Jilly: 1952-2009

Jilly

Seeing your name there – the big sweeping J – reminds me how much your name was a part of you. Not in the obvious way that we all are and all own our names. “Jilly” was (and is and always will be) so unique to you. It can only ever mean my larger-than-life, thoughtful, clever, funny aunt who grabbed life by the lapels and shook all she could out of it. You signed it so distinctively and I desperately wanted to be called “Jilly”. Family folklore has it that when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always “a Jilly!”. I admired you so much. Loved you so much. You taught me to sign my name my own special way – a big “B” for “Bec” and no “k” at the end. It wasn't as good as yours but it has stuck with me and I was evermore Bec with no k after you gave me my way of being.

My earliest memories are my fondest of you and they choke me as I write them now. Who knew there'd be no time left to tell you? I'm so sorry I didn't tell you every little thing that mattered to me about you.

I remember Sundays at Gran's – long hot summer lunchtimes and afternoons – with Dave as bored as me. Restless with that childish, irritating energy of children, Gran and Mum used to egg us on to “Go and jump on Jilly!” We used to wait, practically hopping from foot to foot, til it was 11 o'clock and it was deemed you'd had a long enough lie-in and recovered from whatever exciting exploits you'd been up to the night before. We used to bomb upstairs and leap on you and literally pound you with our jumping bodies – so thrilled to see you and wake you and be with you. You – bleary eyes without your contacts – were never cross, never annoyed, never bored by us.

You fascinated me when I was a girl. You seemed so beautiful and glamorous and daring and sophisticated with such a thrilling life filled with friends galore whose names echoed through the years and littered your conversations: Sarah and Josephine and Eric and Arthur – next door's huge, long haired lads. They always seemed to be there in Gran's back garden – eager as you to play wheelbarrows and handstands with me and Dave. Sunny, carefree days.

You seemed to have an inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm for uskids – never too tired or too adult to pay attention to us. You were a very special person for an insecure, sad girl to have in her corner. I owe you so much.

Dave and I used to spend hours on our hands and knees, searching for pretty and interesting stones in the front drive at Gran's. We'd be ushered snappily out there by the grown-ups and we invented our own ways of passing the hours. Every so often, we'd find a real treasure of a stone and dash in to show off our precious find – running straight to you. You always seemed genuinely interested in all our efforts and accomplishments. I never detected fakery or patronising from you. The patient teacher in you was eager to exclaim and admire. You made me feel so important and worthwhile. Thank God for you – thank God that little girl had you.

My mind jumps backwards and forwards – random images and memories of things you taught me. Scotland Bridge Road means pastry to me – you teaching me how to make it from scratch. Cold hands make good pastry. It seemed so amazing that you'd have the time and inclination to teach me. I felt so important in your eyes. Worthy and clever. I am so grateful for that. I am sad to think how much I needed that. What on earth would I have done without you – what would have become of me?

I first learned about comfrey from you in that house of yours. I have never been able to hear the word and not think automatically of you. Your stand-by for all manner of ailments. You tried to sell me on that stuff for years.

Me at 5 and 7 and 10 – making things with paper at Gran's dining room table. Painstakingly sewing the spines into flimsy little books you'd shown us how to make. You made me feel proud of myself. I could always tell you meant it when you congratulated my attempts.

As I write all this down, my fingers can't keep pace with the words and images that bombard me. I remember, randomly:

• Your contact lenses. Green or blue, depending on your mood and your clothes. I wanted some so desperately. To be like you. Your eyes pale blue without their magic, then transformed so deep and bright with them in. I used to squirm away watching you put them in but wouldn't have missed the chance to be near you, with you.

• The Beatles – scrapbooks and records stashed safely in your bedroom cupboard – treasures we were allowed to share and revere with you.

• Your nose – so you. Just you. You were so confident, proud of who you were, of your heritage.

• The Rock Island Line and The Flint Gate pub in Weybridge and the cafe with ice cream that you mixed up smooth for us.

• Husbands. The less said, the better. How I despised that second one.

• How brown you'd go in the sun.

• Your hair. Frizzy a lot of the time.

• Your middle name. Poirrette. It seemed utterly exotic to me. And that spelling rhyme – Two Rs, two Es, two Ts, an I, an O and a P. Or something like that, anyway.

