The day my mum Maggie told me she had cancer, alongside the heart condition which I already knew about and which we ultimately lost her to, was initially just like any other Sunday.
It was February 2005 and I had just turned 27. I was an editorial assistant at a magazine and had driven back from London to Mum’s Warwickshire cottage for one of her wonderful roasts (which I still dream about, all these years later).
Afterwards, as she was curled up by the fire, cup of tea in hand, she calmly and quietly said that she had been diagnosed with bowel cancer nine months earlier.
I rushed over to hug her, while she did her best to reassure me, saying it had been caught early and should be treatable.
The recent headlines about Kylie Minogue’s secret cancer battle, which the pop star revealed in her Netflix documentary, brought back many painful memories of Mum’s private and heartbreaking cancer fight.
Kylie confessed she had a second cancer diagnosis in 2021, after being successfully treated for breast cancer in 2005 at the age of 36. ‘I don’t feel obliged to tell the world and actually, I just couldn’t at the time, because I was just a shell of a person,’ she said.
I wonder if that’s how my poor mum felt. I will never know because she bravely chose to shield me from the severity of her illness – but I wish she hadn’t.
Like Kylie, Mum chose to keep her cancer a secret. She didn’t reveal it until just under two months before she died.
Georgina and her mother Maggie… she bravely chose to shield me from the severity of her illness – but I wish she hadn’t, writes Georgina
Georgina with her mum as a child… I talk openly with my children about life, death and everything in between in a way Mum didn’t, she says
Georgina now… not being with Mum at the end is one of my biggest regrets, she writes
Mum, a much-loved secondary school teacher, had told only my stepfather, a GP, who she married in my early teens. He took her to all her appointments and oversaw everything, which made me feel almost redundant.
Now that I’m a mother of three children aged 12, 14 and 17, I understand the maternal instinct to protect your child. However, Mum’s decision also meant I was unable to comfort her in the way I would dearly have loved to, like taking her to appointments, holding her hand and rubbing her back the way she used to do with me when I was a child. I wish she had confided in me earlier and that I’d been able to provide the love and support of a daughter which she so deserved.
Mum died in the spring of 2005, aged 57, a year younger than Kylie is today.
I was in my mid-20s when I was losing her, and at the time I was busy finding a flat in London with my now husband and starting my journalism career. If Mum had said that she needed me, I would have dropped everything for her.
When I asked why she hadn’t told me until that fateful Sunday, she replied: ‘The best thing you can do, darling, is doing what you’re already doing. Seeing you enjoying your life is the greatest gift you can give me.’
Mum’s cancer would have probably have been treatable, if not for the complication of her heart condition. Born with a heart murmur, she managed it pretty well until her mid-50s, when she began experiencing frequent palpitations and breathlessness.
She had a heart valve operation, which initially seemed to go well, but she deteriorated suddenly and died in hospital a few days after surgery.
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Mum wrote me a letter, just before that operation. ‘Don’t worry, darling, the demands will begin when I get home! Remember Auntie Bett’s ankle,’ she wrote in her self-deprecating, humorous way, remembering when I had fainted once at the sight of my aunt’s sprained ankle.
Not being with Mum at the end is one of my biggest regrets. Unfortunately, no one had told me how serious her condition was when I had called to see how she was doing, so I decided to stay in London and visit her the following weekend.
The shock and grief were overwhelming, I developed shingles, which my GP said was stress-related. But I did what Mum wanted me to do. I carried on. I returned to work after two weeks’ compassionate leave and getting the shingles all clear.
While I have learned to accept Mum’s decision to keep things private, I know how devastating it is to be kept in the dark, something I know I would never do. I talk openly with my children about life, death and everything in between in a way Mum didn’t.
I often talk to them about Granny Maggie and how much she would have loved them. I tell them about her raucous laugh, her love of Jane Austen and Jilly Cooper, and how she would light up a room when she walked in. I tell them about the hundreds of letters and cards we received from her former pupils after she died.
Luckily, I’ve enjoyed good health so far, in my 48 years, so I can’t imagine what it feels like to keep your cancer a secret. My beautiful much-missed Mum, just like Kylie, must have felt like ‘a shell of a person’.
Letting loved ones in must be a tough decision to make, but choosing not to may leave a lifetime of sadness and loss after they have gone.
