when death is just the beginning

I was never really keen on the idea to begin with, but since becoming a mum I’ve developed a fear of dying. No – more a fear of being dead.

It’s not because non-existence is too weird to contemplate or I’m petrified of meeting the final hour – not like when bags dropped out of the hold (and several centilitres dropped out of my bag) on a Boeing 747 bound for Australia in 1999. I was scared for my demise then. But I was young and had everything to live for.

But I had quite a lot less to live for then than I have now.  Because now I have children. And yet I don’t get that fear - maybe it’s just a different fear. The difference between not being here  and not being there.

And I’ve thought about it: not being there for my children. I’ve thought about it a lot. I have this thing where I can build scenarios in my head and run them, like film. Not for amusement; I use them to test out consequences, reactions and emotions. Sometimes it’s good stuff, and if you are ever invited to a James Bond fancy dress party stand on your own in a corner and see if anyone guesses you’re Solitaire. That worked for me, mentally. But I reel in the bad stuff too, like blazing arguments. Still, those I can re-script until I perfect my role and get in the last word (my normal response to confrontation is to gulp ineffectively like carp). But in the worse-case consequence I have ever simulated – the one where the kids live on without me – I can’t perfect the ending; because I no longer have a role.  

At first I imagine a blitz-esque bonding between my darling husband and darling children. You see, in my scenarios they are darlings, all of them. He looks incredibly handsome and twenty years younger and the kids are mature beyond their years and extremely well-behaved; and he’d say as he wiped their soggy cheeks and patted his heart We lost Mummy, Mummy gonny. But Mummy always here (my children are actually old enough to understand and use correct verb conjugations, but for the sake of drama...). And then, because he is practical – so practical we have colour-coded lists about the house, coding the various coloured lists with their own colour codes – I am sure he would then say Oh well, must battle on, eh, kids? Now who wants a McDonalds? All in favour say Yay! And there would be a resounding YAY.

From what I‘ve seen, a Happy Meal succeeds in erasing all devastation from the minds of children. It is the ultimate placebo. I mean, you can’t be given a happiness pill (an anti-depressant one, yes, but not a go-get-happy one), but call beef in bread flaps, nuked fries and a junky plastic gadget a HAPPY meal, and voila! Mummy who? Look, my toy talks!

That is of course exactly what he should do. I mean, what sicko wants their children to be miserable and eternally dysfunctional because of their mother’s premature departure? Of course I want them to have a Happy Meal... although, could we compromise? Could the toy that comes with the burger be a miniature doll. Of me? With a heart that lights up like ET when you press a button?

Post Happy Meal he’d see them through their recurring pains – he would try to take their minds off me so they’d stop using me as an excuse to stay up at night all late and upset. But once galvanised, he would also be responsible for making my memory last on, making sure they didn’t forget me. He would have to tell stories about mummy. And what story would he tell when tapping his head... Ah, here’s one you’ll like, kids... What, I wonder. You see, I can’t die yet – I don’t have any crowd-pleasing obituary-fillers. I’m not a pioneer – I don’t think I’ve been the first to do anything, except maybe eat three jars of hamisher gherkins in one sitting; I’ve never reared lion cubs or spent a year building mud huts or won a big prize for my enormous brain; I’m not chiselled wit, hardly Sarah Silverman or Jennifer Saunders – what funny stories could he tell? Well, and then your mother made your dinner and – wait for it , wait for it.... She burnt the pasta. I know! Who burns pasta, right?

And what happens when he gets senile and he can’t even remember my name, let alone a faintly amusing story about silly mummy and some back-to-front undies? What happens when the kids are looking through his photo albums and come across a young me – will he get me wrong? Will he say that’s a girl I met in Mexico. And when he died, they would look at these photos and think no point in keeping pictures of a girl dad met in Mexico, even before mum was around.

And speaking of mums, what if I wasn’t the only one? What if another mum entered the scene? Oh my goodness. Another mum. Which of course, is exactly what I’d want for my children, and preferably she’d be more doting and creative than me to counterbalance my husband’s intolerance for the sentimental and ‘arts and crafts’. But what if she was a FUN MUM – what if she let them stay up until 9 o’clock or made carton robots their way, when I always insisted they do it my way? Or, what if she were insecure and forbade any talk of mummy number one, or insisted on talking about me – but not as a mother with a deep seam of diamond adoration for my children, but one whose veins were strangled by alcoholic excess and eyes narrowed by dissatisfaction with my lot like a real life Miss Hannigan? I couldn’t bear it – not that I’d be there, of course – but my little darlings, my little pig-droppings! What would they think! They would hug her, (worse-case scenario: they would hug her homely but gym-firm frame) and cry: thank goodness you came along. And there they’d be. Happy family. A second chance. Not that we’re not a happy family now, but you always think, maybe, you could all be a bit happier, right?