• Black coffee. No sugar. Dash of cold water. Cup after cup. You made yourself two mugs in the morning – one with a dash of cold to drink straight away and one without to stay hot for longer.

• Your absolute adoration of Sam.

• Givenchy perfume. Distinctively you.

• Christmas and birthday presents of face packs and hair conditioner. Tiny sample sized packages. You had no money and yet you never forgot. And those inexpensive gifts were always amongst my favourites when I was in my teens. You knew what girls needed. I loved those gifts. You put in such care.

• Pitta bread pizzas. Only bread and tomato purée and cheese, but like nothing I was fed at home. For Sam really but you always made me one too.

• Bitten nails.

• Your dodgy neck and sleeping on no pillows and a special doctor in London.

• Smoking. Cigarettes always smoked while on the phone. 20 Rothmans and that particular blue ashtray with the grids to hold and extinguish butts. You stressed to me the importance of leaving a long butt.

• Tight jeans and long floaty skirts and ridiculously high heels and elasticated tops.

• Saving 20 pences for Sam.

• Your platinum rings. I'd never really heard of something so expensive. I remember feeling in awe of you for having such fine jewellery.

• Dino. Big, silly dog who ran round and round your garden while you smiled on indulgently. And how you made him a special stand for his food bowl so he wouldn't have to stretch too far down to eat. I'd never known anyone care for an animal like that.

• My room in your house in New Haw. You gave me a cassette player and a couple of tapes and I nearly wore out Mr Tambourine Man.

• The miniature telly in your dining room.

• How much you loved my Mum – Little Romey – such a connection between you.

• Your peculiar, modern sofa – all squashy and hard to get out of – like your bean bags.

• Barefoot and brown in Libya with us – shocking the natives with your sunbathing.

• Always smiling and laughing and dimples. Always making me feel cherished and important and taken care of.

• Your watch. I saw it in a photograph on Facebook the other day and it made me feel so wistful. I think it was one where you had to move your wrist to make it work. Everything about you was so other-worldly to me in my childish, humdrum, ordinary innocence.

I miss you. I miss knowing you exist. I took that knowledge for granted.

I miss the certainty, the careless understanding, of “Jilly” in the world.

I loved and respected you so much.

I'm scared I'll forget what your voice sounded like.

Every time I close my eyes or let my mind wander or stop doing and just be, there you are. Your smile and the sheer energy of you.

I wish so bleakly that I had told you all this when I had the chance. Now I write it down (and stop to cry my selfish tears) and I send its essence out into the ether, in the hopes you'll somehow know it.

I hope this is enough. That the memories from my youth honour you somehow.

Bec.

Jilly Donaldson: 1952 - 2009

Isolated Moments of Wonder

It been a month or so of change and I can hardly keep up with it.

It’s making you shift and reassess and battle new demons and it’s making me let go a little – relax my grip on your life. What has taken the place of my mothering madness is a floating directionless vacuity. I feel rudderless and unsure. At least the relentless days and nights of food and fear and obsessive control and habit after pattern after routine were familiar – known to me in all their rancid glory and hated for all their restrictive power.

You have, they tell us at the clinic, made faster, better, more remarkable progress than any anorexic they have known. I hear the astonishment every week when I tell them that you haven’t cheated, have stuck to your directed food intake, haven’t exercised, have cried and talked and healed in appropriate measure.

They expect the worst from you and every week nowadays, you continue to elicit murmured – almost disbelieving – congratulations.

Where has the hysteria gone? We have learned to live alongside anorexia – we have grown accustomed to its face. We talk together through its tricks and wrestle with its confounded menaces like old hands now. How vile that we should be almost at ease with it. No smugness! No settling for this as if it were the best we can hope for! I want more for you. A rich, full, busy life - thrilling and safe in equal measure. You deserve all the Universe has to offer. My sweet little love, my precious, most adored child. All that there is should be yours as reward for and recognition of your existence. My heart pulls with love and admiration: the sheer force of your will and the effort you have put into this. We are on the cusp of something new. We are doing this. I want to grin with relief but am too mindful of complacency. Not just yet...

