When my firstborn was two days old, my mum came to visit. Her face as she held her first grandchild - so full of love and adoration, but with twinges of discomfort from a persistent mystery pain in her lower back - will always be ingrained in my memory. So, too, will the night that came a few weeks later, when she helped with the bath and bed routine, sat me down and calmly told me that her cancer had returned and spread; this time, it couldn’t be cured.
As he grew, my son - and, later, his younger brother - loved time with ‘Nana’. Despite endless scans, tests and rounds of gruelling treatments, the illness never defined her (she refused to ask how long she had, choosing instead to focus on the present), and, children being children, they took her as she came: occasionally full of energy; usually with no hair; sometimes sick and lethargic; never able to lift them up; always interested and loving. She engaged as much as she was able to on any given day, which ranged from dancing around the room to dozing in between watching them play. I think she enjoyed their company more than anyone else’s, in part because they had no filter and didn’t tiptoe around her or treat her any differently.
When he was three, my eldest appeared with his doctor’s kit and delighted in poking and prodding mum with various plastic instruments. He later asked, with a look of concern and bewilderment, if there was any way he could make Nana better. I explained that no, he couldn’t make her better - nobody could - but he was doing something very important that he did better than anyone else: he made her happy. It was this thought - the notion that the fun they had and the bond they shared was stronger than any illness could ever be, regardless of what was to come - that inspired me to write a poem that became a picture book around loss.
I knew picture books existed on this topic - and some very good ones at that - but, for a story so personal, I chose to steer clear of metaphors and animals and write something that felt real and honest. I also wanted the book to gently introduce the topic of illness and what that might look like to very young readers.
The Fun We Had focuses on a young girl who visits her Nana throughout the course of a year. As the seasons change and Nana becomes more unwell, they sit together and reflect on all of the memories they’ve shared together: camping in the garden, splashing on the beach, building dens in the woods, playing in the snow. When Nana is no longer there, the girl finds a box full of keepsakes that Nana has secretly collected from all of their adventures together.
While it could be considered a sad story about loss, it’s also a happy story about love. It celebrates how important our memories of loved ones are. After all, it is always these things we turn to for comfort when we no longer have that person with us, replaying them over in our minds. While my mum didn’t live to see the book published, the boys - now four and six - talk about her often and have memory boxes of their own.
I’m certainly no expert on how to navigate loss (I wrote from experience as a mother and a daughter finding her way through it), but I hope the book can serve as a conversation starter around difficult topics and bring comfort to any reader, regardless of their age, who has ever lost a loved one or is seeing them through illness.