Last night I told my mother that I loved her
No biggie, I hear you say.
Oh yes biggie, big biggie instead. It was perhaps the first time as far as memory goes, and if you think we've known each other for a little over forty hears now, it's a shame. We just don't do feelings too well in our family.
My mother recently spent three weeks in hospital and had a battery of test performed to identify the cause of heavy internal bleeding. She is now at home but next week will undergo an innovative procedure at a state-of-the-art cancer unit about seventy miles away from her place.
Yes, we shivered too when we heard the dreaded c-word, but doctors denied categorically that her condition has got anything to do with cancer. Nevertheless, my mother cannot forget the time she moved in with her beloved cousin who was slowly, painfully and miserably dying of bowel cancer - bits and bobs lost and replaced by external pouches. Dignity lost and unfortunately unreplaceable.
Mother has always been a brave little trooper in the face of adversity, so for her to tell me that she is scared, last night over the phone, it must be a living daylights kinda thing.
And so it just came out, unrehearsed, unplanned, raw: 'I love you mum'. Because that's exactly what I felt.
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