Julie Helen: Mum's cancer has returned... it's a time for love and understanding

I HAVE been staring at a blank page on the screen holding my breath.

There is, what feels like a cold, steel claw clenching on my heart and making my chest feel tight and it is hard to hold back the tears.

I have been putting off writing this story. Over the many years I have been writing on these pages, the one thing readers tell me, when I am lucky to meet you, is that you appreciate how I say it as it is, and tell how I really feel about my life.

I’ll let you in on a secret, I get that real way of storytelling from my mum. We both write columns, her in the national farming bible, the Irish Farmer’s Journal, and me here. We regularly bounce ideas of each other, particularly when we have things going on in life that we both want to deal sensitively with.

Today is one of those days. The cruel fact is mum’s cancer has returned in her lungs. It is not what she or dad or her children or grandchildren deserve.

Mum will now have chemotherapy every three weeks for the rest of her days as long as it works for her, to try to stave off the progression of the cancer, give her quality of life, and most of all give her time with us.

I will never forget the swipe in the air of dad’s hand to silence me when I jovially went to chastise them for not texting us to tell us mum had the “all clear” after her last scan. They hadn’t texted because the cancer was back and they knew I would be at home, and had asked my brothers to come home and they would then tell us all together.

Just behind dad was mum, crying, so I of course knew then it wasn’t good news, but they have always been very clear about telling us important news together. Those minutes before the boys came felt heavy and full of dread.

No matter how grown up I am meant to be, even though I am a mother myself, hearing my mum is sick is as scary and as unsettling as it gets. 

Mum isn’t just a parent though, she’s one of my favourite people in the whole world. We are colleagues in inclusive education and journalism and we are friends. Our chats are like no others I have. I feel so lucky to be able to say that, because I can say the same for dad, they are just different chats.

So when we heard this most recent news, two separate things happened.

The little girl in me panicked and screamed loudly and selfishly how this must be some dreadful mistake because I need my mum forever, not for a defined amount of time.

Then the grown-up in me stepped forward and wanted to take the pain of both my parents away. Their love together as a couple has already endured a lot.

Mum often says in lectures that we have to go to the depths of despair before we can experience the heights of joy. She means it in relation to getting the diagnosis of a disability for a child and it used to irk me as a teenager that something none of us could control could cause despair, but I get it now.

Despair and joy must live side by side, the selfish little girl and the rational grown woman must both deal with mum having cancer, and the only way is with all the love and understanding I have to give.