notfspurejam:

Mark Gatiss: Stand Up To Cancer

In a powerful series of short films, celebrities open up about their fight with cancer. Mark Gatiss remembers the pain of losing his mother and sister to cancer. (First shown: 19 Oct 2018)

It’s an extraordinary thing to say, but one of my absolute happiest family memories was the week that my mum was dying. My sister and my brother and my cousin and I, and lots of people, we sat around the bed and we just laughed, we told stories about her, and to her, and remembered stuff. My sister was a district nurse and we were able to arrange for my mum to be at home rather than in hospital, which was incredibly helpful. And… Her breathing was slowing, and my sister literally got a stethoscope out, listened… and then she ran out of the room, my dad was in the shower and he’s deaf as a post, and she was banging on the door, saying “Dad, come now.”  *He chokes up*

And then she died in front of us and… it was… It’s… literally awful, that’s what it is. In every sense. It’s incredible, it’s the biggest thing you can possibly imagine. And then the kind of moments afterwards, I just remember going outside and sitting doorstep, just going…  *He sighs*

And then, tragically, my sister, who had nursed my mum so brilliantly, on the Sunday she rung me up and said, “I’ve found a lump in my breast and it’s very serious.” We were arranging Christmas and my brother, Philip, had mentioned his Christmas plans to one of Jill’s friends, who is also a nurse. And she said “Philip, she won’t be here.” And I remember that, it was like being hit by a truck. It was just the sort of certain, quite brutal fact of it. She just went completely downhill. On Sunday evening, she was taken to hospital. And my brother was there, and he rang me up at four o’clock in the morning and said “She’s gone.”   *He chokes up*

It just seems so completely unfair that it was happening again so soon. But that’s… That’s the truth of it.