Page 63 of A Part of Me and You
She shrugs and thinks.
‘I suppose I do sometimes,’ she says, ‘though in a different way, I think. He sticks up for me always if I ever feel in trouble.’
‘That’s good!’
‘Yes, not that I get into trouble much but you know what I mean – I mean when I am worried about something he reassures me, like once he went to my school because I was being bullied by a girl in the year above me and he spoke to the headteacher, demanding it never happened again. And it didn’t.’
She sits up a little straighter when she tells me this and I feel better for her already.
‘Oh Rosie, darling, you see? You have so many people who love and adore you,’ I say to her. ‘And on top of all that, your mum has given you the very best she can in every way so you can be the strong, independent young woman that I have no doubt you will be.’
‘But she won’t be able to guide me for much longer, will she?’ she states.
I bite my lip. Do I be honest with Rosie that her mum is deteriorating? Do I try to prepare her for what is coming, but then again, how can I possibly do that? There is no preparation for grief when someone so young is getting ready to say goodbye. I think of my own mother and how the gaping hole of loss felt like someone had ripped out my very core and I couldn’t breathe as I was so buckled with the shock even though I knew it was coming.
‘Your mum will always guide you, Rosie,’ I say to her. ‘Not in the way she has been when you can see her and hear her every day, but she’ll always be near you in a very special way. Look, I know it’s not the same and it’s the most awful thing in the whole world, but wait and see, when you need her you will feel her near you, I promise. I know that’s what gets me through each day without my mum and Lily. I have a place I go to and if I close my eyes I can see them and it makes me feel just a little bit better.’
I realize this much more now when I think of my own loss. Call it an awakening, call it a moment of change or maybe it was seeing someone like Juliette stare death in the face but I have opened my mind and heart over the past few days and it has made me feel my loved ones so much nearer. I see how Juliette doesn’t want to leave Rosie, and I know my mother didn’t want to leave me, so how can she be very far away? She is with me in everything I do, she is guiding me and watching me and I now know that she is looking after Lily and urging me to make the most of my days here just like Juliette is before her time is up.
‘I should probably go back and check in on her, shouldn’t I?’ says Rosie, fiddling with Merlin’s lead in her hands. ‘She’s tired today and I hate watching her when she’s so weak. I am so afraid of something happening ….’
She takes a tissue from her sleeve, dabs her nose and slides off the stool.
‘I think that’s a good idea, yes, plus I’m sure you’re fed up by now with Merlin,’ I say trying to lighten things a little. ‘I’ll call down on you both as soon as my shift is finished and I’ll make you something nice to eat, how’s that for a plan?’
‘That’d be cool, yeah.’
‘We could watch a movie, all three of us and let your mum just take it easy. She’s done so much to make this holiday special and it has been special, hasn’t it, Rosie?’
Rosie’s lip begins to tremble and she doesn’t notice how much Merlin is tugging at the lead, trying to get out of the restrictions of my little workplace. He starts to bark and as he does, Rosie gives into her emotion and lets her tears fall.
‘It’s been amazing because we found you and you’ve made me feel so much better and you make Mum feel better too,’ she says. ‘I just don’t want it to end. Not yet. Not yet, Shelley.’
I look into her beautiful eyes and the fear in them takes my breath away. I know exactly what she means. She doesn’t want this holiday to end because it means she will have to start preparing for life as she knows it to end.
‘I can’t help it, I’m so scared,’ she sobs to me. ‘I’m so scared that I’m going to have no one to turn to no matter how much Aunty Helen and Dan try. My grandparents are old and my Nanna is too sick to even worry about Mum. I lie in bed at night and worry that she might have the same sickness as Mum does and Aunty Helen has enough on her plate with her own family. Who’s going to be there for me? I don’t want my mum to die. Please God, don’t let her die.’
I rush to Rosie’s side and I put my arms around her and hold her tightly into my chest, then I let her cry and cry and cry and as she does so, I do too for Juliette and for this dear little girl that has so much loneliness and grief ahead of her.
‘I know you’re scared, baby,’ I whisper to her. ‘You don’t want to lose your mum and your mum doesn’t want to lose you. This is the most terrifying thing you will ever go through. You will be angry, you will be so angry that you want to tear the place down and run away and hide and scream and shout and you will see other girls with their mothers at all stages of their lives and you’ll think ‘why me? Why my mum?’ It will burn you and it will kick you in the stomach and it will hit you like a ton of bricks just when you think the pain has gone. It will never go away, Rosie but if you can, and I know it’s going to be really hard to think this way, just try and think of all this pain that you are going through as a big storm that happens every time you remember how much you love your mother.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you didn’t love each other so, so much, the pain would be a lot less, wouldn’t it?’
She shrugs. ‘I suppose.’
‘If you didn’t care for her, you wouldn’t feel this pain, so when you have a really hard day and all that anger and gut-wrenching pain takes over, see it as a sign of how much you really love each other and always will. It’s like the floods after a storm, or the damage done by a hurricane. It’s a sign of something so big that no one or nothing could control it. That’s how much you love your mum and you will find that when you need her, she will be near, because she is in here.’
I put my hand on my heart.
‘No one can ever take her away from there, Rosie. She will never, ever leave your heart and once you realize that, you will feel just a little bit better, day by day, week by week. You have a strong woman in your heart and that’s where she will always stay.’
I have to look away when Rosie puts her own hand on her own heart and takes a big deep breath in and then out again.
‘I feel her in here already,’ she says. ‘No one can ever take that away from me.’
‘That’s exactly it,’ I say, fighting back tears. ‘And you know if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always just a phone call away.’
