocking on the door when interest rates were sky high, and many make-and-do projects involving toilet rolls.

She also had an infectious enthusiasm for social justice. At the age of six, I wrote to the then President of South Africa, Mr Botha, to tell him how wrong apartheid was.

She made friends with a local traveller woman who called to the door seeking food and clothes and later gave her her wedding dress.

When the butcher called her Mrs Stokes she firmly told him that was her mother-in-law, not her. She was Edna.

In May 2018 she was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. It was one of those moments when the pit of your stomach drops, and you know it’s bad even before the medics had discovered just how bad.

It was pre-Covid, and not at a time of particular crisis for the health service. Despite what now seem like obvious symptoms — bloating, bowel issues and back pain — several trips to her GP and two trips to emergency departments, she was always sent home with various non-specific explanations until that day.

It was in the Beacon Hospital in Dublin where the kindest doctor I’ve ever met told us the news. The watery sunlight shone through the huge glass windows that early summer afternoon. My legs went from under me, and my mum did what mums do, worried about my sister and me and promised us she’d be fine.

There followed more than three years of treatment at the Beacon, a place I was also attending for fertility treatment at the time.

We found compassionate and expert staff, the best drugs and an oncologist who really got my mum and dealt with her as she wished to be dealt with, which in her case was with humour, no fuss and little by way of detail. When asked if she wanted to know her life expectancy, she didn’t hesitate in responding with a firm no.

Final journeys

Mum came to my wedding dressed in fuchsia, rocking her cropped, post-chemo hair and a beaming smile. Her big throaty laugh echoed across the room as she danced and chatted.

She told us she’d always dreamed of visiting the Outer Hebrides, so my sister and I planned one of the weirdest and most wonderful trips I’ve ever been on to the literal arsehole of nowhere via a tiny propeller plane. We were awed by the beautiful bleakness, charmed by the people and amused that we had to drive halfway across the Isle of Lewis and Harris to get food on a Sunday because the sabbath is still observed.

There was a festive jaunt to New York when an airline mess-up that left us seated separately ended in a bump to first class, just for her. She left economy with delight and didn’t look back. She visited Edinburgh with my husband and me and we laughed and drank hot whiskies, climbed Arthur’s Seat under dreary skies and enjoyed the dark humour and history of the Scots.

Weeks later, Covid arrived. As always, she was in a cycle of treatment to grant her more precious time. Chemo had to be now endured alone. We were grateful for any measure to keep her safe. Meanwhile, my latest IVF transfer was cancelled with days to go because of lockdown. The next transfer I did alone. We ploughed on.

Just before the September 2020 lockdown, after another round of IVF, I discovered I was pregnant. I didn’t dare believe it after waiting so long, but life started to grow as my mum’s life started to wane.

A long-planned family holiday coincided with the introduction of new Covid travel restrictions. We snuck out of Dublin the day before those restrictions came in and escaped to West Cork, to my granny’s birthplace, Goleen, and my mum’s favourite place. She was a stickler for obeying rules but we persuaded her to go and I’ll be forever grateful for her small act of defiance

In an unseasonably warm September 2020, we swam off the vast golden sands of Barleycove, saw whales and dolphins on a bumpy boat trip from Baltimore, ate the freshest fish as the sun set over a glistening sea, kayaked under shooting stars at Union Hall. And we laughed so much, including at the ludicrousness of our family selfie at my granny’s grave.

She showed my niece and nephew, her adored grandchildren, who called her Eddie Peddie, and her two beloved sons-in-law her West Cork and even made it (with their help) up Three Castle Head.

Grappling with grief

On May 1, 2021, our long-awaited son, Tom, was born amid easing restrictions. My mum was overjoyed to meet him and I am so grateful she was there to help me through that amazing and shocking rite of passage.

I’m grateful for the memories of her holding him, the unforgettable moment in my kitchen where she cut through my exhausted haze of self-doubt to tell me I was doing a great job. But I’ll forever be saddened by her physical decline and frustration with her failing body.

On the last day of August, as Tom turned four months old and just weeks after taking sick leave from her job managing a small office, our mum died at the age of 64. It was in the same building where we first got that awful news and where my son was created.

Restrictions meant her death was harder and lonelier than it should have been, although she never gave up hope of more time. We were all with her at the end as she peacefully passed away with the sun streaming through those huge windows once again. Limits on funeral numbers were still in place. It’s a very strange thing to write a guestlist for a farewell to mum but we did, and we said the best goodbye we could muster with the help of family and friends and the guidance and kindness of humanist minister Brian Whiteside.

The grief was, and is, enormous and the weight of losing my mum, our new baby’s last surviving grandparent broke my heart, while his joyous little soul forced us into the future. It’s taken a lot of love and support from my very patient husband, family, great friends and the hospice bereavement counselling service to survive and navigate the last year and a half. Grief is not just sorrow, it’s also peppered with guilt, anger and loneliness. There’s no linear way out of it (I tried), just a very rocky, bumpy path through it and an acceptance of this new, unwanted companion. There is no going back.

Months later, just as I was due to return to work, life caught me by surprise once again. That surprise, now six months old, was born just after my mum’s first anniversary. Jane, named after her granny, Jane Edna. Her big dimples, throaty gurgle and beaming smile, are a resounding echo of my beautiful mum.

March is ovarian cancer awareness month and the month of Mother’s Day. 

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. Life will never be the same but it does go on.

Some 400 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year in Ireland. Initial symptoms can be difficult to spot as they are often mild.

Symptoms include:

• Bloated feeling
• Persistent swollen tummy
• Pain or dragging sensation in your lower abdomen, back or legs
• Vague indigestion or nausea
• Poor appetite and feeling full quickly
• Changes in your bowel or bladder habits — for example, constipation or needing to pass water urgently.
• Feeling tired all the time
• Irregular periods or bleeding after menopause
• Pain during sex
• Abnormal vaginal discharge or bleeding (rare)

These symptoms can be caused by conditions other than cancer, but it’s important to visit your GP and get any unusual changes checked out.

Source: Irish Cancer Society