Kate

Kate

Strength is life in pain
Endured in silence, hidden,
Shared with only one

I think back to when my mum died. Well, actually to just after she
died. I was everybody's best friend. Lost in a world that was too big.
People who had walked past me before suddenly stopped to talk to me.
People who had had nothing but a sneer or a sman now shot me a
supportive smile. It angered me so much. Her death was a blessed mercy
- it didn't hurt any more. I needed support when my mind, life, was
being pulled apart and I couldn't, I couldn't...

In the past two years I had watched my mother slip slowly into a drug
hazed stupor of pain far greater than I could ever conceive. All I ever
wanted to do was to take some of that pain, to share it, to just make
it a bit better for a little while. I couldn't help.

There was the Diazepam, Temazepan, Voltravol, a nebuliser (I never
learnt how to use that, she always dealt with that herself) and the
eventual death knell of Morphine. There was the terror inducing
chemotherapy that came every month that took three weeks for her to get
over. There was the radiotherapy that was "easier than the chemo".
There was the vomiting. There was the shame of having to rely on her
son for the most rudimentary tasks.

A phone line stretched to my bedroom on the other end of the house, so
I was on call. There were the home helps who took off the pressure in
the mornings and after school. My shift began at 5.30pm and finished
about 11.30pm. Her friends and family were there, but she didn't want
to burden them - it galled her enough to have me do what any child
would have done for their parent.

I was the only one to learn the cancer was terminal 4 months before it
killed her. That was a great Christmas present. We had a pact on
Christmas - because she wouldn't see that day, we'd pretend that she
was visiting me at my house for Christmas dinner. It went well until
the chip pan went on fire (my dad had fixed it, in his advanced
technological opinion, the thermostat was "fucked").

I dove into the smoke filled room to stop the curtains from catching. I
lost all the hair on my arm, but got a beautiful lick of pain. With
disaster averted, I ran outside and was sick, the cloying, greasy smoke
lining my throat choked me. With that great excuse, I collapsed on the
front lawn and cried until I thought my eyes had caught light. I
pounded at the ground, tore at the grass, unashamed of any
passers-by.

Why.

It wasn't even a question. It was all that flowed through me.

Why.

I had nothing to rage against. I had no god. I had no higher being. I
had nothing. In the next four to six months I wouldn't even have a mum.
My impotent rage took the form of writing in that time. I would write
stories for my mum, and only for her. Then I'd burn them. I was my own
god. Through my works, I was god.

I could make what I wanted to happen, then I could exercise the
greatest power of all, I could destroy them arbitrarily. All the time I
was cutting more and more - punishing god. Then, I stopped being the
god, the blank page became my god, I had to write for my mum, for
Kate.

She had become Kate. She wasn't my mum any more. Even when we spoke in
private, I called her Kate. And I wasn't William any more. I was Wull.
We were friends. We were friends bonded in the deepest possible way - I
had been born from my best friend. It may have been easier on her to
feel that it wasn't her son that had to help her take a bath, or help
her to the toilet, taking twenty minutes to travel 5 yards.

We shared everything in those final months. How the first guy she went
out with had been called Chick and had worked in a chicken
slaughterhouse, how his hands were callused and covered with tiny nicks
from the cleaver. How the first time she took acid, the police came and
someone told her drop her acid, she did. She dropped it on the
ground.

Every time we had a visitor, she would pretend that she was fine and
she could carry it off. No one ever knew how unwell she was. She was
loaned a ruddy glow by the medication, and she retained a lot of water
because of the Voltravol, so she never looked particularly drawn. I
remember an aunt (I don't remember which) mentioning remission. I
almost snorted my derision.

I wanted to grab her and scream;

>She's dying! She's dying! Can't you see she's fucking dying!

She became a saint in everyone's eyes; she endured so much without
complaint. She was so brave. Yet to me, she was just Kate. She was
brave, but she was funny, and she was vulnerable, and she was alone in
her pain. That loneliness wore away at her, it ate away at her. It was
all she had in the end, but it wasn't all she had. The week before she
died - mother's day - she told me that it was worth it just have known
a friend like me.

