In those twilight weeks of mummy's illness I remember her being a total ogre. It was because of the anger over her getting cancer. So I just sat and listened while she ranted and raved, cussed and vented her anger at me and threw things, and I just took all the cp until she blew herself out, broke down and wept. And then I wept with her.  

Mummy puked up over me, it was the chemo that caused it you see, she shouted, abused me with vile words, screamed and pummelled her fists on me when I so much as tried to comfort her; it's what cancer can do to its sufferers; you learn to live with it. And I took it all, because mummy was the only one I got. "You are stuck with me Mummy" is what I sometimes said. "And I am stuck with you. But I am f*d if you're gonna throw me away cos I'll stay the course with you whatever and however you treat me!" and then the tears came, and you can't stop them cos she's crying, too, and then we're hugging each other, our tears mingling, but inside I was shattered cos mummy, even though all her beautiful hair had fallen out she looked younger than me. And that is the very hardest part. The hardest to live with even now, nine months on.  

I picked her up off the toilet floor. I cleaned her up, washed her bottom, washed her everywhere. I took on all the abuse of a woman enraged because she was dying needlessly, and I took it all cos she was the only person in my whole life at the time, and I sat and listened to her as she abused my name and threw things at me cos if it made her feel better to abuse me like that, then she was on the way to help fight the cancer. But those days felt endless and often a week passed until she came round and said sorry. And cried in my arms like a little girl all lost, feeling frightened of dying because when you're dying and the days squash up and you find yourself in that conundrum of not quite knowing which day one is on. And you know what? I let mummy sob out her heart cause when she's gone, all I'd have are 4 walls to cry against.  

I'd have given my entire belongings to have had one moment in time with mummy again. And that is a princely sum which carries a heavy burden because I've seen what wealth can do to a person. But all the screaming abuse, the punches the vile names she dealt me with were tempered with tears of laughter, tears of joy and my listening to her tell me she loved me more than life itself.  

Of course, I've contemplated suicide, go to be with her. But that is taking the easy way out, isn't it? You can be the toughest person in the world but still contemplate doing away with yourself. I mean, V who lived with us she took a load of meds because she couldn't cope with her bipolar, but look what her action did to her younger sister, and my family. Suicide leaves a whacking great hole - no - it's like a mine shaft that goes on down forever and ever, because that is the feeling you're left with, an unspeakable emptiness; one of being left behind to find a way though the mire of life. And try and find a way of telling V's little George why his mummy went away, try finding comforting words that a little Downs Syndrome boy can understand without suffering the weight of it all. For little George is in my care and that of my partner Lyra: one good reason to carry on, I think.  

Sometimes though, we just crumple up which is what happened to me when I was driving one day but swerved to a halt suddenly because the shaking began, the tears wouldn't stop falling because inside I was breaking apart. Thank goodness Lyra found me even though I was soaked through from walking in the rain while out of my head, wanting to find mummy again cos I was in denial.  

I made alcohol my prop to cope with the desert that lay in my heart. Paid for it, though when Lyra found me legless, out of my head on the floor in an empty house. But she gotten me to A&E and then I went through the ultimate humility of lying naked on a cold steel gurney while having my stomach pumped out by nurses who had not one shred of empathy, let alone understanding. Yes, my friend, I paid for alcohol dependency while continuing to fight to stay dry: eighteen years old, bereft of Greece that was my country, and even more bereft of the many precious belongings that were damaged in the move here to England; reflections of pain that never seems to go away.