Daffodils

On the morning I took this beautiful picture I was walking along the river. It was exactly two months ago today. I went for a walk that I regularly take, hiking along the banks of the river, passing underneath the Humber Bridge, and then weaving through the leafy country park.

But because of a parcel I went an hour and a half earlier than I usually would. It wasn’t even my parcel. On his way out to work, my husband asked if I’d be in all day to sign for it. I said I wouldn’t, that I absolutely had to take my walk, after all yesterday I’d been on a mental health awareness course at work, and it had reiterated what I already knew – that physical exercise is up there with good sleep in combating depression and anxiety.

We argued half-heartedly, the way you do when you’ve been married almost twenty years, and in the end I said that if I went for my walk there and then – at just after 8am instead of at 9.30am – he could hang about for the ‘bloody parcel’and just go into work late.

On the walk, in the early mist, I saw these gorgeous daffodils by the water. I took the picture, intending to maybe share it on Instagram or somewhere.

I never did.

That afternoon my phone lit up with my sister’s name. She lives in Grantham and I knew she was at work, so I frowned, knowing it must be quite important. She said, ‘She’s OK,’ first and I knew it was bad news. Someone must be in trouble, but alive.

Then she said, ‘Mum jumped off the Humber Bridge.’

I don’t actually know how I felt immediately. It’s a bit like the misty picture of the daffodils where you can’t fully see the water, and nothing of the opposite river bank. She garbled the facts, clearly in shock. Mum jumped this morning. She’s at the hospital now. A miracle she’s alive. Life-changing injuries. I called my other sister. It took ages to get hold of her because she too was at work, and with every ring I dreaded changing her life the way mine had just been changed. I’ve always liked to protect my siblings, but there was no protecting them from this.

We rushed to the hospital. My brother was waiting there. We have been together, the four of us, through so much, and this was no different. The rest is a blur of medical staff and cups of tea and lists of injuries and standing around a bed and hearing the machines and having to tell my mum’s only brother in Australia.

If I had gone on my morning walk at the usual time, I might have seen my mum walking up to the bridge and changed things. Or I might have seen her on the bridge and been able to do nothing. Or worse. And this haunts me every day. Thanks to a parcel – that never actually came that day in the end – I wasn’t there when she was.

Four days after it happened, I had to go away.

Until the day before, I wasn’t going to, but my family persuaded me that I should, that I could come home if anything else happened. A good writer friend told me to go and be Louise Beech the author, which really helped. I had an awards ceremony in London that I couldn’t miss, and a book tour that despite everything, I didn’t want to miss. I did it. I smiled and did it. But I really was broken inside.

I like making other people happy. One of my earliest memories is sitting at my mother’s feet when I was perhaps six or seven, trying to make her smile. She was depressed. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know that nothing would have made her smile.

So it’s two months on.

And I found the photo of the daffodils on my phone, with the date 28^th February.

Daffodils symbolise spring and rebirth. If you look up their meaning, they also represent memory and forgiveness. They belong to the genus narcissus, a name that comes from the Greek God Narcissus. He was so enamoured with his own reflection in the river that he drowned trying to capture his reflection. The daffodils growing along stream banks took on his name, due to the beauty of their reflected image in the water.

Anyway, I’m writing again, like I always am.

And I’m smiling again, like I always am.

But just like in the photo, there’s always way more to it.

Published by Louise Beech

I remember sitting in my musician father's cross-legged lap while he tried to show me the guitar chords. I was three. His music sheets fascinated me - strange language that translated into music. My mother taught French and English, so her fluency with words fired my interest. I love all forms of writing. My short stories have won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting twice for the Bridport Prize and being published in a variety of UK magazines. My first play, Afloat, was performed at Hull Truck Theatre in 2012. I also wrote a ten-year newspaper column for the Hull Daily Mail about being a parent. My debut novel, How to be Brave, was a Guardian Readers' pick for 2015. My third novel Maria in the Moon was described as ‘quirky, darkly comic and heartfelt’ by the Sunday Mirror; The Lion Tamer Who Lost shortlisted for the Popular Romantic Novel of 2019 at the RNA Awards and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019; Call Me Star Girl longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and was Best magazine’s Best Book of the Year 2019; and I Am Dust was a Crime Magazine Monthly Pick. This Is How We Are Human was a Clare Mackintosh Book of the Month. Daffodils, the audiobook of my memoir, and Nothing Else were released 2022. End of Story (as Louise Swanson) and the paperback version of my memoir, Eighteen Seconds, were released in 2023. View more posts

22 thoughts on “Daffodils”

Oh, Louise, so very, very sorry to hear what you and your family have gone through. How is your mother now? You are so amazing, being able to keep it all together during the roadshow. And this is such a beautiful post – as always, your writing reaches out and grabs my heart.

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Published by Louise Beech

22 thoughts on “Daffodils”

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