Disappearing Me

  The morning Call Picking up the phone with a sigh, I can hear Radio 4 and the bustle of my husband making breakfast downstairs. The same time every morning. The phone call to my mother was a promise I made to my dad shortly before he died. For almost twenty years, the routine has been the same—alarm at six, down to make the tea, then the call just after seven. In the earlier years, if I was a minute or two late, my mother would call me with a sharp inquiry, demanding to know why I hadn't phoned on time. But lately, as she's grown less mobile it takes her longer to reach the phone,   so it’s closer to eight by the time I ring. Ours has always been a difficult relationship. As a child, I feared her. As a teenager, while my friends shared secrets with their mums, I learned to keep mine locked away. It was a shock to discover other girls’ mothers were soft and gentle—people to run toward, not away from. Even now, her disapproval can silence me. Every morning, we have the...

  She wanted no fuss. No ceremony, no gathering of people wearing their ill-fitting, moth balled best. No one there out of duty   and the hope of a cup of tea with cake afterwards. Just her family- meagre at that- and me. It was the farewell we had talked about for several years on my trips to see her. It had been a game of sorts initially, both of us making light of the day that was approaching as if on the incoming tide that twice a day covered the salt marsh near her home. An ebbing away from life that little bit more each time I saw her. Then as her illness progressed and the certainty of her going felt more real to us both, the laughter gave way to a silence in which her thoughts and mine met and danced together in the sunlit room overlooking her garden towards her “ blue remembered   hills” in the north.    She loved her garden, a rebellion of wildflowers and ivy cloaked trees. A small patch of woodland dropped into the pristine neighbourhood which c...