Life After Death: Dad, Mum and Brannon

23 years ago and I still remember that day so clearly. Dad was home from Germany, I’d gone to school and all was right with the world. Except it wasn’t. That afternoon no one came to pick me up. Teachers faffed around me. Suspiciously attentive and kind. I knew something was wrong. I was given hot chocolate and toys and books I’d never seen before. All to entertain me, while they grappled with the gulf that existed between their knowledge of what I was about to find out and my 9-year old innocence. Eventually, mum appeared with my godfather and I was taken into the headmistress’ office. Mum looked pale, transparent, broken. Hollow, like she’d seen a ghost.

And she kind of had. Dad had died that afternoon. In our loft. In our house. As reckless, wild and self-indulgent as ever. Mum found him and nothing was ever the same. She was never the same.

I didn’t really understand how he’d died until I started college. I met a girl called Lily and we instantly bonded. Exchanging our shared secret knowledge of what it feels like to lose a parent. We talked about love, loss, the romance and tragedy of it all and something about our talks resonated. Something was familiar about the tragedy. I recognised the intense and enduring heartbreak in my own mother, and I knew there was more to it than an “accident in the loft”. At home, I searched my mum’s documents in the bottom of her wardrobe. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew I’d know it when I saw it. And I did. Dads death certificate. Death by asphyxiation. An answer. Finally, some clarity. He was a man and he was as flawed as he was beautiful. Wild, hedonistic, kind and magnetic. He was my dad and he ended himself in the name of pleasure. And he ended our family in the process. I spent my late teens and early twenties in free fall, trying to make sense of that discovery. Engaging in various self-destructive endeavours. Grieving for not only the loss of my dad but the death of an ideal. The death of innocence and the realisation that your parents are hot blooded humans, that exist outside of their duty, love and bond to you as their child. Finding social work in my mid-twenties was my saviour. That degree and then my career afterwards, have saved me a million times over. Grounded me when the whole world has spun out of control again and again and again.

Contrary to the shocking and unnatural departure of dad, mum’s death was the longest of goodbyes. By 50 she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. She fought hard for ten years to beat off the dark demise of losing herself but by 60, the wrinkle in her brain had taken over and she rapidly deteriorated. My once strong, independent, bohemian and wholly infuriating mother became a shadow of her former self. The state of her house crumbled alongside her mindset. Snippets of paper piled on every surface, covered in notes to remind her of something she immediately forgot. Dust everywhere, dirt everywhere, as she forgot how to clean the house. How to clean herself. How to cook. How to manage her money. Then how to drive, and finally how to eat. She became tiny, emaciated like a dying bird. Trapped inside a home she couldn’t manage and a mind running away from her. We battled to get social services to acknowledge what was happening. True to form, they avoided taking any responsibility for as long as possible. When she finally did go into a care home, I knew it was the beginning of the end. But while the final chapter on mum’s life was drawing to a close, new life was growing inside of me. I was pregnant. As pieces of my heart shattered as mum got worse and worse, a whole new feeling of love was building simultaneously. My heart was breaking and bursting at the same time. Sometimes, when I was down in England to visit her, it felt like the grief would engulf me. Flowing down my throat like thick black tar. I felt like if I cried, I’d never stop. But then I’d look and feel my growing belly and feel instantly comforted. I knew what Brannon was about, well before he was born. I knew he was a boy before the scan. I knew he’d be named Brannon, our little raven. I knew his nature. What he was made of; strong, wise, pure and joyful soul. I knew he’d be the best thing I’ll ever do.

Pregnancy was a novelty. I embraced it. I indulged in it. Dad was dead, mum was on the way, but I was pregnant with Brannie and this I thought, this I could control. I went to yoga. I did hypnobirthing. I greedily devoured every pregnancy book I could. I had the placenta freeze dried into capsules to take after the birth. I had a print made from the placenta as well. It’s still rolled up and never been framed. We planned for a home birth. We bought a pool. We watched every idyllic YouTube video of women having holistic, spiritual home births, catching their babies in their arms, as their adoring and helpless partners, looked on in awe. I wrote a meticulous birth plan; delayed cord clamping, gas and air only, music, candles, some woman whispering hypnobirthing wisdom at me through every “surge”. It wasn’t pain, it was discomfort and it was temporary etc, etc.

I threw all I had at having Brannon, distracting myself with every element of alternative pregnancy and birthing knowledge that I could. And then he came. 2 weeks late. Meconium in my waters, meant that a home birth was out the question. I never had a backup plan. 20 hours in and I was losing my mind. The discomfort was unthinkable. This was fucking PAIN. Unimaginable PAIN. I screamed. I writhed. I shat in a cardboard bowl. Unbeknown to me, Brannie was back to back and as the energy and dignity drained out of me with every minute, I caved into the bombardment of medical interventions being offered. Gas and air, morphine (which was disappointingly shit by the way), some clip thing that was attached to Bran’s head whilst he was still inside of me; effectively chaining me to a machine by the vagina. It was gruesome, disappointing and in retrospect, strangely hilarious. After 36 hours, when even fentanyl wasn’t touching the sides, they offered me a c-section and I took it. I made them take the screen down so I could see as they sliced me open and lifted Brannon out my abdomen. And there he was, screaming, pissing and pigeon chested as ever. A tiny, enormous unit of strength. Our beautiful Brannon, who I knew so well already. My broken heart no longer felt so broken, as an unthinkable love rushed in.

