I have been meaning to write this piece for a very long time. Only now do I have the equanimity to do so…

Our mother became profoundly deaf. She could not even hear us if we stood beside her because so much of her hearing was done by lip-reading. But our mother was also an incredibly sociable person, she loved people and they loved her. She engaged with everyone and they with her. People trusted her implicitly. They found themselves telling our mother the most impossible, intimate secrets. They told her things that they didn’t even tell their own mothers with equanimity and in complete trust. They had it. She was one of the most discreet people I’ve ever met. She always made us feel as if we had her full attention. And, indeed, she always gave it.

She was the kind of person who everyone gravitates towards. The kind of woman who you know has walked into a room because the atmosphere changes subtly for the better. And also because she was beautiful and immensely elegant.  Yet there was nothing flashy about our mother. She was very humble. Very self deprecating. She never lost her temper, yet we always knew instantly if she disapproved of something. She was a great cook, a great provider. Everyone felt special in her company.

She had had polio in her 20s. She had no muscle in one of her legs at all, except for the muscle from her other big toe which was transplanted behind her knee by an American surgeon. This was so she could flex her leg to walk. And she did. Miles. Every day. With the dogs. She got tired easily and was in pain a lot but she never complained. Never.  Regardless of circumstance, our mother always remained loving and sweet-natured.

She was disabled because of the polio, but for her, it was the deafness that was crippling. She wanted to join in but often couldn’t. She loved parties, but, although she would not admit it, simultaneously semi-dreaded them. All she ever heard at them was babble, a horrendous version of white noise.  She always said that if she had the choice of deafness or blindness, she would have chosen to go blind. She said she still had the memory of what the world was like, of what we were like.  But for her, not being able to be part of it was torture. It was the cruelest form of isolation in the midst of a busy, sociable world she longed to feel fully part of.

We urged her to have a cochlea implant because, it seemed, she was a good candidate. She procrastinated. We did not know why. Eventually, she had one.  For her, it was a steep learning curve, mastering the signals that were flooding her brain. For us, it was a miracle. For the first time in years we could talk to her on the phone, rather than relay messages through our father. For the first time in ages she could listen to music, her joy, and love it once again. Our mother was returned to us, fully.

And then she got a cold. A stinker. It lingered and worsened.  And we learned why, perhaps, she had taken so long to decide to have that implant. It seemed she had an illness buried deep within her that would only come to the surface if provoked. Myleofibrosis. It is a form of leukaemia that inhibits the bone marrow’s ability to create new blood cells. The spleen enlarges hugely because it is trying to do so instead.

Our mother soon had puffy, elephantine legs. Yet she was birdlike from the waist up because she had no space in her stomach to eat. The pain this caused her became intolerable. And our proud, elegant, lovely mother simply hated it. Hated the loss of her independence. Loathed the fact she could not walk much any more. Particularly after the trials she had faced earlier in life, and that, by force of will, had overcome. Did not want other people to do for her what she had so willingly, cheerfully done for them.

So our mother chose to die. I did not mention that she was also vey single-minded. When our mother decided to do something, it always got done. Our mother, with characteristic bravery, sat down with our father, and wrote a letter to each of their friends. She told them she was dying. She told them she did not want them to read about her death in a newspaper. She told them that she loved them.

She made herself a pact. She did not want to see any of her grandchildren, whom she adored, because she wanted them to remember her with vitality and joie de vivre. But she did want to say goodbye to each of her children. So we came, my brother and I from different parts of England, my sisters from Africa and Australia, respectively. We came to spend time with this extraordinary soul. To laugh with her. To reminisce. To love her unconditionally, as she did us.

She said goodbye to each of us in turn. Our brother was the last to say farewell. She died the night after he came to see her. She died where she wanted to. Where she should have done. She died in the place that she had made a safe haven for all of us. She died at home, in her own bed.

The night our mother died was extraordinary. You can read what happened in my poem, Our Mother’s Goodbye.