‘Although you’ll annoy each other at times, you’ll miss them when they’re not here’
As families across Scotland prepare to mark Mother’s Day on Sunday, Matt Hopwood of storytelling project A Human Love Story shares conversations of hope, strength, loss, and joy from his latest book
My mother was in the factories. She was a welder and, in the war, she was a foreman of the factory. She was a real bundle of energy. Five foot nothing and a bundle of energy. We used to go shopping together, and we spent a lot of time together. I do miss her. She was always so wise and said the right thing and gave the right advice because she was so level-headed. You miss that advice, even if it’s on the end of the phone. She always said the right thing, and I’m terrible at making decisions. I can never make my mind up about anything whereas she could, straight away.
I think when you lose your mother you lose part of yourself, really. And yet, in another way, you become stronger. You feel stronger because you have all of that in the background that you learned from her. I can’t understand people who don’t see their mothers, can’t get on with their mothers. I think it’s sad that they don’t, because you can learn so much. Treasure your mother while you’ve got
your mother, really. I think that’s the best thing to do. Although you’ll annoy each other at times, you’ll miss them when they’re not here.
II.
S: My eldest son died about four years ago. It’s the anniversary tomorrow. When the notice came through, Eddy was the one who got told to go to the police station to get some news, because my son was in America at the time. And Eddy had to come back and tell me that he had died, and I’d never seen him cry like that. From that moment and over the next few weeks and months, I didn’t eat very much and I wasn’t sleeping very well. He completely took over functioning in every sense, getting us to America and dealing with everything that needed doing, even though he was grieving. He looked after me and he cared for me and I’d never felt so vulnerable or as needy before. Needing someone in such a raw way and for him to be there and do it without any complaint.
As the first couple of years passed, when I found it wasn’t just about grieving, it was about dealing with not having joy in myself, and how to function for the rest of my life and me feeling quite low, he just quietly got on and looked after me but didn’t make a big deal of it and didn’t expect anything in return. I think, Eddy, that’s when I realised how much I love you and how much you love me, and that there could be a vulnerability in loving each other, rather than coming at it both with strength. And that’s been a huge learning curve for me, to have such implicit trust, and it’s made me love you even more. E: For me, you were this kind of crumpled person. At the police station they came out and told me and I completely broke down. All I could think of was you and I thought, ‘This is going to destroy her.’ I remember saying to the policeman, ‘God, why did it have to be Patrick, of all the people in the world?’ I said, ‘I’d put myself in his place a hundred times.’ I remember saying all this to the coppers and they must have thought I was mad. But I remember thinking, ‘How is she ever going to get over this? How are we ever going to move forward from this point? It’s just a complete disaster.’ I suppose that is my love for you, because it was probably two, three years of you really struggling but I never thought, ‘I can’t be with her any more’, I just thought, ‘Well, this is where we’re at and I’m just going to be with you. Do what I can and just be there for you.’
S: I think I never imagined I could feel love like that for someone who wasn’t my child. I panicked a few times about whether you could still love me. The need for you to love me and be there unconditionally was so strong. I couldn’t have functioned without it. And I think particularly with Patrick’s death. He was my son but I had him when I was very young. I was 17 and I was a single mother. So all my adult life, I’d been with Patrick – he was my one constant. From being a very silly, giddy little teenage girl doing too many drugs and drinking too much to suddenly realising and understanding a purpose in the world, which was love for this child. And then loss, but maybe then discovering my love for you. I mean, I knew it was there, without a shadow of a doubt, but it deepened or solidified from that implicit trust and faith in you.
E: ’Cause I didn’t know you thought that really.
S: Didn’t you?
“Since he’s been born, he’s my little love affair in a funny little way”
E: Not like you’ve just said it. We just managed to do it, didn’t we really?
III.
There’s an assumption that loving your children is easy, the nurturing mothering thing comes naturally. There is also the assumption that, because all mothers give birth, that somehow childbirth is divine. I don’t know! It’s a traumatic thing. Even when it goes completely smoothly, it’s so traumatic. And yet, it’s just held up as this spiritual amazingness. I mean, I’ve never given birth naturally, but the processes I went through were really traumatic. Really traumatic! And pretty much every single mother has either been cut open or ripped open. It’s not easy just because we all do it. But I felt like, before I had my kids, no one spoke about that. No one spoke about it.
I felt guilty for years for having caesareans, and I felt like I had missed out on this amazing experience. I planned a completely natural water birth, no pain relief. What other thing do we go through in life where we say, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to suffer this pain, I’m going to feel it because it’s divine.’ Is it only divine because it’s happening to women? I don’t know. Is it divine to feel pain, or is there a way of giving birth and having the greatness of that without suffering? And then, if it’s a woman suffering, do we almost mythologise that and make it divine when actually it’s just suffering and women are still dying in childbirth? For me, it’s not taking it for what it truly is. Making it a divine experience silences conversation and shuts things down. Because if it is this amazing divine experience, you can’t complain!
IV.
The giving birth is something indescribable. It’s so difficult to put that into words. And then to hold this precious little thing that I had been creating and growing and working towards for nine months – to finally meet him and hold him. The flood of love is just indescribable. And then our first night in hospital when it’s just the two of us lying there. I barely slept, just wanting to look at him and sneak him into the bed and hold him.
And then, since he’s been born, he’s my little love affair in a funny little way. Maybe because of the particular energy coming out of him and the way we’re connecting. I want him to always feel safe, safe with me. My childhood was quite challenging, with a rocky home life where the environment wasn’t always safe, and I was scared at times and had too much responsibility too soon. I don’t want him to have any fear of me whatsoever. I want him to always feel safe and know that he can come to me with absolutely anything and feel confident in that.