She Died on a Sunday.

She died on a Sunday; it was Remembrance Sunday, November 9th 2008.

She was 63, and it was only a handful of weeks since her birthday… a birthday I missed, the first one I had ever forgotten since I was born. My life has revolved around her survival for so long, that dates like birthdays had dissolved into the grey matter that was everyday life.

She was sixty-three, it was only a handful of weeks since her birthday – a birthday I had missed. It was the first one I had forgotten ever since I was old enough to make her cards and write her name. My life had revolved around her survival for so long that celebration dates no longer seemed to count, and simply fell away, dissolving into the dark grey matter that had now become our everyday lives.

She passed two weeks after I last saw her. I had received the urgent call to ‘come now’ only to arrive and find that it was a false alarm. After a few strained days I was left with no choice but to return to England and helplessly wait for the phone to ring again. It has rained for four days now, hard black torrential rain, swept up by a relentless gale that has lashed at the windows and doors. It’s like the world knows and echoes the darkness swirling inside my empty body. I hurt, my head aches … my feet drag and I need to wash my face. I have lain in bed and ignored my phone, I’ve lashed out, I’ve cried, I’ve been normal, insensitive, broken, hysterical … calm.

Somehow, I already knew. The night before I heard, I completely broke down and cried as if she had died in my arms. I had sat in the dark on my bed and watched the local Guy Fawkes fireworks fracture the night sky over the rooftops. With each shattered burst of light I felt an overwhelming sense of loss. Time was running out, I felt it in every part of my aching, exhausted body.

The next morning I was up at seven o’clock, and did something I had never done before. I took my camera, lenses and notebook and went on my own to London for the Remembrance Day parade. I stood in the crowds, two poppies pushed through the yarn of my hat, I wanted to meet the war veterans, I wanted to hear their stories and spend some time with them. I was so ashamed I had never been to Whitehall to pay my respects. As the two-minute silence started, I found myself crying, overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment and suddenly filled with the loss of mum. I should have stayed at home, but something had pushed me to go out that day. As the guns fired to signal the end of the ceremony I realized the veterans were marching in the opposite direction from where I was standing. I ran through the crowds, only to be stopped by fences and diversions, everyone stood and clapped for the retired servicemen, but in a strangely quiet way. There was no cheering or shouting, just the hard slap of hand against hand ringing out through the bleak morning air, bouncing off the buildings and mixing with the beat of the veteran’s footsteps. I had to run through St James’s Park until I finally came to the end of the route. Breathless and embarrassed I stopped some of the men as they said their goodbyes to each other and headed for the coaches. I dropped my pen as I tried to write down their names, and asked vague and timid questions about their service and where they had been based. I realised I should have been more prepared and felt more ridiculous with every passing second. I only spoke to six men, all of whom were over eighty years old, and had marched the whole route on that freezing Sunday. One had joined the army in 1938 serving twenty years, he waited patiently as I accidently dropped my business cards and thrust my camera in his face. He had a beautiful smile and politely stood with his arms behind his back the whole time. He briskly shook my hand when he left, and had said it had, ‘Been a pleasure to meet you, Kirsty Mitchell’. He must have read my name off the card I had dropped in the mud. I had asked his name and written it down, yet I couldn’t remember it as he walked away. None of this had been disrespectful; it had been just the opposite. I had found myself in the company of men who had risked their own lives for people like me, who had seen horrors that most of us could not even dare to imagine. I felt humbled and overwhelmed by it all and suddenly realized I was shivering and completely exhausted. Normally I would have stayed much longer, but my legs began to give way and I knew I had pushed myself too far. As I walked back to the train station I began to cry, I had reached my limit, there was nothing left. Inside I felt like mum had already died, I didn’t want to get up and go to work again for a month. I didn’t want the phone to ring, I didn’t want to see anyone, I just needed everything to stop.

The rain returned as the train pulled away, I leant my head against the window and watched the trails of water stream across the cold glass. The sky grew dark as the weight on my back grew heavier. I arrived home at two in the afternoon and crawled into bed, and that was when my father called. I knew before I heard his voice, it had been in my heart the whole day. She had died in her sleep; it was over.

My only chance to say goodbye was gone. The last time I was there I had taken my camera to the hospital so I could remember everything, and never forget her in the good and the bad times. I had dreamt about photographing her hand in mine as a record of our bond, but in the end I realised it wasn’t right. It was a lesson to me: I knew she hated how she looked, I knew it would have upset her, and so I left it in my bag. Our life together was about everything we had done and shared, and the love she had given me. Days after her death someone dear wrote to me and said that being there when she stopped breathing was not the sum of our relationship and what we had meant to each other. It gave me some comfort and on reflection, I now know that is true. My mother was fanatical about the plight of the World Wars, she had taught every single one of her pupils about the atrocities of the Holocaust, despite the subject having been removed from school programs nationally. She maintained it was man’s greatest lesson, and that no child would ever pass through her classroom doors without understanding it. I suppose what I am trying to say in some confused way is that she was with me on that Remembrance Sunday. I think she would have been happier that I had taken the time to go to London, than stay in bed and cry all day, which I so easily could have done. The pictures I took may not have been of her, but are of the men she cared so passionately about. It made sense.

Some say every picture taken is a self-portrait, that somehow whatever is happening internally is always reflected from the subject. The picture I chose for this entry still haunts me. Looking into his eyes now, it is almost as though he knew before I did. There is something indescribable that hits me time and time again, which maybe only I will ever understand. His name was Len Hale, he was eighty-six, and served in the Air Force. He had marched the entire parade route that freezing morning and I guess he will never know what his portrait now means to me.

It is indescribable how much this hurts. I miss her … I miss her so badly and I love her so much…

My beautiful, wonderful mother Maureen.