I have recently been watching a lot of Disney fairy tales with my daughters during the school holidays.
If you think of the Cinderella story, you probably think of rags to riches, the fairy godmother or Prince Charming, all of these cliches which permeate our daily lives. Me, I think of the mother. Not the wicked stepmother, but the one who dies before the story even begins. You see, she’s the one I identify with.
I’m currently four years into my incurable cancer journey and the clock is ticking, I’m worried I will become a footnote in my daughters’ lives, someone to be mentioned in passing before their real lives got going. A memory. A good one, but still. I’m worried my husband will remarry. My family will gather at my funeral and posthumously publish my poetry. I will never know what legacy I leave.
But fairy tales don’t care about any of this. In Rapunzel the woman who longs for a baby loses her for her entire childhood. Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, the Little Mermaid. I could go on. The mother is written out, replaced or simply ignored.
The funniest thing about this stage in my cancer treatment with progression in my liver is that I am actually happy to at last be noticed. I hate it when my friends discuss cancer without acknowledging my own diagnosis. I hate it when I collect tablets from the hospital and the nurse barely gets my name right. When I break a bone and the doctor can’t be bothered to examine me. When someone discusses their own health condition and I am too empty to provide sympathy. If I do manage to empathise, I want it to be reciprocated. I find it hard to relate to those with seemingly perfect lives and am propelled towards those for whom the struggle just to keep getting out of bed is real.
So, I’m writing my own fairy tale. The mother is the heroine. She is the glue that bonds the family together. If she is nurtured, she can in turn nurture others.
Please don’t dismiss me as someone born before the story got going. I’m still here, and I feel like I am only just getting started.
