The truth between the lines

A week I will never forget. Unfortunately.

I haven’t written a post for a while because I don’t know where to start. I like to keep to the peaceful and positive but life isn’t always a smooth path. And why should social media live a lie by always showing the glitz and glitter of life that pretends life is always easy.

This week I’ve been sitting at mum’s bedside, listening to options left open to her from the palliative team. A week ago I got the phone call from the doctor in the UK, strangely enough, while visiting a good old friend in a fantastic Spanish hospital, that mum has cancer.

It was a shock. Of course. And the doctor didn’t stop for me to catch my breath. But explained. While my family in the hospital room listened in. He explained some more. I understood most of it, or did I? I started to wonder as I rang off. I got on a plane last Sunday. Went straight to a stunning hospital that has a grand piano in the main hallway. An atrium with a roof, thirty meters up, made of glass.

And in the coming days I understood what the doctor didn’t say. Slowly the penny started to drop. He didn’t talk of any operation to remove the ‘obstruction’. He didn’t talk of a plan for chemo. He didn’t talk of months or years or weeks. I realised there was a lot of truth in what he didn’t say.

That Mum’s one way ticket is date-stamped. We held on tight to her hand.

So I’ve been with Dad a lot too in this turmoil of a week or more. So many changes in a week. Mum’s medicines have changed and she is more familiar and comfortable with the care she is receiving at last. That is a relief.

Yesterday the surgeon with long, flowing hair arrived, explaining something he could do for her, to reduce a bit of pressure in her tummy but she refused. No surgery she says. Too weak.

Mum used to be a hairdresser. One of those that travels door to door for people who can’t get in to the village.

….’No’, she said ‘But thank you, Charlie. ‘I do understand. I really do. But no’. She likes to remember everybody’s name who comes in, and there must be forty so far to learn this week. Then she smiles, her pale face and then I see a twinkle in her eye and says, ‘….but I’d love to cut your hair!’

Mum and I have had a couple of giggles this last couple of days. Who would have thought it.

I’ll be back with more story soon. I’m not sure how, but it seems to help to put some of what we have been through in words.

Lots of love.