Life continues

I’ve never cried in front of my children. Apart from when they were born. Once, quietly, during the opening scene of ‘Up’. And once, loudly, stepping on a piece of Lego. But never solemnly, until yesterday.

Before then, the Saddest Thing to Ever Happen was something that happened before them. Something I’d tucked away in my past, folded into a drawer, marked ‘another day’. But it was a secret hiding in plain sight. Like the drawer was made of glass. Which is a helpful way to describe blockchain, but an unhelpful way to say: my mum died before they were born, and I didn’t know how to tell them. 

What bought me time was the fact that they have plenty of grandparents: my dad, of course; my wife’s divorced parents, their new partners. If anything, my kids have five, when, at best, most have four. But the one they don’t know they’re missing is the one I miss every day.

“I pray to God my daughter-in-law and son are able to have a child,” my mum wrote in her diary a month before she died. “They’re both good people and will make wonderful parents.” It took a little while for those prayers to go up to the top and back down the fallopian tubes, but three years later Winnie was born. And I guess the big guy got the memo [not a euphemism], as Meri came two years after that.

We’ve all been on speaking terms for at least three of those years, but neither have asked: where’s your mama gone? And I was glad of that, because I wouldn’t know what to say. She’s gone up to heaven? She’s a star now? She’s always watching you, like a Ring doorbell in the sky?

But then yesterday I was put on the spot. Winnie woke up during a nap drive as I’d stopped to let Brook out. “Where’s your mummy?” she asked, sleepily.

I looked at her in the rear-view mirror, as she held a mirror up to me. I’d been keeping her in the dark and now I was forced to reflect. “I don’t have a mummy,” I said, bluntly. “I had one. She got sick and died.” (I’m thinking about writing a children’s book, by the way: 13 words, the illustrations are going to have to do the heavy lifting.)

She looked back at me, blankly. So, I went on. “But I have amazing memories of her. She was funny, she had a beautiful smile. And I miss her every day.”

I realised then that I hadn’t talked about her in a long time. I hadn’t told my children about her in forever. And I hadn’t allowed myself to even think of her for more than a fleeting moment.

I saw then that my eyes had filled with water. With nowhere to hide, I’d been framed in the rear-view mirror. I’d put off telling her about my mum’s passing, not only to avoid a scene like this, but to avoid her picturing a scene in her future – when her mum will pass too. Just then Brook returned to the car.

“Mummy!” Win exclaimed.

“Everything okay?” Brook asked me.

I wiped my eyes and looked back at Win, who was vying for Brook’s attention.

“Everything’s fine,” I said.

And life continues, as it always does.