Читать книгу Siobhan's Miracle - They Told Us She Had Weeks to Live. Then the Most Amazing Miracle Happened - Ellen & Derek Jameson - Страница 13
ОглавлениеOscar Jameson knows what he misses most about his mummy. ‘I miss making her laugh,’ he says poignantly. ‘I always tried my jokes out on her and she always laughed.’
Even though he is only ten, Oscar knows what he wants to do when he grows up. ‘A stand-up comedian,’ he says without hesitation. This may come a surprise to people who know Oscar as he seems a shy young boy. ‘Around grown-ups I often don’t know what to say,’ he admits, ‘but with my friends I’m always talking and joking. It’s my favourite thing, making people laugh. Even some of the teachers have seen my stand-up comedy routine and they think it’s very funny.’
Oscar is happily settled in an excellent school in Belfast, to where the family moved three years before Siobhán’s illness returned. He is an able and well-liked pupil.
Warming to the theme of his future career, Oscar springs another surprise. ‘I model myself on Billy Connolly,’ he says. ‘I watch his videos and even steal some of his jokes, though I really prefer writing my own material.’
Oscar is proud that many people say he is like his mother. ‘We share lots of attitudes,’ he says, ‘especially about people. We never like anyone who thinks they are better than others – especially if it’s because they just have more money.’
In a memorial book at Siobhán’s funeral, Oscar wrote this tribute to his mother: ‘Mummy was nice because she always let everyone’s opion [sic] count. Oscar.’
‘There was one special way we were like each other,’ he says thoughtfully. A pause. ‘It’s an S word – its not “sympathetic” – it’s more like we understand people. Oh, I know, the word is “sensitive”. Mummy and I are sensitive.’
Apart from enjoying making her laugh, Oscar shared another great passion with his mother: football. The whole family would gather around the television to cheer their favourite teams, Manchester United – and Ireland.
‘We liked to watch and work out what the players were going to do,’ explains Oscar. ‘I think it’s an A word – something like “analyse”.’
Oscar is an enthusiastic player himself and the word is that he is very good. Asked if he would like to be a professional footballer, he answers with surprising maturity. ‘Sure, but so would most of the other boys – and some of the girls. You’ve got to be really, really good to be a professional. You need years of training and hard work – but that’s not to say I won’t try my best.’
People tend to fall in love with this tall, handsome, fair-haired boy – just like they did with his mother – but, like her, he is discriminating in his tastes. ‘Just because someone likes me doesn’t mean I like them,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘I like to watch how people behave and then decide if I want them to be my friend… My mum was the same. We would never be friends with someone who was unkind to other people.’
A member of the school council, Oscar is passionately against bullying. ‘We did have a boy in my school who was bullying some of the younger kids,’ he says. ‘He was the same age as me, but I’m a lot taller than him. One day in the playground I went up and told him that what he was doing was wrong. He said he would stop. I hope he does because we have to protect the younger ones. My mum taught me that.’
Oscar is certainly his mother’s son. Any parent would be proud to have him as a son. ‘I can still hear her voice in my head,’ he says, ‘and I talk to her – I think she’s gone to heaven.’
Constance Gilfedder, to whom Siobhán restored the Irish form of her own surname, would like her mum remembered by the kind of story she used to tell ‘when I was little’. Like the story of mischievous Suki:
‘Suki is a spider with six legs who lives in our back yard. He is married to a thrush called Amarylla. They have eight children: four thrush-sized spiders and four spider-sized thrushes. Suki likes going to different places by hiding on the roof of the car. He went to the beach, to the park, to school and lots of other places. Once, he went to the zoo and accidentally got lost. He ended up in a lion’s cage, where the lion tried to eat him. But before he could, it got a thorn stuck in its paw, so Suki pulled it out and in return the lion didn’t eat him. Then a little girl accidentally dropped an ice cream on him and he froze solid. Eventually a stray dog found him and licked him until he thawed out enough to move. Then the dog said its name was Jack, and Suki climbed on his back. Jack took Suki back to the car park, where he climbed on the roof of the car just in time and went home.’
SIOBHÁN’S STORY: ME AND MY CHILDREN
Mostly these days I like to write for my children. Constance won’t forget even if the stories I’ve made up for them over the years are never published. The characters we have made up will continue to influence their lives.
We have these two characters, Rosamond Almond and Suki Spider, who are part of our family mythology and I’m sure Peter and Constance will keep them alive for Oscar. Every family has these stories and just because they are not published does not diminish their importance – a story is important even if it is only one person who hears it.
Constance and I have learned a lot about each other through sharing our imagination and making things up together and mythologising our lives. We make up stories about the dogs, the house, the garden, family holidays, all the ordinary everyday things of our lives together.
We’ve also talked about my illness and the possibility that I might die. We told her about the things that were happening.
There were so many people visiting and phoning up. Rather than let Constance make something up, perhaps even worse than the reality, I talked to her and said that I might die. I told her that people who have cancer sometimes do die, but that even death is not the end of life. Like her grandmother, who died in 1998, she still will be able to talk to me when I’m up in heaven and visit my grave.
There is only one area in which I haven’t been honest. I have pretended to her that I’m not frightened of dying. She is not frightened of dying – she believes it is something we all welcome and embrace.
My mother lived with us for eighteen months before she died. Constance understands that now nanny is in heaven she doesn’t come back to visit and we can’t pop up to visit her, though we do go and put flowers on her grave and talk to her then.
Mum has been gone long enough now for Constance to be aware that death does indeed represent a kind of loss. And I think she expresses that most often by saying that if I die she wants to go with me – she doesn’t want to stay behind. I don’t know how she will cope if my illness gets worse.
She’s a sweet, caring child, a very good child. Not a day passes when she doesn’t say, ‘Let me kiss your scars, Mummy. Let me see if I can make it better.’ She arranges cushions for me and tells Oscar, ‘Don’t jump on Mummy, her back hurts.’ She is considerate to her father, Peter, and gives him extra time to get on with all the things he has to do while I am ill.
The hardest thing I find is when she’s showing a different side of her childish personality and being difficult and crying and whingeing. I have to make a conscious effort not to pull the sickness card and say, ‘Let Mummy rest.’ I endeavour not to take advantage of her sweet nature.
Oscar, I think, suffers a lot when I’m absent. He seems to know intuitively that I’m not well. He’s a sunny little boy and I can’t imagine how his little mind will adjust if one day he does not see me again. He’s very attached to his father and very attached to Constance. Though I know he will never be able to get over the death of his mother, in a way he will come to terms with it.
One of the reasons for choosing his guardians, Liane Jones and Jamie Buxton, is because Jamie lost both his parents in childhood and he will understand some of the issues that Oscar will need to face and hopefully be able to help him. At least he will have some experience to share with him that other people may not have been able to express.
We have also done some things in case I die that I never thought we would – like having a family portrait taken at Christmas in the studio. My parents and grandparents always had family portraits done in a studio.
I’ve also been trying to record, with varying degrees of success, a tape of me reading the two children a bedtime story so that they could listen to my voice, though I did say to Peter it could be more upsetting than comforting. He would have to be the judge of that should the time come when I’m not here.
The way I discipline the children has been governed by the uncertainty of my illness. Both Peter and I try not to reprimand them in any way that makes them feel they are not living up to our expectations of them.
We try to spell out how much we care for them and leave them with lots of positive affirmations of praise so that, should they lose me, then hopefully they will not be left with the thought that it’s some kind of punishment.
They are very happy children. Any difficulties or uncertainties they may have in their world are concerned with the environment outside the home, at school or with friends, not with any doubts about whether their parents love them.
