Bittersweet joy of the memoir my daughter left behind
Our daughter and only child rebecca Grace arrived ten months into our marriage in January 1974 when I was 21 and Tony 26. I remember looking over at her and thinking: ‘Ah. There you are’, the way you do when you have finally found something you had been searching for.
She grew into a tremendous chatterbox with a question constantly on her tongue. When she was 12, we bought a smallholding in the Black Mountains of Wales. Bec loved it, bringing friends to ride ponies, chase sheep and adventure with us.
Bec was very artistic, but struggled with reading. It wasn’t until university that she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Once help was in place, academically she took off, getting a first and then later a PhD at Oxford.
Once she had left home, we phoned regularly, visited often, went punting in Oxford, had picnics at the seaside and always spent birthdays and Christmas together. We were close, but she was building her own life, as were we.
Then, when she was 34 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She came back home so we could care for her. One of the first things we had to do was to go to the hairdresser to have her beautiful auburn shoulderlength hair cut off in preparation for chemotherapy. She was so brave, but it broke my heart.
Before the diagnosis Bec had written her first book, a biography of the writer of The Wizard Of Oz. On the day it was published in America, our lovely daughter was sitting in the chemo room, having bright red poison injected to save her.
As Bec wrote at the time: ‘(Mum) boiled our untreated spring water for me to drink the regulation two litres a day, kept an eye out for infection while I had no immune system, and, her greatest achievement, she hid her own pain from me, patiently getting through the long hours in hospital waiting rooms as her only child fought to stay alive.’
The only way I managed was because I have a loving family and big group of friends, always there for me, happy to hold me in their kitchens as I wept. Bec closed down during treatment. She separated from her partner, the brightest, kindest and funniest man, but for reasons beyond their control they could not look after each other.
SHEwould see nobody, saying she could not bear to feel the sadness in her friends. ‘ If I cannot cope with my own sadness, Mum, how can I possibly cope with theirs?’
We would watch nature programmes and episodes of Friends and Frasier, deliberately avoiding anything poignant or sad. She would listen to no radio, read no book and worst of all, she did not pick up her pen once. She had been a scribbler since she was 16, never without a pen and notebook.
It was a strange 18 months, alternating between horror, sadness and exhaustion, punctuated with times of such joy and closeness, of gentle walks with the dogs, long winding conversations, watching nature through the seasons, living quietly in the present. Tony and I went to each consultation, to each treatment, trying to support her and each other.
Finally, the treatment came to an end, and, having lost 4st, she began walking herself well in the mountains with friends. She discovered gliding — flying in engineless planes from a gliding club six miles from our home. She had always been afraid of flying, but decided that she had been so scared of dying that now she wanted to face down fear and find some freedom.
We were thrilled as we watched Bec transform from the pale wraithlike woman we had at home to a glowing person longing to get up in the morning, full of excitement.
Then came a wonderful day — she burst in through the door like a whirlwind and said: ‘Mum, I know what I want to say’ and she was off, bless her glorious short, spiky auburn hair. She had a plan — a book about her experiences; she called it Skybound.
She flew all season here in Wales, then followed her instructor Bo to New Zealand. Bec knew it was hard for us to see her go, and later wrote: ‘They have nursed me through lifethreatening illness and now they are trying to smile as they see me off to the other side of the world to fly in dangerous mountains with a group of unknown extreme free-flight pilots’.
We visited her and it was wonderful to see her so well and happy. She and Bo had become a couple, she was full of bounce.
Four months later she came home, found a house in our closest town and made it into a home. She wrote and wrote; Skybound was emerging.
She went to Nepal to fly with vultures, came home and sadly seven months later we discovered the cancer had returned in her abdomen. We were devastated.
She moved back home and over the next 14 months she put her all into staying alive. She did her best to make it easy for us, telling her doctors that she was only going through this for those she loved and for them she would not give up.
It was a privilege to be able to care for her so intimately. Our love for each other was immense and all three of us told each other constantly, hoping nothing bad could really happen to someone as loved as she was.
At night I would lie beside her and we would make up stories about journeys on magic carpets with the dogs, just as we had in her childhood. Friends would send messages that brought the smile to her face.
On Saturday, September 17 2016, aged 42, Bec died at home in our sitting room. She had told me: ‘Don’t worry, Mum, whatever happens it will be all right. All that really matters in the end is love.’
her leaving broke our hearts. We will never get over it and life will never be the same; no chuckles, no glaring looks, no madcap ideas, strange paintings of birdsong, pranks or magic tricks. We imagine her in a peaceful place where we bring flowers and sit and talk.
Losing a child is against what nature intends. It is terrible to realise some things cannot be fixed with a hug and a kiss.
BEC’Sspirit is in every square inch of the farm, I feel her everywhere, look up and see her in the sky, in the clouds, on the mountain she loved so much. I miss her dreadfully.
I have been fortunate, though, as Bec left me the manuscript of Skybound, written before her treatment started. reading her writing after she’d gone was a wonderful gift, and it was an effective distraction from the lack of her. It meant so much to her that it be published. On Thursday it will be.
I hope everyone who knew her will be able to hear her voice, and those who sadly never did will be able to imagine it. The world is the poorer for the loss of her, but Skybound means she will never be forgotten.
REBECCA LONCRAINE’S memoir, Skybound: a Journey in Flight (with an afterword by her mother trisha) is published by Picador, £16.99, on april 19.