“Why not? Why didn’t I live with my mother when the doctor told her she had metastatic cancer? I was her only child, the apple of her eye for whom she always stood up. She loved me dearly, and I loved her, but I abandoned her in the most difficult phase of her life. That’s how it feels.
It was clear that my mother was very ill and did not have long to live. She died six weeks after that shattering diagnosis, aged eighty-one. It’s been five years now, but still not a night goes by where I don’t wake up heartbroken and wonder why I didn’t move in with her at the end of her life.
At the time, I told myself it was impractical. My mother lived in Deventer, I work and live in The Hague and I couldn’t miss my children. When I feel sad, I prefer to be close to my two daughters. In retrospect, I think it was especially difficult for me to see my mother vulnerable. I also think I wanted to save her from my grief. She couldn’t bear to see me sad. Perhaps it was because of our close bond that I subconsciously chose to keep my distance from her during her illness.
Make happy
Our bond was so strong that it could be oppressive at times. I felt responsible for her and for her happiness. My mother was a tough, witty, outspoken woman, a feminist pur sang, who regularly went out with cheerful friends and liked to drink a glass of wine. But I also knew she could feel alone. And everything that made her sad touched me, and all the more so because she had had a hard life.
My mother grew up in poverty, went to a school with nuns who beat her, had a nasty father who cheated on her, and her own husband ran off with another woman. When she finally found a dear friend, he died in an accident. In the ten years that she was alone, I did my very best to make her happy by regularly collecting her to eat, stay with me, visit a museum or go shopping. Every year we went on a long weekend trip.
collapsed lung
Of course I didn’t know that she would only live so short when I heard the bad news, otherwise I would have made a different choice, and it’s not that I gave up my care for her during her illness. I went to her every other day, I attended all the hospital interviews and I arranged a nice care hotel for her, where she had a nice last summer – friends came over and the weather was beautiful.
But when things went wrong after the first irradiation, there were two more times when I failed. My mother was in pain and I comforted her, but I should have demanded a scan – it turned out she had a collapsed lung. Then I once again wrongly trusted the doctors, who said they had everything under control and that I could safely bring my children back to The Hague after what turned out to be their last visit. When I got a call from the nurses at home, my mother was already in a coma. When I returned, all I could do was talk to her.
Just reassured
I told her that she has been a good and sweet mother, that I loved her incredibly, that I was going to miss her terribly, but that I would get by in life. I’d rather know if she heard me. I’m hopeful, because as I spoke to her, tears rolled down her cheeks. But my heart breaks when I think she felt let down.
I reread all our texts to find out if she was blaming me. It wasn’t. According to my mother’s friends, I couldn’t have taken better care of her. Even my own friends try to assuage my guilt by convincing me that in such a tumultuous disease process there are always moments when decisions are made that in retrospect may not have been the best. Then I am reassured. But I keep regretting. I could have at least moved in with her. I didn’t and that fills me with self-loathing. Every day again.”