Here is a list of changes for me to revel in:

1. You ate a Skittle. On the bus, on a school trip. I wonder if you factored in the calories and the sugar. I think it was one of Robbie's. I picture you reaching for it and shaking inside. One tiny bright sweet popped into your mouth. Oh, the casualness of that word. I bet there was no such thing as 'popping'. I bet there was trepidation and screwing up your courage and that desperate longing to be normal - to take a sweet and eat it as easily as anything. And it will have looked like a big nothing to anyone watching but we both cried when you told me. The miraculousness of it. You incredible girl. This is the slippery slope now. The spinning into wellness. It's got you and it's carrying you along and me with it and we're on our way.

2. You peeped round my door one day and said you'd like to try having Christmas lunch with me and Dad and Robyn. Not your food, simply eaten at the same time as us. But actual different-to-your rigidly-usual food. I tried so hard to not punch the air. I wanted you to see my delight but not my overwhelming relief. Or my tears. I actually wanted to yell with surprise and happiness. I think I managed to convey my pleasure without completely alienating you...

On the day, you supervised the preparation of the roast potatoes - making sure no magic extra oil or poisonous calories were slipped in secretly. And you served yourself alongside the rest of us and you ate it. With us all there. And you didn't take ages or do anything outwardly anorexic. You just ATE YOUR FOOD. The significance of this is really quite enormous. I'm not conveying it well here but it was everything I'd ever hoped for. Your tiny portion - carefully quantified - of Christmas lunch. Eaten. Deliberately consuming different food at your own instigation! Halleluia.

3. You announced you'd like to try having your lunchtime sandwich at college instead of me collecting you, bringing you home to eat it and then delivering you back. This means you feel brave enough to eat in front of your friends. I am so proud. I wondered if this day would come. A part of me was content with the prospect of it not. When the first day is done, I will want to pry your mind with questions and have my worries soothed by your nonchalance. I must not badger you. Must not hold you to me and weep into your hair when you tell me it was fine.

4. You offered me a cup of tea tonight which is not that unusual but it was as we were going up to bed to watch DVDs and you don't generally offer me one at that time. The minutiae of our times together are unvarying and any slight alteration makes my Mother Of An Anorexic radar go blip. I am very glad I said yes. You carried up your day's flotsam and then went back down for the tea. When I turned to take the mug from you, I saw another in your other hand. I thought "Oh. Grace is having... " and then stopped. A what? A mug of air? Grace doesn't drink unbidden anymore. She sticks to her scheduled fluid intake and never deviates. I pester her to drink. I mention how she doesn't. I slip it in alongside my other vexed whinings. And you smiled at me and said "Guess what I'm having?" and I looked and I crowed! A cup of tea. Not black tea either but with a dash of milk. My GOD. What is happening here? What has become of my unyielding, inflexible poorly girl? I couldn't stop the "Yes!" Nor the cheek-aching grin. We had a lovely cup of tea together, as normal as you like. I wanted to ask you what made you decide, how did it taste, were you scared, had you been thinking about it and planning it for ages, was it horrible, did you like it, are you amazed at your brilliance? I didn't, though. I drank my tea and kept my eyes off yours and my speculations to myself.

5. Your period started. For the first time in nine months. You were jubillant and so was I. That we could discuss the finer details of something so personal and ordinarily taboo is testament to how this has robbed us of our boundaries and modesty. Illness is no respector of privacy. Your body is creaking back into life and your innards are churning with hesitant vigour. Hooray for that damnable thing revisiting.

You were swept along by fantasies of release and freedom - as if this signified the end of your illness and a return to eating what you want, when you want. But this is just the first step and the realisation hit you cruelly. You must stick to the regime a while longer, must continue to gain weight and then stabilise and stay at a healthy weight for a considerable, unspecified length of time before you are unburdened. The agonising slowness of recovery is infuriating to you and it made you cry when they told you you'd still need your ovaries scanning to make sure you really were getting better. You had blindly expected liberty. It's so hard for you to see how far you've come. Each forward step is reached only after weeks and months of horrendous effort. When you reach the milestones, there's only ever more ahead.

We are living a life of semi-absolution. It is frightening to have it all swimming untethered and unfamiliar in front of us. I want to surrender to it.

Crying

I have cried so hard this morning. With something I can't name. I think it's a mixture of fear and relief. My eyes ache now like they used to in May and June and July.

