This story starts somewhere in the middle, or perhaps in the aftermath; I’m not sure which. In the beginning I had the best of intentions. I wanted to document my mother’s illness and share our experiences with the world. I thought about it long and hard. I had the best intentions. I thought I could help people by telling our story. I wanted to share our struggles and unconsciously, I think our victory. I had no idea about the journey my family and I were about to go on. In my naivety, I underestimated the toll that cancer would take, not only on Mum’s life, but ours. She paid the ultimate price and we’re left to put our lives back together with a crucial piece missing. I always thought we’d have more time.

So, as mum’s breast cancer was diagnosed and her treatment progressed, I thought and planned and decided to start a blog. I decided to name it ‘A daughter called Hope’. I created an account and, occasionally, I wrote but never published anything. In my naivety, I believed this would be another thing that Mum would conquer. She was amazing, had achieved so much, and burned with a fire that seemed unquenchable. After all, her mother beat breast cancer twice. A double mastectomy, some chemo and radiation and she’d be just like Nan. It was simple. I was wrong. Breast cancer turned into pancreatic cancer and that one’s a killer. It gives no fucks, takes no prisoners and beats just about everyone.

The breast cancer chemo had been hard on mum. It affected her heart and they’d paused treatments while her body recovered. Hopefully enough that she could recommence the chemo. She needed the chemo. It was important she finish as the drugs were specifically targeted to her particular cancer and she didn’t have a good outlook without it. Then, we learn that she has pancreatic cancer and spots on her liver. More surgery follows, this time to see what can be done. The answer: not a lot. The doctors moved her bowel as the pancreatic mass was already blocking her stomach and stopping it from emptying. They couldn’t do much more. They closed her up and planned for more treatments. She made one of the bravest decisions I’ve seen: she opted to stop further treatment. She wasn’t up for more. The nausea, hair loss, peripheral neuropathy, radiation burns and the whole gamut of other side effects from the chemotherapy and radiation were too much. So we planned for palliative care and pain management. They gave her three months; she got six.

She wanted to be at home and she didn’t want to disrupt her daughter’s lives with her illness, so dad became her carer. The devotion and love that man showed still brings me to tears. When things got bad, I took some time off work and went home to help out. When things got worse, I called my sister and she flew home too. Within a week of my sister arriving, the fire that had sustained my mother for 60 years finally went out and she passed away in a palliative care ward of the local hospital. We spent most of that week just being together and loving each other the best we could.

We were with her the whole time and she made every decision about her care. The biggest was to stay in the home she loved with us trying to do what we could to ease her pain, or to go to a hospital where trained professionals could take care of her. Eventually she made the decision to go to the hospital. We stayed with her and did what we could; unable to fully relive the pain, unable to fix things but unwilling to leave her to fight (I can’t bring myself to say die) alone. That helplessness still haunts me.

Although this story doesn’t seem to have the message of hope that I had, so optimistically, decided to pursue two and a half years ago, I’ve found that hope is a very hard thing to kill. Through it all I hoped for many things; some of which I got, others I was denied. But in the end, hope always comes back: a little bit of dawn after the darkest of nights. So, even though things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, I’m still a daughter and damn it if I don’t still hope.