Gratitude: I Ought to tell you about Mum & Grace – 5

My gratitude diary day five

I wanted to offer mum the distinction of a bunch of elegant flowers grown in my garden. Instead, because flowers do not keep, I am penning this diary entry as the fifth in a year of gratitude stories. The photograph shows the power of light shrouded in darkness. I am grateful for light.

I am, too, so grateful for my mother. She is graceful with the language she uses to describe her illness. She is detached from it. I see this as a good thing. The illness isn’t her.

I wanted to wait until I had something useful to share with you about mum’s illness. Mum was diagnosed with lung cancer in both lungs in December 2023, and it is now almost a year since I last saw her. (We live over a hundred miles apart.)

I tried to visit mum at Christmas, but she was due another invasive examination and wanted to rest.

Mum has been through several investigations, but she hasn’t told me what stage the cancer is and I have decided I don’t want to know.

I learnt something from watching a devastating film called ‘Me before You’, based on a true life story about a man who was paralysed and wanted to choose how to live some years ago; it isn’t about you when other people are unwell.

I accept mum’s need for space with grace and without making a fuss. We have been gifted 20 good years. I am older than my two younger siblings who get to be with mum now; it is okay. It is more than okay. It is good. I am happy.

Just this morning (we chatted last night), I realised that I had something to say that wouldn’t be in any way making use of her illness. Of course, I admit that writers do that. It is a difficult balance. Writers have good stories, but they don’t always write them out of respect. I think mum would approve of this story. Mum has given me permission to write about her cancer as she knows I did so for the fundraisers I used to do for Cancer Research as a keen cyclist.

The gift my mother is giving me is talking about her illness in positive terms. I ask her how she is and she never tells me about the pain. She did tell me that she found it difficult to walk to the hospital and had to keep stopping, which is heartbreaking to hear, but I know my sisters accompany her when they aren’t working. There was nowhere for them to sit last time, so they had to go out in the rain and seek out a coffee shop, mum said.

Thank goodness for coffee shops. They are our places of retreat and solace. Hopefully, there are dimmed lights and gentle music, though we seek the light, conversely, we need a place away from bright lights at times, perhaps a free book or two; welcome solace for us all. Thank you for coffee shops and thank you for time spent with loved ones. I’ve had plenty.

Grace is courtesy, elegance, dignity.

I am giving thanks for grace. What happens to us when grace leaves us? With you, mum, I was always graceful.

Hermione Wilds (the pen name of Hermione Laake), is author, mother of five adults, editor for ‘All’s Well’ and ‘Soul Magazine’, artist and creator of ‘The Difffference: Achilles Heal’ art blog and gardener and owner of https://hermionelaakeloveslavender.wordpress.com (The link will take you out of Medium.)

Hermione holds an MA with distinction from KU, and a BA (HONS) in English Literature from Winchester.