You weigh 42.8 kilos - the most since the getting better began. I looked at the readout on the scales at the clinic yesterday and felt a small jolt of happiness. But I've seen the changes in you over the last couple of weeks and I know you're getting better - I don't cling so desperately to the numbers on the scales any more - don't look to them for reassurance and hope or for confirmation of my hateful fears. So I didn't feel my stomach flipping or that swaying feeling of deliverance.

It was almost as if I expected it. Your eating is stable. Your rage is contained. Your madness is managed. So you follow the expected course of recovery as you have done every step of the way. But now I feel limp with - I don't know what. I want to call it relief but it feels too empty and dark for that. It's as if all these months, a huge part of me has been on hold.

And now I am disintegrating - because I can. It won't kill you. It won't take something essential from you: you are healing yourself slowly and don't need my hawkeyed love and support now. I can fall apart. I can sink into my disintegration and the fallout won't be catastrophic. My hands are off the wheel now and we're not going to crash. I worry I might though - all on my own. I look in the mirror and realise I have stopped caring about what I look like - the lines and dark circles and the grey hairs that have grown with such alacrity this half a year are just there now - forever. They are unremarkable to me and that in itself is indicative of how deep I am in the this hollow place. I'm all a bit fragmented and loose in my soul and don't know how to put myself back together. Sighing and crying won't do it.

I feel so sorry for us. So sad and wretched that we had to go through this. It breaks my heart for us. I want my mother to hold me and comfort me and help me and tell me it's ok. But she has never done that for me - has never seemed able to reach out to me like that and nurture me. I've always managed without her. But right now I could so do with her telling me how wonderful and strong and brave I have been - that I have helped Grace and that I have been a good mother. She doesn't seem to have the wherewithal for that. But I am all Mothered out and need one for myself. I feel sad for me. I am so weary. Tired to my bones and as if my heart has been shattered. I want to leave this all behind now.

But I'm too scared to succumb. You might need me again. So today's self-indulgence will have to be just that - for today. A small peeping out of the real, broken me.

Is this my life now?

Anger

Anger has always been such a powerful emotion in my life.
My own anger but more so, the anger of people I love.
It's always meant devastation, fear and being out of control.

My father's anger terrified me. It was fury. It was rage. It was catastrophic. It was drunken spittle flying and massive, calloused square hands hurting a little girl. It meant pain and humiliation and violence and a feeling of complete worthlessness and terror. He frightened and enraged me so completely and the forever thing of all this is that now, as a grown woman, I see anger brewing and I am reduced: 5, 9, 14 years old again. I am unable to cope and am lost to the fear. It is cataclysmic in its power.

My own anger was medicated into a tight, black hole for years - squashed down by the strong, flat palm of alcohol and released in short crazy unbelievable bursts, leaving me weak with remorse. Now, I have a better grasp on it - can let it fly a little bit and not dread the repercussions. Those few words encompass years - decades - of therapy and effort and soul searching. It's too much for me to go into more detail. And anyway, this is about you, my little love.

Your anger is another thing altogether.

It is unknown to me. A brand-new thing, amongst all the bloody awful brand-new things this year of hell has brought us.

When you were a baby, you had plenty of anger. Crying almost solidly until you could speak. Trying days. Years ago. As a toddler, you had not one single tantrum. I would do anything to avoid you having to feel angry, frustrated, that vile churning inside. I would stop and attend to you if I saw it coming - divert you and distract you - take your feelings for myself - swallow them down and forbid you them. I shielded you from what existed inside you and forced you to suppress it or ignore it. But I never let you learn how to manage your own natural, real, normal anger. I thought I was doing it for you, protecting you and being a good mother when in fact I was neglecting your emotional development. In my desperation to save you from the horror of anger, I stole something too.

But was it just for you? Maybe I was protecting myself too. Bad enough having to witness my father. I couldn't bear to see that emotion on your face and in your body. It frightened me. But it means that now I have no frame of reference - can't reassure me/us with remembering past rages and recoveries.

When (in your recovery from anorexia) you felt safe enough with me (as the mother of an anorexic) - safe in the knowledge that I wasn't going to shout or cry or fall apart or die from it - you began to show some of your rage and fear. The first time, it drew me up so sharply I almost fell over, never to get up again. You shook and yelled and panicked - raspy, catchy breaths and bobbing shoulders, red face wild eyes garbled voice. I thought you were going to die of it. Literally fall over dead. I felt hysterical inside. I expect you did too. If it wasn't so tragic, I'd be smiling as I type that. Oh darling, what a pair.