I am aware that this is self-indulgence at its worse and to fill my days with thoughts of morbid outcomes and self-pity makes it appear like I have too much time on my hands. But remember, I’m compacting a good few years of angst into a few pages, you understand, and if die, obviously I wish them all multitudes of amnesia and McDonalds. Anyways, the situations in which I could die on a daily-basis are few are far between – unless you count the school run. And death by boredom. Mainly, my gizzard tingles when I’m either in the back seat of a taxi with fur seats or about to board a plane (once I’m on I’m almost instantly reassured by everyone else’s apparent ease with ‘cruising’ at 30,000 feet, and pacified like a junkie by in-flight entertainment. Unless I have my kids with me, in which case I have more chance of finding nutrition in my food tray than watching in-flight entertainment or being pacified – and besides, fear of going down with my kids... It’s a whole different story. And I think one that is even too horrific for this project).

I also get scared of dying when remind myself I’m scared of dying, which is disturbingly quite often. I can be sitting at my computer, half–buried in work (the other half more genuinely committed to online Scrabble) when without me knowing it my brain practically invites the thought in. If it’s not knocking at the medulla oblongata, it’ll go call for it, like a missing cat. De-eeeeath? Oh De-eeeath! And finally Death will approach, reluctantly, wiping his shoes on the mat – are you sure this is a convenient time? – and Brain will say yes, yes, do come in. And Death, now quite at home, feet up, eating smoked salmon sandwiches, will proceed to provide some jolly scenarios in which I might slip away (some scenarios are a little too abrupt for slipping), which invariably I will find upsetting and subsequently eject Death, telling him never to darken my doors again. But the stain remains (didn’t wipe them thoroughly enough) – and without even the aid of long-haul or manky mini-cabs, I’ll start to envisage my family life without me.

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t see a one-parent-pass-away family as the ideal. I know the kids would much rather they had two parents to play off and it’s not that I’d like to be the other way round either. Obviously, if I am honest (again, I should be), if one of us had to go I would always rather it wasn’t me. But not for a second would I encourage my current husband to take his colour-coded lists to the great filing cabinet in the sky, because I do love him – I mean, who else could take one look at my sorry disposition following a failed ninth rewrite for Up The Duff Monthly and say ‘what you need is my chilli con carne with garlic- and lime-infused avocado salsa and a nice glass of that Chilean Cab’...? Precisely. He’s an excellent father, exactly the sort of person I’d like to leave in charge of my kids should something terrible happen, but for his chilli con carne alone I’d rather he was alive. And while I think of it, apart from the children, of course, it’s a good reason for me to remain here, too; I’m a big eater, a don’t-stop-till-I-pop eater, and I’ve heard the portions on the other side are non-existent.

I was never really keen on the idea to begin with, but since becoming a mum I’ve developed a fear of dying. No – more a fear of being dead.

It’s not because non-existence is too weird to contemplate or I’m petrified of meeting the final hour – not like when bags dropped out of the hold (and several centilitres dropped out of my bag) on a Boeing 747 bound for Australia in 1999. I was scared for my demise then. But I was young and had everything to live for.

But I had quite a lot less to live for then than I have now.  Because now I have children. And yet I don’t get that fear - maybe it’s just a different fear. The difference between not being here  and not being there.

And I’ve thought about it: not being there for my children. I’ve thought about it a lot. I have this thing where I can build scenarios in my head and run them, like film. Not for amusement; I use them to test out consequences, reactions and emotions. Sometimes it’s good stuff, and if you are ever invited to a James Bond fancy dress party stand on your own in a corner and see if anyone guesses you’re Solitaire. That worked for me, mentally. But I reel in the bad stuff too, like blazing arguments. Still, those I can re-script until I perfect my role and get in the last word (my normal response to confrontation is to gulp ineffectively like carp). But in the worse-case consequence I have ever simulated – the one where the kids live on without me – I can’t perfect the ending; because I no longer have a role.  

At first I imagine a blitz-esque bonding between my darling husband and darling children. You see, in my scenarios they are darlings, all of them. He looks incredibly handsome and twenty years younger and the kids are mature beyond their years and extremely well-behaved; and he’d say as he wiped their soggy cheeks and patted his heart We lost Mummy, Mummy gonny. But Mummy always here (my children are actually old enough to understand and use correct verb conjugations, but for the sake of drama...). And then, because he is practical – so practical we have colour-coded lists about the house, coding the various coloured lists with their own colour codes – I am sure he would then say Oh well, must battle on, eh, kids? Now who wants a McDonalds? All in favour say Yay! And there would be a resounding YAY.

From what I‘ve seen, a Happy Meal succeeds in erasing all devastation from the minds of children. It is the ultimate placebo. I mean, you can’t be given a happiness pill (an anti-depressant one, yes, but not a go-get-happy one), but call beef in bread flaps, nuked fries and a junky plastic gadget a HAPPY meal, and voila! Mummy who? Look, my toy talks!

That is of course exactly what he should do. I mean, what sicko wants their children to be miserable and eternally dysfunctional because of their mother’s premature departure? Of course I want them to have a Happy Meal... although, could we compromise? Could the toy that comes with the burger be a miniature doll. Of me? With a heart that lights up like ET when you press a button?