I told her that it wasn't - because as her friend, I had to watch her
die. We made another pact on that day.

The lies came so easily. It was a case of just acting as if everything
was normal. For me, my arms became the blank pages, and I began to
slowly fill them. It helped me cope, one slight cut at a time - once a
month. No one noticed. The morphine seemed to rob Kate of her sight. Or
she just didn't want to know - it was my business and if I wanted to
talk about it, then I would.

Her strength embarrassed me. She was fighting something that couldn't
be fought. She was fighting and she was losing. But she never gave up
the pretence to others. I lay with her in my arms one night while she
quietly sobbed for over an hour. All she kept saying over and over
was;

>It hurts.

She hadn't taken her morphine because she wanted to talk to me
straight. I couldn't bear it. I forced her to take the tablets, then
lay with her until she fell asleep. I looked at her face and tried to
see her years ago. I imagined that we had been friends in this time,
her with my dad, like it was something ordained.

I could see it - I could see me and Paul and Kate and Wull all hanging
out together. I fell asleep and dreamed about us going on a trip to
Blackpool together. It was weird, my dad and I had a lot in common, but
we got into a fight because he tried to chat up some other girl and I
didn't think he should. We ended up going back to the hotel bloodied
and sore, to find Kate and Paul kissing. Kate then told me it was a
dream and stop being so stupid. I woke up laughing.

I was proud that I could be one of the few guys on the planet that
could actually see their mother as a person. It was kind of weird in a
way, because I felt sorry for her kids, including her son. I had to
keep reminding myself that that was me. Then I was at school.

School had stopped being about learning. School was the only time I had
for social interaction, so I made the most of it.

Then I was at school. I was in the choir room.

This was my haven. I came here in the beginning to avoid the bullying,
which was ironic, because it perpetuated the violence even more.

Then I was at school. I was in the choir room. I was trying out the new
Atari Lynx I had bought.

Then there was an icy cold slap to the face - my toes froze, my nose
went numb.

>What?

My mind tried to catch up with the moment

+What?

>Somebody called Jean? About your mum?

Then I was running. I hurdled somebody's schoolbag.

And I was running.

+WhatisitwhatshappenedshedbetterbeokaydidIleavethemorphineout25milligramsat9and25at11thensleepthen?

A janitor stepped out as I barrelled down the corridor.

>WHAT THE HELL DO Y?!

his face red. I barely heard, the sound of my feet pounding was so
loud.

I reached him at full pelt he tried - to grab me - he got slammed into
the wall with one swing of my arm. No one was getting in my way.

>HEY!

Then I was in the office. The health visitor was there, ashen. She
spoke. Then we were in her car. Then I was home.

Kate was sitting on the end of her bed when we got there - she looked
almost lucid, she wondered why I was there, then she asked where I was.
She asked because she couldn't see. Her eyes were wide, staring,
blind.

Everything fell out of my world. Everything was gone. I wasn't a mature
seventeen year-old any more. I was a scared little boy wondering what
was wrong with his?

>Mum?

She locked onto where the sound came from,

>Oh, there y'are.

She was off by a couple of inches. Jean looked worried as she helped my
mum into her bed. She made encouraging noises and tucked her in. My mum
slurred a few words, laughing at the fact she couldn't control her legs
properly.

She lay in the not-quite-sleep that came with the morphine. I couldn't
stop looking at her. She was waxy, yellow. She looked unwell. Jean had
to leave. I lay with my mum for a while trying to talk to her, but she
kept laughing. Not her usual uplifting laugh that broke through her
agony. This was a hissing, rattling that was pushed from deep down, it
sounded like a chuckle dredged from the pit of hell.

What was I supposed to do? I just lay there. I asked what I should
do.

>William, she laughed, >Wull.

She squeezed my hand, and half turned as if to look at me, >Phone
your dad. I want my two men here.