I have variously responded to your anger with crossness, shouting, fear, wild eyes, pounding heart, walking-away legs, blank eyes - struggling to stay alive in the face of such a terrible thing. We have talked ourselves blue over this and I know you know me almost as well as I know myself and you are certain in the knowledge that my response is not about you. It is about me. It is my legacy. But it is lousy mothering. It is a part of the sickness he infected me with and that it has carried down the generations into you is something that incenses me.

I have always tried to fix you, to protect you.
I was raised to know the world as a terrifying place - filled with unpredictably awful things happening to the people I loved and being utterly powerless. How pointless all my effort has been. The bad thing happened anyway.

How ridiculous that I'd think I could alleviate your suffering. I can barely manage my own.
You will fix you. I am just along for the ride.

Thin Girls

I see thin girls everywhere. It's like when you get a new car and suddenly, that sort of car is everywhere. I didn't realise how many people owned a blue Peugeot and I didn't realise how many terribly thin, sick girls there are out there.

I would have stared and mocked before - thought mean things about stupid girls and diets and willpower and how unattractive, weird, sheep-like, selfish, blind. Now I pass a thin girl and I want to hold her in my arms and rock her. (I want to find her mother and hold her.)

A part of me wants to get angry at her, though - yell how cruel she's being and just bloody well stop it. Maybe it'd work with a stranger. I know it would have been futile with you. It would have shamed you and there is already sufficient shame in your mind to last you forever.

Now, instead of seeing something unknown and alien and strange, I see something that lives my life alongside me every day and inhabits my every thought.

I know you, anorexic girls. I know you. I know your fear and your anger and your complete bewilderment. I see my daughter in you all and it's like a kick in the stomach.

Prozac

My darling, you've taken up your legacy and been forced to succumb to antidepressants. You, your mother, your grandmother, aunt and uncle. A month down the road of sorting out your serotonin. Oh, for different genes.

In a way, I've wanted them for you since the beginning - I know their power and how they can return a life. The light went out and no matter how much I loved you and looked after you, there was no igniting it. It was tearing at my heart, seeing the depression in your bearing and your being and yet not being able to persuade anyone that you needed medicating out of it - that your own resources and mine were never going to be enough.

When you've lived alongside a thing all your life, you recognise it quickly. Eventually, the sleeplessness was showing in your serious, sad eyes and in your monotone voice and your exhausted little body. Such weariness. It made me ache to see. And to hear you tell me over and again, every morning as you peered round my door, that you'd woken twice, three times and stayed awake, staring up and alone and frightened and with your mind whirring and playing with you. There were only so many times I could say "My darling, my poor darling child - I feel for you" and then send you off to college, dragging your exhaustion behind you.

So you take 20mgs a day and it has returned you to me. I have my girl back. I told Monica that when we saw her last and it made you cry. I could see you crying invisibly, tearlessley, silently as we sat and made polite conversation with her about trivial things. I knew something had upset you but wasn't sure what. You were terse and perfunctory with her rambling, idiotic, forgetful questions and I wanted to hold my hand up to her face and say "Shut up a minute - I need to speak to Grace - there's something wrong with her - can't you see!". It wasn't until we got out of the door after the hour and you fell against me and wrapped your arms round my neck and sort of moaned "Oh Mum - I feel overwhelmed". It's been a struggle, getting you to realise quite how ill you've been, all these months. You seemed to come to an understanding right there and then. The difference in the Prozac-free you and the now-you is plain for you to see. You're desperate to never have that version of yourself back. It's only with hindsight that it all becomes clear. I think that clarity is a bit horrifying for you.

We have both endured such darkness. Losing such a huge part of you to this sickness and watching you disappear right in front of my eyes - bodily and mentally, thin and characterless and devoid of substance, your head self merging with your physical self (the one mimicing the other) - has felt like a slow death.

I know you see the changes in yourself. To me, they are a joyous miracle. I celebrate you with all my heart - my talkative, silly, light, friendly, sarcastic, arsey, funny, loving child is here again. She had been smothered and now she is breaking free.

