Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 November 2007 11:48:44
I saw a ghost
I suppose when you start looking for them you start to see them everywhere, but this was a rather different ghost to those I encountered a few weeks before. When Cambuslang first went to school there was a girl in his class whose mother was a single parent. And she struggled with bringing up her daughter, particularly because of her own childhood spent in foster homes feeling unloved and unlovable. Her daughter was to be her proof that she could rise above that and provide a real family home. She absolutely loved that little girl. Unfortunately those demons weren't so easy to beat and whether it was mental health or substance abuse, she sometimes lost control. Being found in town, drunk in charge of a young child, is something many people find hard to forgive. And, of course, once you've decided it's unforgivable then, well, that saves you the bother of having to understand it, doesn't it. From the mother's point of view it was very easily understood. Not accepted, not condoned, but understood. Probably not forgiven either, which brings its own problems, but there you go.
We tried to do our best to support both mother and daughter as we would any other friends. It was hard, because the mother was understandably determined to show how she could stand on her own two feet, and because she didn't want anybody else meddling with her precious daughter. But we did what we could.
But, unfortunately, things didn't go as well as they could. The drunken exploits still seemed to continue and the local authorities stepped in and placed the daughter with another family, firstly as a temporary measure, and later on a more permanent basis. To begin with we still saw the daughter at school, and she still seemed her same bright and bubbly self. Always a smile on her face, always pleased to see you. That was good and reassuring, but I kept worrying about the mother. I bet she wasn't bright or bubbly, and I was pretty confident that it wouldn't be a smile on her face. Her daughter was her reason for living, her motivation for conquering her past. Without her what could be the point of going on? Well, I'm aware that perhaps I'm projecting my own feelings onto the mother here, but I suspect not, going by the sort of things she said.
After a while the daughter moved school (possibly because she'd moved family, or maybe just because the family moved her to a school nearer to them) and I haven't seen her for months now. And I hadn't seen the mother for much longer, since the initial separation. Until a few days ago. And, to be fair, I was wrong - she did have something of a smile on her face. She was pleased to see us, or at least pretended to be. But she couldn't stop; she was clearly very uncomfortable. My guess is that the smile was a response to meeting people she knew, but that it vanished very quickly as we reminded her of her daughter - she only knew us because of her daughter and we only ever saw her with her daughter.
I don't know if she ever manages to put her daughter out of her mind (and I don't know how she survives if she can't, sometimes, manage that), but it seemed clear that our presence had reminded her of a very painful absence. I can't imagine what that absence must feel like - I hope I never know. I just wished we hadn't met that day.