I didn’t realise at the time, but writing my book, A Corroded Soul, got me through the five stages of grief.
My mother and I weren’t close. In fact, you could say we were enemies from the day I was born. At least that’s how I saw it, sitting in my old-fashioned pram.
I’d been left, abandoned as far as I was concerned, under the back garden willow. I can see its silvery branches arching over me, hear the leaves rustle, even now.
I wasn’t entirely alone. I had Larry, a rag doll lamb, who, in order to get my mother’s attention, I hurled into the air. When my mother failed to appear, I began to blubber. Then howl. Then wail. Until I couldn’t breathe.
Still no mother though my sister returning from school, heard me. Slapping my cheeks until they changed from blue to red, she rushed me inside, shouting, “Call an ambulance. I think Peter’s dead.”
Years later, she told me that our mother had told her to ‘keep quiet’, irritated that her daytime television schedule had been interrupted. It isn’t overly dramatic to say my sister saved my life that day.
Relations with my mother went downhill from ‘The Willow Tree Incident’. Other sagas included ‘Not Being Fed Properly’, ‘Not Being Told I Was Loved’, and ‘Being Left to Drown in an Irish Loch’.
This last one demands an explanation.
On another disastrous family holiday, this time to County Clare, I assumed my parents and sister were accompanying me on a fishing trip. But the Cortina’s wheels spitting gravel told me I was wrong.
Aged twelve, I was left to manoeuvre a four-man rowing boat onto increasingly stormy waters until a wave capsized me. The boat keeper who rescued me two hours later was so relieved he made me a hot chocolate.
I’m not asking for sympathy. Save that for the multitude of youngsters who get hideously physically abused. What I would say is that it’s remarkable how many people say they feel damaged by emotional neglect. Do the two bear comparison? Prince Harry certainly thinks so in his book Spare.
Forgive me if I’ve digressed, but I hope I’ve painted a picture. Not that it was all bad. In fact, one of the hardest things to deal with growing up was Christmas. Not, as you might expect, because I wasn’t given any presents. On the contrary. I was given too many. Too many to understand why on the other 364 days of the year, I got little in the ‘feeling cared for’ department.
Back to my book, A Corroded Soul, available online and in all good bookshops since you asked.
It began as an attempt to make sense of my life when, as a result of a car crash, my mother died. Rather than a novel, it was intended to be a cathartic exercise until those dastardly things called words took over, creating scenes and people that didn’t exist. But, in fairness, they allowed me to write more creatively in what became a blend of fact and fiction.
Essentially, the book is about fifty-year-old Daniel Connah, a journalist with questionable character traits, trying to understand why, and who, he is after his mother’s death.
Themes include nature versus nurture, morality, regret and the perverse nature of grief, which brings me on to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
The Swiss American psychiatrist and studier of dead people proposed there are five stages of grief. And it wasn’t until I’d finished my book that I realised I’d gone through them. The first is Denial.
As far as my own mother was concerned, this is both true. And false. You see, in many ways, I denied her loss because I couldn’t believe how good it felt. Let me clarify.
My mother made life hell, not only for my siblings and me but also for our father. Her moods veered from venomous sneering – ‘you’re a useless nasty piece of work’, to simmering silence lasting for days. Whilst delighted that she’d died, or thought I was, I had to suppress a sense of desertion best not faced.
Stage two is Anger. I skipped this stage because I had bucketloads of it already. Anger for the way I was raised, holding my mother responsible for my social inadequacy, low self-esteem and, yes, dubious character traits, such as petty theft.
Next is Bargaining, which relates to statements such as, “If only we could go back in time” and “What if this never happened?” It seems that remaining in the past, i.e. the time before someone died, is a coping mechanism. I buy this one least of all mainly because I didn’t feel any anguish. Relief. Yes. Agony. No.
Depression is the fourth phase. Unfortunately, I spent so much time with the Black Dog anyway that my mother being six-foot under, hardly made a dent. And whilst I don’t disagree that ‘bargaining’ focuses on the past and depression is all about the present, it didn’t happen to me. If anything, as already noted, my mum’s death cheered me up.
The final stage, Acceptance, is the one I found hardest to deal with. For better or worse, my mother had a presence. You might say so does a mosquito, and God knows my mother could leave a mark, but the sudden removal of someone who preoccupied my thoughts, came as a shock. Where had she gone and why? Was her last wound to leave me wanting more? Desperate for her resurrection, I needed her to fill the emptiness and explain the person I’d become.
Throughout the ten years it took me to write A Corroded Soul, I assumed it was about coming-to-terms with myself. And while to some extent this was achieved, writing had the additional benefit of helping me to grieve, even if it was for a mother I never had.
Was I able to forgive her? Partially. But more importantly, I realised that the person who needed to change and move on was me.
Let me know how you dealt with your parent’s death.
Very sad, the hidden lives behind closed doors, when everyone is 'keeping up appearances'.