I never thought these feelings, these times, these days of boredom and habit and everything being ok - never thought they'd be given back. I'd accustomed myself to a new reality and with all the effort I could muster, I'd made myself grateful and accepting of the sadness and the change and the worry and the fear. As long as I had you, I could cope. And now here I am - (those horrible miseries tucked away and murmuring quietly, just so I never forget or take anything for granted) - with my most beloved daughter sitting next to me and I am not wracked with terrifying, persisitent premonitions and stomach-clawing apprehension.

We're getting there.

The Maths

Sometimes - for little minutes - I get this soaring feeling of hope. An imprecise knowledge that your life will be returned to you (and in turn, mine to me) in all it's simple glory and all will be well. And then I remember that it took you three quarters of an hour to choose how to incorporate into your day the requisite - instructed - extra 200 calories issued in today's clinic appointment. Dillying and hesitating, delaying and vacillating - the cake and biscuit counter in Sainsbury's a sea of foulness before your poor eyes.

Such worry and fear in your bearing as you move from cakes to breads to biscuits to cakes and over and over again - picking up packet after packet and then back to the first, seemingly willing the fat content to have each time miraculously gone down and the calorie content to be the exact right number - trying to do the right thing, do as you've been told, battling against the voice and trying to get well. I know you don't want to eat at all but you told me today how frightened you are of becoming so ill again, reverting to that terrified girl who battled to starve herself successfully. So you try and you fight it and you do as you're told. But it very nearly breaks you. To pick up the slack and to give you what paltry reserves of courage I can spare for you to take, leaves me barely able to see.

We get home and I fall into my bed while the sun shines outside and children laugh in the gardens over the way. The nothingness of my room is like heaven. All I have to do is be. And yet all I can do is think of you downstairs - actually being the one doing the living through every second of all the terrible things I imagine. I think of your next meal and your pain and your struggle and your worry and your sadness. And I could punch myself with the guilt and disgust.

Point four of a kilo lost this week. All those stairs at college - corridors strode down and classrooms crossed at speed to keep up with timetables and friends. But with each step, the burning of energy and the maths of it all makes you thinner. So, the numbers do bad things and the balance must be addressed. With more food. You eat so much but of so few calories and such little fat. I despair. How to smile and gather hope and be your calm, equable Mother when according to the calculations, IT'S NOT WORKING. I just don't know. I try to sort it in my head - battle plans and strategies - but I am frozen with indecision and woe. I just want to go to bed and bury my head and melt away into oblivion. I do not know how to keep on doing this. If all this fails, it will be my fault for not being able to hide my rage and my crying and my fear. I let little bits escape, against my will: tears squeezed through swollen and stinging lids; sharp words through tight, bitten lips - lumpy and ragged inside from my restless teeth.

I am so tired, I feel I could vomit. I feel sick with the worry and the exhaustion and the middle-of-the-night wakefulness. The fear is a part of me now - grafted like a new skin over the old me. There seems to be little of me left now. I don't recognise myself anymore - not the vision in the mirror nor the voice in my head. I am on a mysterious autopilot - assigned to me by someone who has never met me before and doesn't quite know how to create the facsimile. I have no idea who I am.

Potatoes

I fell asleep just now and had a dream that you asked for potatoes.

I want to say more on this - about the astonishment and happiness I felt at your spontaneity.
And I want to describe how you held up the bag of charlottes to me in Sainsbury's and said "Can we have these?"

But I think I'll leave it at that: you asked for potatoes.

Smell

You said my salad smelled nice yesterday.
Food smelled nice to you. Oh god - you not only experienced it, you allowed it and you mentioned it and didn't retract it or explain it away or ask me never to mention it again or tell anyone. It was a spontaneous moment! I can feel a smile on my face just from thinking about it.

For a moment there, you forgot that food is medicine - only ever foul disgusting medicine.
Some latent, sleepy part of your brain - the part that has been put on hold all these months and is forbidden to voice an opinion - snuck past the defenses erected by that bitch inhabiting your mind. It remembered food as pleasure - as a delight to the senses - not a shameful, excessive indulgence. Fuck YOU, anorexia.

Whether you want to or not, you seem to be improving, slowly slowly slowly - evidenced by such incidents. Small things no-one would notice - except me and you.

I won't forget this. Moments like that give me a fleeting glimpse into a future filled with ordinariness.

You are wonderful.