My mother's GIFTS

When Genevieve Kingston's mother learnt she was dying, she found a poignant way to mark her children's milestones

It was raining the day of my mother Kristina’s memorial, and the event stays smudged in my memory. I was 12, wore a blue velvet dress and I had a cough.

I remember one of my mother’s doctors taking the podium and comparing her to Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek series. He spoke of her willingness to take risks, to try new therapies, to tolerate pain and discomfort.

‘When I had something promising, I’d call her up and say, “Kristina, I have dilithium crystals for you!” and she’d say, ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’

In 1992, when I was three years old, my mother learnt she had an aggressive form of breast cancer. Each day she sat for hours at our dining table, her hair tied back, surrounded by stacks of paper covered in dense, technical paragraphs. Over the next four years, she consulted doctors, specialists, homeopaths and healers. A surgeon cut the cancerous flesh from her body. She adhered to rigid diets and swallowed a mountain of pills. She flooded her body with chemotherapy and carrot juice. She was always looking for a way to survive. 

Making memories

The summer after her cancer spread, my mother had set me and my older brother, Jamie, to work, making scrapbooks to record our childhoods. Going through the old photographs, we pulled out snapshots of our mother before we were born and told her how pretty she looked.

She'd hold the picture for a moment.

'Yes,' she'd say. 'I wish I'd known.'