By this point, I didn't hate my dad. I had felt so much anger towards
him for what he had done, that I had completely vilified him. I had
done the complete opposite of what people had done with my mum. After
getting so close to her, I could also accept my dad as a person.

He came from work straight away. No questions. I wouldn't have had
answers, anyway. His arrival meant that I was now Wull again. I got
strength from him. I was no longer clueless. Between us, we made Kate
some scrambled egg. She laughed at us working together, she remembered
all my rage, and she remembered all my dad's pain at my rejection. We
sat on either side of her for a while and we held a hand each.

>Wull and Wee Wull, she chuckled at the irony.

I'd always been Wee Wull, though now I was 5'11'' and my bulk just made
me look bigger - my dad's 5'8" (Kate always said he was, although he
always said 5'9" whenever he was asked) and of normal weight (my dad's
clothes were too small for me when I was twelve). We both smiled, too.
In that moment, we were the perfect family. I left them alone for a
while and busied myself in the kitchen.

My dad came through, his eyes red with tears, but not really sad? It's
hard to explain how we felt then. I can't speak for Kate, but we had
got accustomed to her dying. I had come to terms, and from what she
told me, so had she? She wanted to be there for us, but on the other
hand she wanted the pain to stop. We were crying not at the loss, but
through nostalgia, about all the things that wouldn't be
resolved.

All the words that couldn't be taken back.

All the guilty little secrets that couldn't be shared.

All the feelings that couldn't be expressed. Love and Hate.

There was no sadness for me at the thought of her dying, just a relief.
At the time it felt like a massive sigh building up.

Then I had to contact her family. Aunts, and an Uncle. They were all on
their way. Gran and Grampa were in Blackpool. I became William again as
I went in with my sisters. They had come back from school. They were
sad, crying, but my mum calmed them. She always did, even at her
illest. Then?

>OOOOOOOOOOOoooooooohhhhhhh!!! a banshee wail of the Aunts as she
ran up our hall. A wail of pure grief and loss. An animal cry of some
beast. The selfish scream of a?

The girls started howling, terrified. The fear in my oldest sister eyes
was enough for me to hate my aunt at that moment. Kate flushed with
irritation, >Jesus Christ, she murmured. She pulled on her
housecoat.

>Whoa! I put a hand on her shoulder, >Where are you going?

She shook and fell back, too weak to leave, to sit up any longer,
>Just tell her? Tell her I'll be through in? she laughed again. The
girls were huddled into her. My dad stood to one side, his mouth
covered by his hand, more tears. I caught my sisters and Kate +my mum,
my friend+ in a wide embrace.

Flashback to three years ago. The hope of when she told us about the
cancer was gone. There was no hope. There was no uncertainty. We had an
absolute now.

>Oh, God, my dad half-sobbed and half-sighed, throwing his arms
around us all. There was no embarrassment at showing feelings now. It
was beyond that.

Then my dad took my sisters to what was to be their new home. Before he
left I spent some time with them - to me they were as much my
responsibility as my dad's. While I was talking to them, the family
filed in to see Kate one by one. She would have appreciated how much
like a wake this was. She would have laughed, but at least everyone was
able to make their peace with her.

I told my sisters not to be scared, that it would be over soon - there
was no point in lying now - this was part of my pact with Kate. Get the
girls ready. Don't scare them, but get them ready. We all cried and
comforted each other. The girls waited in the car and my dad grabbed me
by the arm.

>Are you okay?

I nodded.

>Yeah, I'll make sure that they all?

>No, are *you* okay?"

He looked into my face.

I sighed

>Yeah,

I nodded, tired, weak, scared, but okay.

He nodded back.

>C'mere, he hugged me, >I'm proud of you, son.

I started crying then. I think he did, but by this time, crying was
just a vague discomfort in the throat and a sting in the eyes.

>You phone me if anything happens?

He broke off but held my arm and squeezed, looking me in the eyes. I
nodded and patted his shoulder as he left. I shut the door behind him
and then some other things happened.