Dear Mum

As I write this you lay in a hospital bed, mouth agape and eyes half-open, sleeping. I don’t know if you will ever be able to communicate with me in a lucid manner again so I write this letter to you at 11:25pm knowing full well that it’s more for me than you.

When I look at you now I feel conflicting emotions. The selfish wish to hold on to you and the guilt of putting you through more pain just to keep you with me a little longer.

For years I had thought our life had been unnecessarily hard. That we’d been dealt a bad hand and been forced to weather it, and while it certainly was in no way easy we always had each other. It could have been a lot worse.

Tonight I asked you if you were tired of hearing that I love you, even though I am unsure you heard me. I tell you I love you because I want you to be so filled up with love when you die that there’s no room for anything else.

I know you still hold a lot of guilt because of things that happened in the past but I want you to know that I am proud to have you as my mother. You created me (with a little help) and through every act have moulded me into the man I am today.

I worry what others will think when they see I don’t cry. When I see George with you I want to cry because your love is so beautiful. When I hear you cry out in pain I want to cry because it hurts me. When I think about a world without you in it I want to cry, but I hold my tears for now (ok, I did have one tear). It’s only as you leave me that I begin to comprehend how very important you are to me.

I came out to you first and in that act understood my fears of rejection to be ridiculous. Deep down I knew you loved me no matter what and when I look back at my life I realise that there has never been a single moment in my life that I was unloved.

Memories are rushing through my head while I think of what to write next.

• How happy you were when I would bring home a new pile of books from the library for us to read.
• You getting angry with me when I had been angry at you for making me worry by being hours late home from work.
• The way you would always brake so late in the car and I would push my feet into the floor to help the car stop.
• When you held me while I cried after telling you I felt I had nothing to live for.
• How surprised you were to discover that I could play the piano we’d moved into the house.
• Getting a belting after I dislocated Tina’s arm.
• When you bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario World for my birthday.
• Being sent to my room because I couldn’t stop laughing.
• That you endured me being such a morbid teenager.
• Constantly being told that there is no such word as ‘badder’, and later, ‘worser’.
• How much trouble Jason and I would get in as we utterly destroyed our bedroom over the course of many years.
• Taking you to see Fellowship of the Rings.
• The time you cooked fish, or should I say didn’t?
• When you would call out the answers for Trivial Pursuit, even though you didn’t want to play.
• That you would never let me touch any of your Hobbytex/Artex/Trichem stuff.
• You being addicted to a late-night tv show about vampires which you found so scary that you made me watch it with you (I didn’t mind).
• Always being told to grow up and being frustrated because I could only act my age.
• Crying after hearing you cry in your bedroom.
• Punishment being to recite up to the twelve times tables courtesy of a chart you had painted and hung on the linen closet.
• Reading all the signs along the Hume Highway when we went to Nan’s and getting stuck on ‘reduce’.
• Discovering you wear dentures and your absolute horror that I’d found out.
• When you surprised me by giving flowers to Tina, Mandy and Sandra on Tina’s 18th.
• That I didn’t go to your wedding.
• Your frustration that I still didn’t know how to tie my laces and being sent upstairs with Jason and Mandy with instructions not to return until I knew.
• Watching The Goodies and Doctor Who everyday as a family.
• Being told to eat my vegetables, which is the why I now always eat them first.
• That you wouldn’t let me watch the television adaptation of Stephen King’s IT even though I’d already read the far more terrifying book.

All of these memories make me smile and while I’m sure that I could dredge up bad memories, I don’t want to. I don’t want to live my life haunted by memories of the past. I want to be happy and make the most of the life you gave me.

I promise I will never waste the gifts you have given me and I will never, ever, forget you because you will live on in my memories.

I love you.

Ben