Hannah’s Choice: A daughter's love for life. The mother who let her make the hardest decision of all.. Hannah Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ was one of such stillness and routine that I craved a big, messy family full of life and laughter.

      I’d met Andrew in a village pub where he’d stood out a mile in his suit. Quiet and kind, he was a big man who made me feel safe and when I got home after our first date, I told my grandmother I was going to marry him – even if he didn’t know it yet. I proposed four months later but Andrew refused because it was too soon and I was being typically impetuous. So we waited another year to get engaged and I was over the moon when we started trying for a baby.

      But two years had passed and I hadn’t fallen pregnant. No one could explain why, and I felt hopelessness seep into me for the first time in my life as the months turned into years. Feeling more and more overwhelmed, I gave up my job and stayed in bed for weeks until realising I couldn’t lie there forever. So I forced myself back out into the world, where I got a job on a production line at a cake factory – repetitive, undemanding work that I didn’t need to worry about – and told myself I would fall pregnant when the time was right. Two months later I did, and was overjoyed. My family was finally starting and I knew I’d do anything to protect it.

      So when Andrew had been made redundant weeks before Hannah was born I had found a job to support us and returned to work when she was just three and a half weeks old. But leaving her was even worse than I had anticipated because I was soon sent to a conference in Canada by the pharmaceutical company I was working for. I ached every day for Hannah, who was being looked after by Andrew and my grandmother, and was overjoyed when he found a new job. It meant I could go home again and I’d stayed there ever since – first with Hannah, then Oli and Lucy – concentrating on our family life and working part-time as a nurse to help pay the bills.

      But now, as I thought back to those few weeks of her life and tried to make sense of what was happening, I wondered if leaving Hannah was just the first mistake I’d made without even knowing it.

      The world closed down to just Hannah and me – she and I in a silent bubble together as we fought her illness, travelling a path that seemed to get darker and darker. Three days into the New Year she was transferred into the high dependency unit – a halfway house between the oncology wards and intensive care.

      Semi-conscious and still on morphine, we lived in half-darkness, blinds closed and wave sounds playing softly to soothe Hannah. Various different types of therapy were offered to children by aromatherapists and reflexologists who came onto the ward. But all they could do for Hannah was give her crystals – pebble-smooth stones that we put in the palms of her hands as she lay in bed hardly moving.

      We were closer to the edge of darkness than ever before, and for the first time the word ‘die’ whispered around the edges of my thoughts. Before now I’d refused to let myself think it, pushed it out as I concentrated on Hannah’s treatment. But now I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer as she lay silently. No one knew for sure yet why Hannah had so suddenly weakened and, desperate to try and make some sense of the chaos inside me, I had asked for a priest to come and perform the Anointing of the Sick – prayers said for those who are dangerously ill. I had been brought up with a strong Catholic faith and Hannah had always enjoyed church. She’d also liked the nuns who visited the children’s ward so much that she’d ask where they were if we hadn’t seen them for a few days. Hannah liked routine and they always came on time before reading the same prayers, exuding a quiet stillness which calmed her.

      Now I watched the priest as he softly traced the sign of the cross on Hannah’s forehead.

      ‘Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit,’ he said softly.

      Hannah did not move or speak but her eyes were open as she watched. The familiar words and phrases of the prayers felt soothing – just as knowing other people were praying for us was. When Hannah had first been admitted to hospital, my great aunt Kitty, who had once been a nun, had contacted all the churches she knew and by now hundreds of people were praying for Hannah. It comforted me to know that we were not alone.

      After the priest gave me communion and left, I sat down again, lost in thought as Hannah slept. Ever since becoming an adult, I’d been making plans and being busy – first with my career, then meeting Andrew, next came buying a home and finally starting our family. Now I had three children under five to keep me constantly busy and I hurled myself through the hours each day, waiting for the next child’s cry when they fell over or a frustrated howl as they couldn’t complete a task.

      But now for the first time ever there was no shift to start at work, cleaning to do, food shopping to get or another child to calm. All I could do was concentrate on tiny things: the feel of Hannah’s right hand enclosed in my left one as it lay limply on the bed. It felt so small, as fragile as a shell hurled across a windswept beach, and I focused on the feel of it in mine – the one fixed point in a landscape which seemed to change almost by the hour.

      It isn’t just emotional certainties you lose when your child falls sick and your world spins off its axis, it is practical ones too – the thousand tiny tasks which make up the physically demanding job of being a mother. Of course you willingly hand over their care to the doctors and nurses trying to save their life. But in doing so, the daily throwaway acts which have made up your life ever since your child came into it are suddenly no longer yours and you realise, for perhaps the first time, that these are the things which make you a mother – loading a dishwasher, wiping a face or turning book pages, each one giving you a purpose and reason which you feel lost without.

      I clung to the little things I could still do – checking Hannah’s feeding tubes, smoothing her sheets or wiping her hands clean of the blood spots running off the drips – but knew it wasn’t practical care she needed from me any more. Hannah and I had moved beyond an everyday world of yoghurt pots and finger painting, cut knees and spilt drinks. We’d fallen off the map into the lands where dragons lay.

      But as I sat with her, I realised that I must conquer my fears if I was to be what I hoped for Hannah. I had to stop looking back at the past and searching for a reason where there was none. She needed my courage, reassurance and strength to draw on more than ever now – a fixed point in all the uncertainty. I could not dwell on making sense of the past or controlling the uncertain future. I must live in the moment, finding strength in it and living it with Hannah, knowing it was precious minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day.

      I had always been so busy focusing on goals and the next plan. Upgrading cars, booking holidays, finding schools – like many people I’d been preoccupied with a future that was just beyond my reach, hardly taking any notice of the moment I was in. But as Hannah’s life hung in the balance I finally saw what I could lose if I wasted the moment. Each one was precious and I wanted her to feel loved in them all.

      Hannah herself was helping me to see this. Ever since she’d fallen ill she had quietly accepted what was happening, and her calmness had humbled me. She hadn’t questioned the drugs or railed against the endless tests. She hadn’t complained when she was in pain or screamed at the injustice of it all. She had simply submitted herself to what was happening and in doing so had guided me as much as I had guided her as we took uncertain steps through our new world. I knew that Hannah might die and had to accept the possibility, however much I didn’t want to. But the strength she needed from me would not come from looking back or forward. I must live in the moment with her – cling to each one and treasure it. As I sat with Hannah, I knew this was a lesson she was helping me to learn. But what I did not know then was that it would be just the first of many.

       CHAPTER TWO Precious Time

      It was Dad’s birthday a СКАЧАТЬ