And all the while mum was oblivious. My fear, questions, joy, anxiety, trepidation & excitement about becoming a mother had no outlet. There was no mum on the end of the phone to share it with, to ask, to confide in. I’d read back through her old text messages to feel close to her, looking for someone that was no longer there. But Mum was somewhere else and the person that wrote those texts, was frozen in memories and never coming back. Those early days of motherhood are a blur. The strength Id felt during pregnancy evaporated, once we got home. It was summer 2018 and it was hot. The combination of sleep deprivation & post-natal depression overwhelmed me. Whilst I was lucky that my mental health never affected my bond with Brannon, it affected me in other ways. My thoughts raced at night. I couldn’t sleep. Thoughts were rapid; visions intrusive and frightening. I’d be holding him, walking into the kitchen and suddenly I could see myself dropping him, his tiny body falling onto the cold hard floor. My mind would see him locked in the conservatory in the boiling heat, suffocating and I wouldn’t be able to get to him. I’d splash my face with cold water to disperse the visions. Manically repeating to myself “he is safe, he is ok. He is safe, he is ok”. Time ticked on. Days merged into one long time lapse and I muddled through. Gradually, my imposter syndrome about becoming a mother started to subside. The cloudy fog of post-natal depression started to ease. I went back to work. Reconnecting with my job was a big part of my healing. It helped me start to feel like me again and the more I felt like me, the more I relaxed into motherhood and felt stronger. And I needed to be strong.

As I began to embrace my role as a mother, my own mother lost the ability to say or even recognise the word. Every time we visited; it was like she’d aged another ten years. Hair plaited back. Her face makeup less. Hairs sprouting on her chin. Her eyes glassy from the medication. To begin with she was frantic in the care homes. Constantly moving. Shuffling round and round and round the vicinity, picking up invisible objects off the floor. Picking at something that wasn’t there on her clothes. Avoiding eye contact and babbling incoherently. But as the end drew closer, her energy slowed and then she stopped moving at all. Alzheimer’s is the cruellest disease. It robs your loved ones of their selfhood and then teases you with moments of them having insight. The first time I took Brannon to meet her, she managed to mumble “beautiful boy”. A moment of connection that was gone as quick as it came. The last time I saw mum, she was bed bound. She looked and smelt like death was close. It was. I held her tiny bony hand and silently wept. Memories of my childhood with her and dad flashed through my mind. A lifetime that I know was real but that to this day, feels like a sepia dream that happened in another life.

Bruce pushed Brannie in endless laps round the nursing home, whilst I held mum’s hand; wading through the heavy blur of grief and recollection.

That was the last time I saw mum. Bruce says he can remember her muttering “don’t come back Vic”. I was sceptical she could say anything at all.

We flew back to Aberdeen at the end of April 2019 and mum died, on May 5th, 2019. I’ve looked back at letters from her since, that say pretty much what Bruce says he heard. “As much as I miss you, don’t come back Vic, live your life and don’t look back”.

I realised when writing mum’s eulogy, that I had greatly underestimated her strength and determination, for virtually my whole life. Whilst she was broken on so many levels, mum always kept going. She was a powerhouse. She swallowed the grief of dad’s death and got on with it, until her mind literally said no more. I try to avoid regret but if there’s anything, I wish I could go back and tell her just how inspiring she was and how much I loved her. I didn’t say it enough. I’m not sure if I ever really said it all. Motherhood has softened me and made me realise how hard she really did try.

Death is a funny thing. It makes the majority of people so uncomfortable. People find out that both my parents are dead and they’re not sure what to say. I fumble about trying to reassure them it’s ok. That I’m ok and they don’t have to tiptoe about. I spent so many years after dad died, searching for him. Trying to find him in various terrible men. Excavating bottles of wine, looking inside tablets, investigating numerous powders and pipes. He was never there. And I nearly lost myself in the search. With mum’s death, I have endeavoured to feel the grief. To sit with it and be present. Make friends with it even and in doing so, it hasn’t overwhelmed me. Not only do I owe it to myself this time, but I owe it to Brannon. To show him that death is an integral part of life. That’s it’s ok to cry, to grieve and to remember. That in doing so, this is how we start to move forward; forever connected to what has been and more open to the future. Every time I look at Brannon, I am confronted with an unshakable truth, that always makes me smile; as certain as death is, there is life after death and Life. Goes. On.