'My mother might leave me. But she can't. She's my mother.'

When do we feel ready to let go of our parents? Natasha Fennell is the author of a new book called The Daughterhood. In this extract she writes about the exact moment when she found herself on ‘the bench’ between being a daughter and letting go.

It’s a Tuesday. I’m standing in a hospital on my way to see my mother. The corridor smells of pharmaceuticals and over-boiled vegetables – I’m guessing Brussels sprouts. It’s a nose-wrinkling, stomach-flipping cocktail.

I’ve always been fond of a carefully handled Brussels sprout, thanks to my mother’s way with them which involves chestnuts and bacon. She has never overcooked a sprout in her life. If she can smell these sprouts from her hospital bed, I’d say they are momentarily distracting her from the recent diagnosis of lupus, which was handed over to her by Dr Kavanagh.

Ah. Yes. Lupus. What an idiotic name for an illness that causes havoc to the immune system. It sounds so harmless and about as terrifying as a crocus or a snowdrop or any other spring flower you care to mention. But it’s that same lupus that has me standing here in front of a lift on my way to Room 41. My mother has it. We just found out. She just found out. Which makes me think that, on balance, she’s probably not thinking about Brussels sprouts. I push the button for the lift that seems to be stuck somewhere, above or below. It’s in lift limbo. I know how it feels. Eventually the lift arrives. I get in and a few moments later I get out on the seventh floor. I look left and right in search of Room 41.

I am forty-one. I feel more like a two-year-old right now. I was a clingy child. I spent most of the years nought to five attached limpet-like to my mother’s legs. I have a flashback to a supermarket in Galway – my mother is trying to reach for a can of beans and I won’t let her because it will mean she is detached from me for several milliseconds. It must have been desperately annoying. But she never let on. I can see her smiling at me now while I threaten to topple a display of tins in my determination to Never Let Go Of Her For As Long As I Draw Breath.

Room 41: is this the one? No, not this one, there’s a frail looking old man in it watching Countdown. My mother is not frail. I wouldn’t even have called my mother old, although I suppose at sixty-nine other people would. I like the word Older much better than plain old Old. Because everyone is older than someone else. The teenagers are older than the toddlers, the octogenarians are older than the fifty-somethings. Old, on the other hand, suggests an ending. You have arrived at Oldstown, your final destination: please make sure you have your luggage and surprising facial hair before departing the bus. Enough. I don’t want to think of final destinations at the moment, especially not in terms of my mother.

And now here I am. Room 41. I go in, walking past the woman who tightens her dressing gown around her when she spots me, towards the furthest cubicle on the right by the window. I lean in close to the pink fabric curtain. I take a breath.
‘A Mhamaí,’ I whisper. ‘It’s me. Tasha.’

No response.

‘A Mhamaí,’ I try again. ‘It’s me.’

Parting the curtain, I see a grey and white head of hair resting against a pile of pillows. She has a tube stuck up her nose and there’s an inhaler lying on the bedside locker beside a bottle of water. The oxygen machine on the floor next to the bed is puffing away. Her eyes are shut and her face seems bloated. Her chest moves up and down with every assisted breath. In this unfamiliar scenario, I take comfort in the familiarity of her yellow nightdress, the favourite nightie of my mother, Mary Troy. I can do nothing except stand there staring, afraid to move in case I wake her although, at the same time, I desperately want her to wake up. I tiptoe to the chair by the locker, put down my bag and the spare nightclothes I brought for her. I sit down on the chair, my eyes fixed on her. She is so still. I look out the window.

I am not ready for this.

In my head I tell this woman, the person I love more than any other, what I can’t yet say out loud: This can’t be happening. You, Mary Troy, are going nowhere. You have only just stopped working. You’re supposed to stay with me this weekend. You said you’d help me pick the tiles for my bathroom and I know that sounds inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but nobody else I know has your eye for a mosaic tile. We have booked our trip to Egypt and, if I’m not mistaken, you want to see the ice-mountains in the Antarctic one day. Don’t you dare even think of leaving. I want to do so much more with you. I need you. We all need you. This is not your time.

Feeling guilty for giving out to her even in my head, I lean over and stroke her bare arm. Her skin feels soft and loose beneath my fingers. She stirs in the bed and tilts her head towards me, her eyes heavy with sleep. Then she takes the tube from her nose and whispers: ‘Oh, hi, love. You’re so good to come.’

So good to come? Her politeness is more than I can bear. We talk for a while, neither of us saying anything about how we actually feel. As though by unspoken agreement we keep the conversation on neutral territory. There is talk about a court case in the paper and the mush that passes for hospital food. She confirms that some sprouts did indeed die in vain to create part of the midday meal.

There is no reference to the rapid decline of her health or to the sudden shock of her being here or the confusion and helplessness I know we both feel. But we can see it all in each other’s eyes, which is one of the reasons I don’t hold her gaze for too long. She doesn’t say anything but I can see that she is tired again. I say goodbye, reluctantly, and stumble back down the corridor the way I came, jabbing at the elevator button. ‘Oh, bring me down,’ I think. ‘Let me out of here.’ The lift finally arrives. I press G for the ground floor. Where is H for Help? I reach the ground and head for the exit, pushing open doors, moving further away from her as I pass through each one.

I’m outside now. I steady myself on a wall taking greedy gulps of sprout-free air before making my way to a nearby bench. I’ve never been here before but I suddenly recognise this unremarkable piece of outdoor furniture. This is it. The Bench that marks the first stop on the road to losing someone. A place where we pause before daring to contemplate whatever awfulness might come next.

I take a seat, inwardly screaming at all the other people who have done time here before me. Can you all shift over and leave this one to me? Move along please. My turn now. But they are just ghosts and I am alone. I rummage in my bag for a bottle of water. When I find it, I knock it back as though the liquid holds some kind of cure. I drink too fast and the water splutters back into the bottle. No graces here today. No mercy either. My body bends forward. I clasp my arm across my stomach and I do what I’ve wanted to do since I first parted that pale pink curtain in Room 41. I cry. I cry and, not for the first time today, I think: My mother might leave me.

But she can’t leave me. She’s my mother.

I will never forget that hour outside the hospital. My Bench Moment, I call it. Just thinking about it I can taste the overwhelming panic I felt as I sat there with all those thoughts of what might be to come swirling through my head. I am normally good in a crisis. A fixer by nature. But not this time. Sitting on The Bench I felt inadequate and helpless and out of my depth.

On the one hand I am worried sick about my mother’s illness for her sake but, even as I consider the possibility of her being on an oxygen machine for the rest of her life, I am consumed with the prospect of her dying and how her loss will affect me. Me. When I think of my mother dying the tears I cry are two parts grief to one part self-pity.

And along with those self-indulgent tears a tidal wave of self-scrutiny crashes in: Have I been a good enough daughter? Have I told her how much I love her? Does she know how grateful I am for everything she has done for me? In my forty-one years what have I done for her? Is she aware of how I respect and admire her as a woman and as a mother? And, if she doesn’t, is there still time left to let her know?

That moment on The Bench was my moment of reckoning. It marks the day I began asking questions about the nature of my relationship with my mother and started looking for ways to cherish what we have. Until that hour outside the hospital, I’d never grappled with the concept that my mother was going to die and that I would be left behind. But there I was on The Bench.

This is an edited extract from The Daughterhood by Natasha Fennell and Roisin Ingle published by Simon and Schuster, RRP $29.99. Available to purchase here.

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