The Eternal Teenager with ADHD: Christine Janet Manley (Mum)

Today, I’d like to write about my Mum. Why? Because she’s succumbing to cancer. Eulogies are wasted on the dead, don’t you find?

Let’s be clear: all Mums are great. Each and every one. Sure, there are bad apples. Rose West, we’re looking at you. The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe whilst we’re here – forcing your offspring to sleep in footwear, that’s just barbaric. But generally speaking, there’s a reason a child’s love for his or her Mum is expressed with such fervent, uncensored candor on the glitter-strewn charm of a homemade Mother’s Day card (years before it is neutered by the sterilised convenience of the greetings industry’s print rollers).

There’s a biological bind, sure, but the maternal bond is a much more organic affair: love sculpted from an overwhelming impulse to protect, care and nurture at sacrificial cost to the parent. These actions aren’t exclusive to Mothers and Fathers of course: there exists genuine pet adoration that far supersedes the affection some parents show their children. Yet I mention these specific traits because I associate them so readily with my Mum. Her devotion to raising four Hamers single-handedly has been something approaching a miracle, and no amount of mealy-mouthed gratitude can begin to repay the years of consistent work, stress and debt our mere existence has caused. Not to mention the subsequent litters of grandchildren.

She deserves 21-gun salutes, a concert in Hyde Park, and a Bank bloody Holiday in her name. What does she get instead? Ovarian cancer and a severely reduced lifespan. Thanks life, you DICK.

This should be happening.

Ever the optimist, this tireless little lady repels negativity. Perhaps being born towards the end of rationing (1949) did it, but she’s always sifted through life’s crap pile in search of those microscopic traces of gold dust. Even now she’s characteristically positive about her drastically shortened future. She rationalises that by having an approximate and literal deadline, she’s able to arrange her affairs with more forethought than most are afforded.

“At least I get to sort all of this out,” she chirps breezily, pointing to the legal paperwork associated with her passing. Oh, the tedious formalities of death. Then she’ll stare briefly into the middle distance, clean her glasses, and make that funny little silence-punctuating, two syllable cough she’s made all of her life.

Born in the 1940’s? Sounds ancient, yeah? Well, she’s only sixty four, and before her body was saturated with this miserable disease, she was what you might call a young sixty something, new hips notwithstanding (although technically, they’re the youngest part of her). Mum’s always had the astonishing energy of someone two thirds her age. A cliché perhaps, but one rooted firmly in truth. When not nursing her tits off undertaking night shifts, extra shifts and additional agency shifts, she co-ran our local swimming club with a fevered passion bordering on insanity, as anyone who ever watched her leaping on poolside with a stopwatch, barking “PB!” can attest. Because it is fair (and right) to say that my Mum has had a heavy dusting of eccentricity somewhere along the manufacturing process. This is a woman that calls to her handbag as if it’s an errant dog (“handbag - yoo hoo!”), sleeps with her arm in the air in the hope of developing pins and needles (I think), and, on a daily basis, claps along vigorously to the Archers theme tune with pure rhythmic hopelessness.

A dog. Or a handbag, possibly.

In moments like those, you’d be forgiven for thinking that my teenage self was embarrassed by such peculiar displays. And I would be lying if I declared that said feelings didn’t occur (adolescence makes tiresome cynics of us all), but for the most part, I was proud to the utmost that that funny little firecracker was my Mum. Not other Mums. God, no. They’re fine and all, and some might have even made better gravy (my Mum’s gravy managed somehow to be thinner than water itself*), but they’re not my Mum.

*the roast chicken was a little suspect on occasion too. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the poor bird had been punched to death just in time for the oven.

In addition to working, coaching, working and working, Mum would also consume books voraciously, take me on inexpensive but essentially pleasant European coach holidays, and worship the sun at every available opportunity (the times I would bellow hurriedly into the garden for her to put her bikini top back on immediately ‘cos a mate had just come round...). Also, during Dad’s short tenure with our family, she took up Morris Dancing, my parents presumably finding it a perfectly acceptable parental activity in which to participate and not, as it should be, a crime that carries a heavy custodial sentence.

There are better photos of my Mum out there, obviously.

Actually, I should like to briefly but sincerely apologise for the times that my self-absorbed, hormone-addled fury got the better of my poor, beleaguered Mum. Especially when she was only trying to help. During one of her well-intentioned but fairly disastrous extra-curricular French lessons in the dining room, I grabbed her pen in a rage of cause-less rebellion, and scrawled in two inch block capitals, “MR BACON IS A CUNT” at the top of the textbook page. Now, neither my Hexagon Plus or the afore-mentioned headmaster deserved such defamation (year head Mr Hocking on the other hand…), and so my poor Mum was left to repair my simple but brutal act of wanton graffiti. Realising that we had no Tip-Ex, she instead somewhat masterfully changed the insult to the far less vulgar, yet determinedly more surreal, “MR BACON IS AN OONT?” I think she was hoping to mystify my French teacher into submission. And hey, this was at least two years before “Cook Pass Babtridge”.

Of course, I should add that Mum had a whole lifetime before she became “Mum”, lest you think I’m limiting her to a role she didn’t play until her early twenties. Miss Christine Janet Moyle was a British teenager of the 1960s who partied in swinging London, saw McCartney when he was going out with Jane Asher, and watched an early Led Zeppelin performance with her Jewish boyfriend (of whom she once declared “Yes, his was like that,” to my bewildered, astonished face).

McCartney, Asher and the fella on the left with the pipe who isn't my Mum.

But this is all frippery, really. A lightweight character sketch arrived at by thumbing through some anecdotal evidence. I can’t just summarise my Mum any more than I can cure her diagnosis with an Elastoplast. Ascribe her a pic ‘n’ mix of traits or some choose-your-own adjectives? She’s too good for that, it wouldn't do her justice. Besides, she’s a tangle of contradictions anyway: keenly intelligent, yet indulgent of lowbrow pop culture. Flippant but serious. Whimsical but practical. Stoic but vulnerable. And so on. Describing her feels like an abstract art: an intangible, impossible attempt to conjure up one of the most important people in the world using mere, worthless words. And you could take every single one of my memories and novelise the lot if you like – they’re no substitute for her being with us, alive and well.

That’s the real fucker about death, isn’t it? The most bloody obvious yet bloody awful thing: they’re gone, and that’s your lot. No more catching up, gossiping, discussing, sharing, reminiscing, laughing, consulting, consoling, sympathising, comforting or watching the grandkids tear up the garden with anarchic glee. No more hugging. Nor even just watching shit telly together.

No making new memories. Just old memories to cherish.

The true essence of her being, her effervescence, vitality and spontaneity - they’re only ever there in the moment. Each moment she continues to exist. I will miss that more than anything.

My Mum, reacting to the world around her, and making it a better place for it.

So, Mum. Yes, you. You’re going to read this, because I will make you, like I do everything I write. And, of course, I find the written word infinitely easier, because it means I don’t have to say this stuff out loud, because I fear that if I do, I may never catch my breath again from crying. Because, although you’re right now probably more concerned with how many sentences I start with a conjunction, I need you to know this: this language fails me when I try to convey what a truly incredible person you are. You are, and that’s it. I love you, and thanks. Thank you for everything.