It could be our indomitable mum’s last Christmas because of her stage-four cancer… Esther Rantzen expects a quiet one but her daughter REBECCA WILCOX has other ideas!
For the past year, almost since last Christmas, my mother Esther Rantzen — campaigner and broadcaster extraordinaire — has been threatening to die.
She’s been pretty accepting about it, planning ways to make it easier for us, her kids, but stage-four cancer has its own time-frame, even for the indomitable Esther Rantzen.
So the fact she’s still here this Christmas, and well enough to come and stay with me, perhaps even pull a cracker and don a sparkly sweater? Well, it’s our very own Christmas miracle.
And while she told one newspaper that it will be ‘a merry Christmas, but a small one’, I and my enormous shopping list have other ideas.
Last Christmas was a bit subdued. Mum was suffering from fatigue and it worried her. She was not her usual buoyant self and mostly sat quietly, smiling, while my brother, Joshua, sister, Miriam, and I, plus partners, played with her five grandchildren.
Rebeca Wilcox Family Seated L-R Teddy , Alexander, Romily, Kelly Florence, Standing L-R Me Rebecca Wilcox, Joshua, Esther, Benjamin and Miriam
Esther Rantzen and daughter Rebecca Wilcox ‘Two mums’ VERY different approaches to Christmas’
Rebeca Wilcox Family at Christmas Far end of table left to Right Benjamin , me , Teddy, Josh , Miriam, JAMES, Alexander, nearside table left to right Alexander, Florence , Romily, Kelly and Esther
And if her thoughts became too gloomy for her, she would secretly switch her Bluetooth hearing aid over to Radio 4. Perhaps wisely, when it blocked out our rumbustious rendition of The Twelve Days Of Christmas.
My birthday is in January and Mum gave me her hand-drawn card early. It featured an unusually sentimental picture of us together and the caption read: ‘You are in my heart and I’m in yours.’
Mum was clearly feeling more apprehensive about her health than she let on. She had found a lump in her armpit, which was biopsied and sent for testing in early January. Within a few days we received the stage-four cancer diagnosis that brought our family to a standstill.
‘I’m 82, I’ve got to die some way,’ she stoically told us on our frequent visits to her house in the New Forest, where we took it in turns to try to make her laugh, compare Wordle scores and then weep on the drive home.
Since her diagnosis, we have learned many new terms and facts. For example, that lung cancer doesn’t have to be caused by smoking. That the days between the scan and the results are unbearably long. This is called ‘scanxiety’ — and it’s rough.
Another fun fact is that, at times in the past year, Mum’s been more radioactive than Spider-Man.
Also true is that she’s great company in waiting rooms, consulting rooms and even big metal CT machines, where she entertains us and the medical staff with her (aptly named) gallows humour.
The most surprising fact, given her diagnosis, is that Mum is celebrating another Christmas with us and, if it’s to be her last, then I plan to make it a memory worth cherishing for us all.
When I was growing up, Christmas was always a raucous, fun-filled season. We held Christmas Eve parties every year, where fancy dress was required and the merriment was boisterous.
My mother would wear wonderful outfits, including once dressing up as Dick Whittington, complete with thigh-high boots from her time in panto at Bognor in 1982.
Meanwhile, my late father, the documentary film-maker Desmond Wilcox, often dressed as an elf or sometimes Caesar, merrily passing round presents, topping up glasses and, still meticulously costumed, vacuuming the carpets once the guests had departed.
Then they’d get up at the crack of dawn to open our stockings with us and unwrap presents.
In those days, our family Christmas lunch was mostly celebrated at a hotel. The cooking of a huge meal was impossible, what with both my parents working all hours up to, sometimes during and immediately after, the big day.
Though the food at these beautiful restaurants was delicious, the atmosphere was sometimes austere and my siblings and I, dressed in our stiff velvet collars, thick woollen tights and shiny shoes, mostly just wanted to leave.
It was hugely ungrateful for such a treat, but who doesn’t love a family Christmas meal at home? So Mum, ever the trouper, vowed to attempt to cook one year. Which was only slightly marred by the accidental serving of mayonnaise instead of brandy cream on the Christmas pudding.
My maternal grandmother, also courageous, ate her whole portion, and licked her mayo-covered spoon. But then she was always a very loyal admirer of mum.
In later years, we managed to create a wondrous Christmas dinner with two other families. They would come to the barn at my parents’ New Forest home, where ping-pong tables and rickety garden furniture were covered with brightly coloured tablecloths and lashings of sparkle.
They were famously loud occasions, with more than 30 people sitting down to enjoy an epic turkey carve-off, followed by hugely entertaining quizzes.
These were some of my favourite Christmases, surrounded by friends and family and with both my parents healthy and happy.
The evening’s celebrations would often end with carols accompanied by the talented silver band my father supported. Dad’s solo in The Twelve Days Of Christmas — the line ‘Five gold rings’, sung with noisy tonelessness — has been remembered by us every year since his death in 2001.
In my family, that line can only ever be sung now as a group, each of us competing to sound as tone deaf as my dearly departed father. I’m sure he would think of it as a mark of great respect.
After Dad’s death, we struggled to recreate the magic of Christmas, something I’m sure many bereaved families will understand.
