Graeme Saux - Graeme Le Saux - Left Field

My secret is this: when I was thirteen, my mother, Daphne, died. I know now that she had developed breast cancer a couple of years earlier and had a mastectomy. I know now that she thought she had beaten it but that it came back more deadly than ever. I know now that when I went away on a school football trip to northern France, my dad knew that my mum might have died by the time I got back to our home in Jersey. I know now that he had agreed with the doctors that it would be better for my mum if it was kept a secret from her. He was told that it might benefit her if she didn’t know how seriously ill she was. And obviously, if he wasn’t allowed to tell her, he couldn’t tell me or my two sisters.

So I didn’t even really realize my mum was ill. I was full of life and energy and busy chasing all my football dreams, haring to matches and training sessions all over the island. As a youngster, you don’t think about life or death. Anyway, mums and dads are always there. The thought of mum being ill never really crossed my mind. Perhaps I blinded myself to how poorly she was. Perhaps I shrugged off the signs I saw and I suppose everyone else helped me with my denial. It was only twenty-five years ago but people weren’t as open about cancer back then as they are now. It was still talked about in hushed tones.

My mum didn’t have chemotherapy so she didn’t lose her hair. She didn’t show too many outward signs of being ill. There were a couple of occasions when I walked into the room and found her crying but I just put it down to Mum being emotional. Even when an ambulance came to pick her up from our house in St Ouen, I failed to appreciate the seriousness of what was happening. I thought it was a bit of an adventure and my best mate, Jason, and I cycled furiously down to the parish hall and waited on the steps so we could see the ambulance driving past on its way to the hospital in St Helier. That was the last time I saw her. She was forty-one.

My poor dad: what a burden it must have been for him to carry. On the day he was in the hospital being told that my mum’s cancer had come back and that she had approximately nine months to live, I climbed onto the flat roof of the garage next to our house to retrieve a football. When I was getting down, I slipped and fell and gashed my shin so badly on a breeze block that it needed fifty stitches. It was a pretty dramatic injury and I was taken to hospital, too, without knowing of the terrible events that were unfolding there. Jason’s mum took me and bumped into my dad on the hospital steps. He thought she had come to inquire after my mum. When she told him what had happened and that the doctors were saying it might impede the use of my leg, the combination of it all was almost too much for him to bear. He says now it was the worst day of his life.

My mum was in and out of hospital in the weeks before her death. Then, that ambulance took her away and I went off on a football exchange trip to Caen for a long weekend. It was Easter and I was incredibly excited about it. I had an amazing time in France. We won the tournament we were playing in and some scouts from Caen, who were then in the French first division, were talking about me going over there for trials for their youth team.

When I got back to Jersey, I was euphoric. I’d bought some Easter chocolates for everyone and I couldn’t wait to give them to Mum and tell her all about my trip. We got the boat back to Jersey and I ran off it with my friend James Robinson, who was one of my close mates from school, when it docked. I spent a lot of time round at his house so I thought it was a bit weird when his dad looked straight through me on the quayside.

Soon, I caught sight of my dad. I was full of myself. I showed him the trophy I’d won and I gabbled out all the stuff about the trip. I was yakking away and we got in the car. We got about five minutes down the coast road from St Helier heading towards St Aubin. Out there in the bay was Elizabeth Castle on its rock. I suddenly thought ‘Oh Mum, how’s Mum?’ I asked Dad and he drew the car slowly into one of the lay-bys overlooking the beach.

He muttered something like ‘Just a second’ while he was stopping the car.

So I said ‘How’s Mum’ again.

‘Mum died whilst you were away,’ he said.

I couldn’t comprehend it. I said: ‘What?’

‘Mum’s died,’ Dad said. ‘She’s not with us any more.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It all seemed horribly unreal. As much as I tried to comprehend it, I just couldn’t accept it. I burst into tears while Dad tried to comfort me. As we drove home, fear gripped me. What was I going to say to my sisters? Who would I turn to now that Mum wasn’t ever going to be home again? Arriving at the house we walked into the lounge and there were all these cards of condolence – bizarrely it reminded me of Christmas. Mum was a very popular lady. She was a great netball player. She had loads of friends. And I just felt so lost. I looked around and I thought: ‘Everyone knows and I don’t. I’m their son and I’m the last one to know.’ Both my sisters were there – Jeanette is two years older than me and Alison is six years younger – and I felt that I hadn’t even been there for them. I can’t really express how difficult it was or how desperate I felt. I suppose you just spend time trying to come to terms with it.

I couldn’t even go to my own mother’s funeral – I was too embarrassed. I felt guilty because I suddenly saw it with such clarity after the event. It was like when someone throws a surprise party for you and you genuinely don’t know about it until you walk in. It’s that instant when you realize what has happened and suddenly all these pieces fit together.

Suddenly I knew why James Robinson’s dad couldn’t look me in the eye. I knew why we had been asked to go to church in France on the school trip the previous Sunday when we weren’t even a religious school. The teacher knew mum was seriously ill so he was desperate for us all to go to church and say a prayer for our loved ones. I didn’t realize any of that at the time. I was distracted because I had a game of tennis organized for that Sunday morning and I didn’t want to go to the church. So the teacher let me off church and allowed me to play tennis. I thought that was unusually generous. I thought I’d got the best of the deal because everyone else was going to church while I was hurtling round a tennis court.

On reflection, all these pieces came together and I just couldn’t deal with it. I regret not going to the funeral more than anything now because it stopped me coming to terms with my mum’s death. On the day of the funeral, I went down to a hotel in St Brelade’s Bay with Jason, where his father worked, and just sat by the side of the swimming pool, staring into the water. I grieved and I went through a lot of emotions but I never had any support in those early years. I’m not blaming anyone – it wasn’t anybody’s fault. We just didn’t speak about it and it wasn’t until later in my life, when I met Mariana, that I felt I could open up about it. I did grieve at the time. I cried – a lot. It was more shock than anything. I found it really difficult to let go of her. I tried to remember her and relive things that happened before she died as part of trying to preserve her memory. But that made me even more upset. I’d transport myself back to a time when she was there and then, when I was forced to come out of it, it just accentuated the loss. I was a thirteen-year-old kid having to deal with that kind of emotional baggage. It added a complicated layer to my psychology.

It certainly wasn’t my dad’s fault. He didn’t have anyone to tell him the best way of dealing with the situation. It all happened a generation ago and cancer was still a bit of a taboo subject back then. You were supposed to deal with tragedies like that with a stiff upper lip and just get on with it.