‘Le Jardin De Ma Mere’ – Death and Running Away

‘Le Jardin De Ma Mere’

To be honest I don’t know where to begin with this diary entry. For so long I have kept silent about what has really been happening in my life, that these pages have become quieter and shorter as the weeks have rolled by. I have still been writing but in an old pink notepad that I have kept by my side as things have slowly slid from bad to worse. Pages of scribbles, underlined, crossed out and stained with tears, crushed in my bag – it is a sorry-looking testament for some of the most important words I’ll ever write.

I remember how my father’s voice broke on the phone as he told me my mother was dying. ‘A few weeks left,’ he had said quietly, ‘maybe a couple of months at best’. There was nothing left to do, so I flew to France and prepared to face the horror that awaited me in a bleak blue and white room, in the corner of a small-town hospital, far away from everyone whose lives she had touched and loved. As I write this now I know what it is to be numb – to be detached and unable to speak even though the body is willing, and the words are forming their shapes across my lips.

In the hospital I sat on a hard plastic chair and stared into her pale, wild eyes. She had changed so much I could barely catch my breath – her face was swollen from the drugs, her skin was still delicate, but the features were diluted by this new foreign mask. She looked so old, her hands shook as she reached out at nothing, whilst tiny black curls of her hair fell away from her scalp and slowly collected in the creases of the pillow.

None of it seemed real.

Since arriving, I hadn’t been able to cry, I could only make a strange noise that was a mix of a shout and shake bursting from the pit of my stomach. I spoke to my father as though nothing was wrong; I sat in the garden avoiding discussions on the inevitable mess that loomed ahead. This wasn’t what I had planned, the superhero daughter fixing everyone’s grief. Instead she (for it couldn’t be me?) became remote and detached, an ‘automaton girl’. I ignored my phone, ignored my friends, avoided eye contact and hid at the bottom of the field under the trees. I should have been washing up, or helping my father vent his pain, let him cry on my shoulder … something.

But I couldn’t … I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

All I could see were snap shots of her in my mind’s eye, cinematic slices of her best moments – teaching the children in her class, running around the playground laughing, floating in her rubber ring in their new swimming pool (she never learned to swim). Living in France had been her retirement dream, her big adventure. In her first weeks of arriving there she had written to me to say she would master the language, embrace the culture, and as a family we would spend long, happy summers under the apple trees until grandchildren arrived. And then she would return to England and read to them like she read to me all those years ago. Now I know the true meaning of being lost, how it feels to be empty, to walk through nightmares and feel nothing. I sat and looked at my family, and wondered: ‘What will happen to us? Will we come together, or will we separate – each of us a living memory of her?’ I had dreamt of this my whole life, one of my greatest fears. Now that it was here all I wanted to do was run away and hide, bury my face in my hands.

She was brought home to die, and slowly we found our way. Between us we fed her, broke up her pills and washed her poor fragile limbs. The nurses came late every day and so each morning brought a new experience that I never thought I could get through. I washed her hair and it came out in my hands. I got into her bed and held her while they gave her the injections, and she cried so much.

It was horror, after horror, after horror.

I had to leave a week later, though we had no idea how much time she had left. Once again I found myself in another airport, passing through another metal detector, eyes glazed as I waited for my jacket and shoes to follow me in yet another set of plastic trays. The passing weeks were strange. I would slip between reality and dreams, sometimes feeling normal, and other days just sitting on a bus crying hysterically, surrounded by uncomfortable strangers. But the weeks became a month, and slowly she began to come around. None of us could understand how it happened but she began to speak, and eat a little more each day. She could sit up, and eventually be lowered into a wheelchair. She was fighting … she was winning.

It is now two months since I first stood in the corridor of the hospital and prayed that she would last more than the month the doctors had given her to live. I returned for another week and this time I was able to sit beside her in the autumn sun on the back terrace of their house and talk together as we had always done. She knew who I was, she was lucid again and eating more than me. She told me about the hallucinations she had seen during those dark early days. I had never dreamed I would have a second chance to spend more time with her.

It was during this precious week that I found myself creating the pictures for ‘Le Jardin de ma Mere’. It wasn’t planned at all and in truth, was an escape when my words ran out and the days became too long. Although my time at my mother’s was more than I could ever have hoped for, there was still so much sadness that hung in the corners of the house. She was in great pain and refused to look in mirrors because she knew all her hair had gone. She was unable to stand or walk, and her sight had not returned to how it had been. So I ran away – into my dreams – the nearest and most accessible place when the real world is too much to bear. I had packed my tripod and remote and began making an alternative existence in the shade of her garden. I spent hours running around the house with birdcages and flowers, kimonos and bedsteads. Everything was staged, nothing was real. I filled wheelbarrows with rotting apples and pinned paper flowers to the trees, the whole time she laughed as I raced past with the latest prop. In the evenings I would show her what I had done on my laptop. It was a relief to talk about something other than the cancer that crept through her brain. ‘Le Jardin de ma Mere’ was a place to forget, it was my twilight universe where there were no tumours or doctors – just a place to wash it all away.

I left on a Friday and returned to a cold wet September, the days felt short and dark and so I worked all weekend to finish the shots. I loved them all because of the memories they gave me, but the most significant photo was the final one. It was an unexpected addition I made after finishing the original seven shots – one for every day I was with her. The piece was my way of accepting my return to reality – and the end of the dream. With nothing left to hide behind, it was my first proper nude. It was about being raw, who I truly was, stripped of bright colours and costumes. It was a return to reality, the sadness I felt, black and white … with the remains of the flowers from her garden dissolving around me. I cried when I finished it because it was the truth – staring hard back at me, hopeless and dark.

So this is where I am after two months of avoiding the subject. This is what has really been going on and I’m glad I finally wrote it all down. Sometimes I almost forget this diary is public because I never see others read it – it’s just a link on a website and nothing more. I write it for my sanity and sometimes to explain why I take my photos, it is a quiet release. Some people might find it an uncomfortable read but I promised myself when this all started that no matter how good or bad the memories were, I would write it down as best I could.

And so here it is… here I am.