Lisa Jewell: Diary March 2005

Diary

June 2005

In Memory of Kay Jewell

1944-2005

I am so sad to tell you all that my mum passed away on May 24th . She had been suffering from lung cancer for two years but the end came very quickly. I say suffering from because my mother didn't fight it. She stopped chemo halfway through because she hated it, she didn't eat a healthy diet and she didn't try any outlandish alternative remedies. She didn't run a marathon or climb a mountain or travel round the world. She sat in her chair eating digestive biscuits and fruit pastilles and trying to live as normal a life as possible until the end. She'd always dreaded being an old lady and I think she was very happy to let the illness take its course and take her away before she went all frail and wrinkly.

The funeral was last week and next week we're holding a big party for all her friends and family. It's been a really tough couple of weeks, much tougher than I expected. I thought, stupidly, that I had mentally prepared myself for her leaving us, but of course I hadn't. Nothing can prepare you for losing a parent. She spent seven days in a hospice before she went and then died literally fifteen minutes after I walked into her room that afternoon. As we'd predicted, she waited for her three girls and her beloved ex-husband to be around her before she went and I take comfort from the fact that we were all there for her.

Three days after her funeral, life took me off on a completely different tangent when I left Amelie at home with Jascha and headed off to Norfolk with my sister Sacha and our childhood friends Claire and James. New Woman magazine had commissioned me to write a piece about revisiting a childhood holiday destination so we went to Thornham where we all used to stay on a caravan site behind a pub. It was the most fun I've had in at least a couple of years and couldn't have come at a better time. I got home feeling like a new woman (excuse the pun!) and determined to enjoy every last second of the summer, which officially started yesterday with a garden party here for all my writer friends. It was prearranged two months ago so we were incredibly lucky that the sun came out for the whole afternoon and we had a gorgeous few hours sitting under the willow trees in my communal garden, over-eating, over-drinking, admiring each other's babies and bumps. Amelie kept herself entertained at the other end of the garden, returning every now and then for party rings, tortilla chips and chocolate biscuits. Her dress looked like on of those adverts for washing powder by the end of the day, covered in chocolate, fruit juice and grass stains.

It's my mother-in-law's 80 th birthday party on Saturday, then the following weekend it's our friends wedding party, after that it's Penguin's 70 th birthday party and the next weekend we're off to Sardinia, the three of us, for another all-inclusive, child-friendly holiday in the sun. July is full of more birthday parties (including mine and Amelie's) and then August is publication month which will, of course, involve another party! So it's shaping up to be a really exciting fun-filled summer. I'm sad in so many ways that my mum won't be here to join in the fun, but glad in others that her illness is no longer a part of our lives. I know that might sound cruel, but she'd have been so happy to know that we were enjoying our summer with our children and our friends. She never liked summer anyway …

So here's to Kay, my lovely mummy. May she have a comfy chair up there with the angels and an inexhaustible supply of digestive biscuits.

Lisa xxx


Picnic sur l'herbe! From left to right:: Stella Duffy, Matt Dunn, Tilly Bagshawe, Louise Wener, Chris Manby, Jenny Colgan, Mike Gayle. Maddy Wickham (aka Sophie Kinsella)

The next, freshly-hatched generation of lady novelists. Except they're boys.	Amelie drops by for another Party Ring

Sacha, Claire and James enjoying the sunshine and balmy summer weather on Holkham beach.	Amelie and I on Primrose Hill last month

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