Post Happy Meal he’d see them through their recurring pains – he would try to take their minds off me so they’d stop using me as an excuse to stay up at night all late and upset. But once galvanised, he would also be responsible for making my memory last on, making sure they didn’t forget me. He would have to tell stories about mummy. And what story would he tell when tapping his head... Ah, here’s one you’ll like, kids... What, I wonder. You see, I can’t die yet – I don’t have any crowd-pleasing obituary-fillers. I’m not a pioneer – I don’t think I’ve been the first to do anything, except maybe eat three jars of hamisher gherkins in one sitting; I’ve never reared lion cubs or spent a year building mud huts or won a big prize for my enormous brain; I’m not chiselled wit, hardly Sarah Silverman or Jennifer Saunders – what funny stories could he tell? Well, and then your mother made your dinner and – wait for it , wait for it.... She burnt the pasta. I know! Who burns pasta, right?

And what happens when he gets senile and he can’t even remember my name, let alone a faintly amusing story about silly mummy and some back-to-front undies? What happens when the kids are looking through his photo albums and come across a young me – will he get me wrong? Will he say that’s a girl I met in Mexico. And when he died, they would look at these photos and think no point in keeping pictures of a girl dad met in Mexico, even before mum was around.

And speaking of mums, what if I wasn’t the only one? What if another mum entered the scene? Oh my goodness. Another mum. Which of course, is exactly what I’d want for my children, and preferably she’d be more doting and creative than me to counterbalance my husband’s intolerance for the sentimental and ‘arts and crafts’. But what if she was a FUN MUM – what if she let them stay up until 9 o’clock or made carton robots their way, when I always insisted they do it my way? Or, what if she were insecure and forbade any talk of mummy number one, or insisted on talking about me – but not as a mother with a deep seam of diamond adoration for my children, but one whose veins were strangled by alcoholic excess and eyes narrowed by dissatisfaction with my lot like a real life Miss Hannigan? I couldn’t bear it – not that I’d be there, of course – but my little darlings, my little pig-droppings! What would they think! They would hug her, (worse-case scenario: they would hug her homely but gym-firm frame) and cry: thank goodness you came along. And there they’d be. Happy family. A second chance. Not that we’re not a happy family now, but you always think, maybe, you could all be a bit happier, right?

I am aware that this is self-indulgence at its worse and to fill my days with thoughts of morbid outcomes and self-pity makes it appear like I have too much time on my hands. But remember, I’m compacting a good few years of angst into a few pages, you understand, and if die, obviously I wish them all multitudes of amnesia and McDonalds. Anyways, the situations in which I could die on a daily-basis are few are far between – unless you count the school run. And death by boredom. Mainly, my gizzard tingles when I’m either in the back seat of a taxi with fur seats or about to board a plane (once I’m on I’m almost instantly reassured by everyone else’s apparent ease with ‘cruising’ at 30,000 feet, and pacified like a junkie by in-flight entertainment. Unless I have my kids with me, in which case I have more chance of finding nutrition in my food tray than watching in-flight entertainment or being pacified – and besides, fear of going down with my kids... It’s a whole different story. And I think one that is even too horrific for this project).

I also get scared of dying when remind myself I’m scared of dying, which is disturbingly quite often. I can be sitting at my computer, half–buried in work (the other half more genuinely committed to online Scrabble) when without me knowing it my brain practically invites the thought in. If it’s not knocking at the medulla oblongata, it’ll go call for it, like a missing cat. De-eeeeath? Oh De-eeeath! And finally Death will approach, reluctantly, wiping his shoes on the mat – are you sure this is a convenient time? – and Brain will say yes, yes, do come in. And Death, now quite at home, feet up, eating smoked salmon sandwiches, will proceed to provide some jolly scenarios in which I might slip away (some scenarios are a little too abrupt for slipping), which invariably I will find upsetting and subsequently eject Death, telling him never to darken my doors again. But the stain remains (didn’t wipe them thoroughly enough) – and without even the aid of long-haul or manky mini-cabs, I’ll start to envisage my family life without me.

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t see a one-parent-pass-away family as the ideal. I know the kids would much rather they had two parents to play off and it’s not that I’d like to be the other way round either. Obviously, if I am honest (again, I should be), if one of us had to go I would always rather it wasn’t me. But not for a second would I encourage my current husband to take his colour-coded lists to the great filing cabinet in the sky, because I do love him – I mean, who else could take one look at my sorry disposition following a failed ninth rewrite for Up The Duff Monthly and say ‘what you need is my chilli con carne with garlic- and lime-infused avocado salsa and a nice glass of that Chilean Cab’...? Precisely. He’s an excellent father, exactly the sort of person I’d like to leave in charge of my kids should something terrible happen, but for his chilli con carne alone I’d rather he was alive. And while I think of it, apart from the children, of course, it’s a good reason for me to remain here, too; I’m a big eater, a don’t-stop-till-I-pop eater, and I’ve heard the portions on the other side are non-existent.

Comments

[Rachel]

Being a mother is an illness, it kills me every day. :0)

[Sister Wolf]

HA! This is all very familiar. Now that my kids are older, I am less afraid of leaving them in the hands of their respective fathers.

I had a friend who was a raging hypochondriac and worried about dying all the time. She once demanded a cat scan for a headache, screaming at the doctor "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, I'M A MOTHER!"