Polly

I don’t want to dwell on it too much here, but it was two years ago today that my mum died. I’m uncertain still whether this event represented the beginning or end of an emotional process for me, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter very much and, one thing for sure, what happened after her death wasn’t pretty. With truly terrible timing, my mum chose her exit to coincide with what had been, to that point, my longest period of sobriety since I’d begun counting. As I’ve related before in these posts, I found out about her death whilst I was in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of my favourite meetings in fact, that being Sunday night on Tabilban Street (known cheerily as ‘Taliban Street’ to the local AA crowd), in Burleigh Heads, southern Gold Coast. If only irony was funny, one might have laughed at the prospect of an alcoholic son being informed of the death of his alcoholic mother, whilst in the middle of a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Anyway, having been sober just over three months when she upped and went, I lasted another ten days or so (somewhat remarkably, if I say so myself) before walking into the bar at Coolangatta Airport in the Gold Coast and promptly ordering a large vodka and coke, followed swiftly by another, and then another. Needless to say, by the time I reached my waypoint in Bangkok, I’d changed from a poster boy Dr Jekyll of the local recovery scene, into the snarling, unstable Mr Hyde that was to control my character until I was dragged, nearly two years later, beaten and bruised, into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre somewhere in the Australian backwoods.

If there’s a warning to be taken from all this, I think it’s that we underestimate grief at our peril. At its most ferocious, grief delivers an emotional double tap, at once rendering you immobile with a profound and fathomless sadness, whilst at the same time denuding you of the ability to cope with the crushing burden you’ve just shouldered. And if there is, eventually, another kind of quietus to be found outside of death itself, then it’s worth remembering that the rewards of Calvary came at a heavy price.

I’ve often wondered, in these past few months of restoration, what my mum would have made of it all. Neurosis, depression and a catastrophic relationship with the bottle weren’t exactly new to her either, so at the very least my own descent into alcoholic madness would probably have seemed all too familiar. And as a normal, loving mother, doubtless she would have been deeply concerned about her only child’s emotional implosion. But knowing her as I do, I’d be doing her a disservice to deny the streetwise, worldly and profoundly sceptical take she brought to bear on her understanding of things. She’d have taken, I believe, a slightly grim delight in watching me learn a few of the hard lessons she herself had picked up along the course of a lively, eventful and sometimes difficult life. Not that she would have enjoyed the spectacle of my downfall as such, but I can see the old weather eye now, sizing up my difficulties, weighing things in the balance and delivering a few well-placed home truths, concerning how it came to be that I had got myself into such a pickle.

Delivering my mum’s funeral eulogy, I’d used a quote from the poet Kahlil Gibran, which compares children to arrows sent forth in the future. In that case I wasn’t the notional child in question but rather my own son, her grandson Blake. I think that, of all people, and I know she would approve of this, she would have wanted him, not me, to be her final emissary. Contemplating her great love for him, had caused me to reflect on my own unconditional love for my son, and then the feelings that she must have had for me when I was a child; feelings I’d played fast and loose with, as ungrateful children are wont to do.

The day I left Cambridge to come back to Australia, I went to Polly’s house in the small village of Histon, where she’d lived for so many years. With my dear friend Richard waiting outside to take me to the airport, I had a last look around her living room, particularly the tatty old armchair in the corner where she always sat. It would be stretching it into a ghost story to say I could see her there, but I could certainly feel her presence, like a humming force, that drew me towards the chair, hold her shade in my arms and give her a final kiss goodbye. All the things that happened next are over now and done. I can’t – and wouldn’t – change any of it, a sentiment I didn’t think I would be able to express, let alone feel, even a few short months ago. Nature and nurture being what it is, I’m clearly my mother’s son and today, despite my great sadness, for that – and for her – I feel only a quiet but abiding sense of gratitude and peace.

One day at a time.