Life and loss and writing, by Keren David

 In January this year I finished writing my book, Say No To the Dress for Barrington Stoke.  The week after I finished editing it, my mum was taken into hospital. A few weeks later she came home again. She knew and we knew that she'd come home to die. 

We nursed her at home for six weeks. It was hard, but it was also a time of great love and some laughter. We all knew how lucky we were to be together, to be able to say goodbye. So many families hadn't had that during the pandemic. And we were supported by fantastic carers, the district nursing team and eventually the hospice at home team too. She died with her family around her, holding Dad's hand. 

I was able to thank her for supporting me as a reader and a writer when I was a child. She would buy me books, even when money was tight. She didn't (unlike other mothers I knew) impose bans on Enid Blyton or any other author. When we went on holiday she'd go to the library and take out books to surprise us with. And when I was 10, for my birthday, she bought a hardback copy of my favourite library book (Masha by Mara Kay). I still have it. I still treasure it. 

She encouraged me as a writer too. She was my scribe when I wanted to write down my stories but my handwriting wasn't quick enough to keep up with my brain. She always believed that I would write books one day. When we realised that she'd probably never read Say No to the Dress she insisted that I told her the story anyway. 'There's a lot in it,' was her verdict.

All my life, she was the person I wanted to tell stories to -  true and made up. She was my first and best audience. She had the gift of really listening, even amid many other demands on her time and attention.  Here we are when I was about five years old and she was the mother of three children, one of them physically handicapped.

Since she died (on March 12, the day before my birthday) I have not written anything fictional. I have written articles, but that is my day job. I have used that day job as a way of coping with my grief and loss, even taking on extra work (I've just edited a 98 page colour magazine alongside my weekly 14 page newspaper section. I know. Mad. And she'll never see it.). 

But I can't make up stories right now. I don't seem to have room in my head for them. 

I am not beating myself up about this. It is early days -  not six months yet -  and I have a 94-year-old father to look after, heartbroken to be alone after 63 years of marriage. There are other traumas in my life too. I am constantly busy, so busy that I have hardly cried for my lovely mum. There has been no space for spiritual growth or reflection or anything much other then checking that Dad has food in his fridge and cutting flowers from the garden to arrange for him and trying to sort out his care and his finances and -  on two occasions -  rushing to be with him when he fell over and couldn't get up. Oh, and he got Covid in April, and my husband broke his shoulder. It's been a LOT.

But this gap in writing given me an opportunity to think about what I write and why I write, and how hollowed out one can feel after 12 years of writing books, even with the fantastic luck I've had to be in contract all that time with various publishers. I've pondered on the things I love about writing and the things I hate -  all the time feeling further and further away from actually being able to do it.

 'How do you even start writing a book?' I asked a group of writer friends the other day, and of course they gave me the answers that I've given so many other people over the years. And I thought, I know how to write a book, of course I do. I just don't know how to write a book now, in this world without Mum. Because I guess that for me, part of writing was about getting her attention, entertaining her and making her happy. And now she's gone.

I know that this phase of mourning will pass eventually. I understand that it is early days.  I'm going on holiday in October, and maybe that'll give me the peace I need to start creating new people in my head, asking them questions, finding out what happens to them. I hope so. I can (just about) hear Mum's voice in my head encouraging me to give it a try. I'll let you know how it goes.

If it goes. 

(If you want to know more about my lovely mum, this is a link to the eulogy I gave at the funeral, which took place two days after she died. )