Bearer of my own bad news

I got through to my Mum’s sister, Ann, first. “Are you sitting down?” I asked.
“Hold on I’ll get your mother”, I sensed fear in her voice. Moments later my Mum picked up the phone, I heard frantic muttering in the background then, “Hi son, are you okay?”
“I hope you’re sitting down Mum, I’ve got a bloody brain tumour”. A moment’s silence, then…
…She told me not to worry, not to give up hope and that miracles happen all the time. We talked about my prognosis, the type of tumour, Francesca, the kids, my job, religion. She told me not to lose faith, and that she’d come down to London on Friday with my aunt because at times like this family should be close together. Her words were calming, soothing, what I needed to hear. Not the reaction I expected. She was composed, collective, and rational just when I needed her to be. If roles were reversed, and I just discovered that I was likely to survive my offspring I’d probably go ‘postal’. I couldn’t help thinking that it was rehearsed, that she had braced herself for the worst news after I had told her about the seizures those few weeks ago. I was later to discover from my Aunt Ann that after I hung up they held each other shivering and crying for what seemed like an eternity. The ‘stiff upper lip’ was for my benefit. After a while my Mum turned to my Aunt and had said, “Oh my God he can’t drive, that’ll kill him!” She knew my passion for the internal combustion engine.
God knows she’d seen enough cars and motorbikes grace the driveway.
Against her better judgement, when I was 17, she bought my first motorbike, a Honda XL125R
(Hey a flick side parting, Levi cords, Adidas Capri trainers, and Benetton rugby tops were de rigueur in Liverpool in the early 80's). Later, when I came back from a working holiday in the USA, she helped me import my VW Karmann Ghia. Later still, she stopped me from committing GBH when a very ex-friend purposefully neglected to add hardener to the two pack paint laid on my cherished 1973 Carrera RS replica. Imagine a classic sports coupe effectively covered in a thin layer of yellow putty – sacrilege. She even watched in amazement as I shoehorned a Porsche 356 Super 75 motor into a VW beetle 1303S. She was even more amazed when I through a rod racing a 2.8 Capri.

Strange, the things that ‘pop’ into your mind and take ‘centre stage’ when faced with adversity. But then again we’re complex creatures with many inbuilt psychological defence mechanisms especially designed to deal with such circumstances.