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In the same week in March last year, my healthy parents were told that my mother had stomach cancer and my father would need a heart bypass operation. They were on a different trajectory: my father had a quadruple heart bypass operation on 14th August and resumed his weekly rowing at Henley on 27th January.  My mother died on 19th August in the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice. This page is for her.

I am not naive about cancer having witnessed it up close. However, nothing could have prepared me for what my mother had to suffer or what we had to see by her side. Her cancer was aggressive by the time it was diagnosed but she fought it so bravely and with total optimism. I was lucky I spent time with her when she had the strength so we could talk about everything. And we did. She was admitted to the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice on 4th August as there was no more the hospital could do for her but she was too sick to be at home. She was planning what she was going to wear at Christmas. I knew she had days to live. 

And so it was that our family embarked on a rollercoaster chapter with the incredible staff at the Hospice helping us through each and every awful moment. I realised another nightmare situation was unfolding: that I was going to offer to run the London Marathon for the Hospice, to represent our family on the gratitude front, as 'thank you' just wasn't going to cut it. The most running I've ever done was for the bus in my heels so it was quite a thought. By some miracle my eldest son Hugo offered to run it with me, for his Grandmother, so I am truly blessed.

The hospice needs to raise £15,000 daily in order  to function, as only 20% of its costs are covered by the Government. We runners are asked what is our fundraising goal? The answer, surely, has to be 'as much as we can achieve'. Aiming to raise enough money to keep the hospice open for a single day to help another regular family finding themselves in a very irregular situation has to be a start. 

The stage is set, training is in full swing. Or should I say run? Both. My mother wanted a quote from TS Eliot at her Memorial but was too sick to be specific. The more I looked, the more inappropriate the quotes became until I found this: 

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” 

This was my mother. I have a feeling its genetic.

F & H

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