How has it possibly been four years since I could call her? How is she still the first person I want to call after an interview or after I read the latest asinine decision by the Met?
The first time I moved house after my mom died, I couldn’t deal with the fact that she might not know where to find me. I know grief isn’t linear or rational. I also know that I can write this, while crying, without it meaning the end of the world; or pushing me into a dark place.
I’ve been thinking about the last time I saw her, knowing that I was about to do the impossible and say goodbye for the last time. But also I am far enough away from it now to know that that was barely her. One of the things that a drawn out battle with cancer robs you of is the abundance of healthy memories. I still struggle to really remember my mom healthy as the last six years were so fraught with pain and fear. Everything revolved around the cancer, around the things we wouldn’t get to do, around the books we wouldn’t get to talk about.
The way everything played out at the end was my brother calling and telling me to get on a plane and then my mom telling me to go back for the launch of London Seafood Festival which was the first huge event my newly launched events company had been commissioned to create. It was my baby and was running Tuesday till Sunday, I was the creator and the face of it. My mother passed away early Saturday morning; three days prior to our launch.
I compartmentalised and was on auto pilot for most of that week. The team on the ground and my business partner Heather carried me through. My best friends moved birthday parties, and family engagements and arrived en masse on the Sunday to have our own little riverside memorial to her as I wasn’t in Philadelphia with my family.
Two weeks prior I had gone back to say goodbye.
It was the last few moments before I had to head back to the airport, back to London. I knew given the pain she was in that there were only minor moments of lucidity. I asked for the room to be cleared, for a little time alone.
She held my hand and tapped it. She gripped it. She made out a sound that I didn’t quite hear.
“My Jame. My Jamie Jame.” My childhood nickname which no one had called me in three decades.
I don’t think I got any words out. I may have apologised. I don’t really remember. She patted my hand.
“Go and do it. Do it well. You have to.”
“But I can’t. I can’t go with you still like this.”
“Go. go. I know. I know” Momming me till the end.
She grabbed at the handle of the walker to try and lift herself to me. I couldn’t lift her alone, but I tried. I got her up and held her there. At that point she lost focus and I just sobbed and lowered her onto the couch in a fentanyl induced daze. She no longer knew I was there.
I kissed her forehead goodbye and forced myself out of the apartment and into the hallway with Marie who would drive me back to the airport. It would be the last time I ever spoke to my mother, and I had barely said anything at all.
But till the end she believed in me. I often kick myself and regret that she didn’t get to witness this version of me. She died worried about my dependency of alcohol. She wanted more for me, she wanted better of me. I hate that she didn’t get to see the me that is helping other people see that they can get better, that they can change. The me that has a purpose. The me that is fighting for women. The me that isn’t drunk.
I called her friend Wendy after a week where we fought the Met in High Court and I went to the Cambridge Union and debated about how her Majesty’s Police Force had lost the confidence of women. I wanted her to be in court with me. I wanted her to know I was at Cambridge. I knew she would have been as furious as I have been this past year. She would have gone over every one of those thousands of pages that we were sent in preparation of the court case.
There is no one else I could have spent the hours and hours going over every detail with. So I spend a lot of time writing out the things I want to tell her. I spend a lot of time publicly challenging the power on her shoulders. More than anything she wanted me to find my fire and my use. I wish she had been here to see it; but she keeps the candle burning daily.