Mum.

I mentioned a few posts ago that my mum had started smelling smells that weren't there.

A couple of days ago, she sent me this message:

Been to doctors this afternoon. I have sclerosis in both hemispheres Will be keeping my app't at Walton on 24th. Started taking a low dose aspirin once a day. Don't know what treatment can be offered. We will wait and see. Looking forward to seeing you both.

She's 65. 8 years younger than my Dad. I suppose I assumed that he'd go first. I sort of tried to avoid thinking of such things at all, truth be told. The child in me thinks they will just always be there.

Sclerosis is a medical term for the replacement of the normal structures present in an organ with connective tissue. Some forms of it are degenerative and incurable. Others less so. If Mum knows more about it, she's keeping mum. We're having a meet up next weekend. I shall find a quiet moment with her to ask. I suspect she may be trying to protect me. Or she might have another 30 years in front of her. Right now, I just don't know.

We all age of course. If you don't want to bury your children, you have to die before them. That's just the normal way of things.  She helped me not just through childhood, but through all the shittier bits of my teens and twenties too.

She's always been a bearer of other people's burdens. Only rarely has she ever let slip how much it's cost her.

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