hi everyone
I've just been reading a thread about something Kirsty Allsop said about girls going to uni, or not actually, anyway everyones getting their knickers in a twist about what she said so I read the article from the paper she was in. I only seen the first bit, the bit where she was talking about her mum recently dying. I thought she was spot on about what she said, I'll copy and paste for you to read.
"dy Fiona Hindlip was 66 when she succumbed to breast cancer after a 25-year battle. “And, you know, my mother’s life wasn’t defined by cancer in any shape or form. She got it, she had it, she was fit and healthy. She was staggeringly brave. But I can’t sort of…” Allsopp breaks off for a bit. “You’re very close to your mum, aren’t you? And you can’t take that away from someone. It’s appalling. Losing your mum is --. As a lifestyle choice, it’s just --. There is no way of getting away from that. But her extraordinary bravery is something that I admire so much.”
Allsopp was only 17 when her mother was first diagnosed. “I can’t say how our lives or her life would have been different,” she says. “It’s just what it was.” One day – not now, it’s still too soon – she would like to write something about how Britain deals with dying, in the same vein as Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death.
“We don’t get it right in this country. We don’t get it right by any stretch of the imagination. In fact,” says Allsopp, gathering pace, “we may get it more wrong than any other country in the entire world. And so I think that there is a moment to just do something and say: 'OK, this is how it’s done in Turkey,’ for example. They are buried immediately in the Muslim and Jewish traditions. And then for 30 or 40 days you stay at home, everyone comes round and they all talk about the person who has died. I think you need that.”
She remembers the first day she went out after her mother died “and nobody said anything. My mum left very specific instructions to be buried within 24 hours. But with most people, nobody is in touch with you for seven days, because that’s the sacred period between death and the funeral when nobody thinks they are important enough to be in touch with you."
I just agree with her so much. No one talks about your mum after shes died, maybe they cant face it, but its so painful to have people you thought were close to you ignore the worst thing thats ever happened to you and expect you to carry on like you've lost a tenner in the street. There should be something done about this, I hope Kirsty writes a book on it. I hated the way my mum was never mentioned and brushed under the carpet, I still cant speak to a cousin I've always been really close to who bar sending me a card, virtually ignored my mum dying, like it was a minor blip. Or my niece who wrote "mums and dads are great" on her facebook page 2 weeks after my mum died, knowing I'd see it. I'm not trying to be all poor me and dramatic, but I cant forgive and forget, I just keep a few people, mainly family, at a distance now, I cant take them anymore.
I know from being on here a while we all have experiences of this. Its just bloody unnecessary. It the worst time in our lives and people dont see it. I just dont get it.
Anyway, how are you all doing here? mummylin, sorry to read you havent been feeling well, hope your feeling a bit better by now. mycats, I know how you feel, I've lost both mum and dad and I really hope they are together up there somewhere. Its awful, I know.
hugs to all of us here, I hope we can keep the thread going, even if its just to pop into. I know sometimes posting here is hard, as for me anyway it feels I'm going over the same stuff over and over again and not getting anywhere with it.
xx