Christmas is not always the most wonderful time of year for everyone. In fact, in my new role as deputy president of Childline, I am learning more about the loneliness many children experience over the festive season.
I was honoured to be asked to deputise for Mum, the current president of Childline, a charity she founded in 1986 after becoming aware of the lack of a helpline for children and young people.
Her illness has meant she is unable to dedicate as much time and energy as she would wish to the role of president, so I am stepping in to help, as it is a charity we are both passionate about.
Mum has always made time to visit the bases, meet the team, listen to the children on the phones. The fact she has stepped back from this role, in an organisation she treasures, shows how living with cancer is consuming, even for someone as seemingly indestructible as my mother.
When Childline started, Mum would take us to the London call centre to visit the volunteers on Christmas Day, bringing with us small treats to support the incredible people giving their time throughout the holidays.
This is when I first became aware of how tough Christmas can be for some children. Those who were spending the festive season with parents who drink too much, were violent or abusive.
These things don’t stop just because it’s Christmas.
As Mum says to me: ‘At Childline, we know how painful Christmas can be for some children, particularly when the media is filled with pictures of families happily celebrating together, and they are feeling alone and unloved.
Rebecca Wilcox with her children Alexander and Benji and mother Esther Rantzen at home in North London
Mum Esther Rantzen ( daughter Rebecca Wilcox) Christmas Eve dressed as principal boy on Christmas Eve 1993
‘A child once described it to us as like looking through a shop window where everything inside is warm and bright, and you are outside where it’s cold and dark.’
She’s also never forgotten hearing from an abuse survivor that her only happy memory of Christmas as a child was the one year when a neighbour met her with a plate of dinner and all the trimmings in the alleyway outside her joyless home.
These stories are particularly poignant for me now I am a parent of two young boys, Benjamin, 11, and Alexander, eight. Christmas celebrations feel as though they should be about children, and since I became a mother some of the sparkle has returned for me.
It’s infectious watching their delight and amazement at the mischief caused by our naughty Christmas Elf, and on Christmas morning the sight of Santa’s footprints left in the fireplace.
My mother has to look the other way when my children marvel at the magic of half-eaten Father Christmas snacks and the bulging stockings that vaguely reflect their carefully written lists. For some reason that I’ve never understood, she’s not comfortable with my persistence in the maintenance of this particular Christmas ritual.
But she can usually be distracted by the delivery of her very own stocking, filled with delicious chocolates and fluffy socks.
We have a small annexe where my sister, Miriam, and Mum — who live together — stay when they come, which is lucky since my family is very allergic to the beloved and aged cat that accompanies them on all visits longer than a few hours. The rooms are basic, but comfy, and I plan to decorate them to the rafters.
This Christmas, I’ve also gone a bit overboard on presents — especially for Mum. Miriam and I often club together to buy Mum’s gift, and this year it took us a while to come up with an idea.
She has everything she needs for now and buying new clothes, or bags, hats or scarves for someone who has worn the same outfit since 1970, is pointless.
Spa vouchers are no good either, since she’s never liked going to a spa, even before her diagnosis, and now it would be tantamount to assault if we booked her a massage. Food hampers are not really an option either, since her appetite is minuscule, and many foods don’t appeal.
Then we remembered her very favourite thing. Something small and delicious and luxurious that she’d never buy herself. Its delivery has required a lot of shenanigans, but hopefully it will be the right gift for this year.
I’ll let you know what it was and if she liked it after Christmas.
My children wanted to make Mum presents this year, so they have drawn pictures of her beloved wild birds. She has a plethora of regularly visited bird-feeders outside her window that she loves to watch.
Alexander, my youngest, drew a robin with the aim of printing it on a soft blanket for her, as she gets very cold. Sadly, the reproduction went slightly askew, so the blanket now features an enormous version of the robin, slightly distorted and with a crooked smile making the whole thing more menacing than intended. I’m sure she’ll love it.
My husband, a brilliant cook, has taken on the mantle of Christmas Day chef, and produces food from our aged and unreliable Aga that surpasses itself year after year.
Journalist and television presenter, Dame Esther Rantzen is now 83-years-old
My extended family have come to celebrate at my home most years since our children were born (Covid allowing) and now, in our new house, purchased in the summer of 2021, Christmas is a vast but delightful undertaking, bedecked with huge swathes of twinkle and fake ivy.
When we moved in, we scoured antique and second-hand shops for a table big enough to seat my husband’s and my whole family. We finally found a 3m-long reclaimed wood behemoth around which we all sit each year, pulling crackers and eating too much turkey.
It is my constant wish to have my family with me for Christmas, and I know just how lucky I am.
Age UK has said that 2.3 million older people will spend Christmas alone this year, with 1.6 million saying Christmas is the hardest day of the year for them.
I know how fortunate my family are to have each other, especially as none of us thought we would be all together again this Christmas, carving turkey and fighting over the last roast potato.
So, forgive me if I spoil them all this year, particularly my mother, filling her plate with treats and surrounding her with love.
My family have lived with the threat of imminent loss for 12 months, so I hope we can forget it for one day, one more Christmas. And maybe it won’t be our last? Miracles do happen and, as they say, ’tis the season.
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