Daily Mail, June 1, 1995, by Mary Keenan ----------------------------------------------------------- IT HAS been almost a year since three-year-old Erin Palmer- Lund lost her two-year battle against cancer. When the disease was diagnosed, her mother Cynthia agreed to one course of chemotherapy. It failed. With the help of Gold Blend actor Tony Head and other celebrities, she raised Ł30,000 to take her daughter to Texas for alternative treatment. When that also failed, Cynthia refused to accept any more drugs for Erin, allowing her to slip away in peace in June, 1994. Two months before Erin died, Cynthia was reunited with her boyfriend John Palmer, 31. They had separated three months before doctors discovered a tumour the size of a satsuma on their daughter's brain. Here, 35-year-old Cynthia, who now lives on a boat in the South of France, tells how she has survived the bleak first year following the loss of her child. PEOPLE really do cross the street to avoid someone who has been bereaved - it has happened to me. I didn't care, although I wondered if they had put up with me in the past only because Erin was ill. It's impossible to describe the emptiness I felt when she died. Before, each day overflowed with raising money and being with her. Then it all went quiet. I had my life back again, but I didn't want it. I suppose I must have done things, passed the days, yet I don't know how. Of course I am still involved in raising money for the Rainbow Centre in Bristol, which had given me so much support throughout Erin's illness, and that is a way of connecting with her. I now see that I was in shock for the first few months. I cried constantly but the reality only hit me now and then. I didn't want to kill myself but if I had fallen into a river I wouldn't have saved myself. Once, in a daze, I walked in front of a car. The driver stopped about half-an- inch from me. He was shaking. I looked at him and walked on. Nothing mattered. The only thing that has kept me sane is the fact that John and I are back together. I'm just so glad Erin was alive to see it. Just before she died, she looked up and saw us smiling at each other. She beamed, as if to say: 'Thank goodness you two have sorted yourselves out!' I met John when I was 27. Ever since I was a child I'd been fascinated by the thought of sailing around the world, and had just given in to my lifelong fascination with boats by living on a houseboat in Kew, Surrey. John worked for a local boatyard. Around this time, I was becoming disenchanted with my business, running an actors' management agency. So I sold up and went sailing in Majorca with John. We returned home briefly before going to work on yachts in the Caribbean, when I found I was pregnant. Everything changed. I had always wanted babies although I had bought heavily into the myth that I could have it all - freedom, career, family. I realised that I had to have this baby or I'd be still wanting one at 85. John was slightly less enthusiastic. He wanted childen, but not then. When Erin was born, we were living on a houseboat near Dolphin Square in Chelsea. I was happy for my life to revolve around her. Unlike men, women accept that they have to change when a baby arrives. I still longed to sail around the world, and I felt that it would be even better with Erin, showing her history and geography in situ. It became clear that John and I handled things differently. Our love of water wasn't enough to keep us together and we split up. John was in France when Erin was diagnosed and he came straight back. We knew we should be united for her but we didn't want to restart the relationship. One night, about two months before Erin died, John telephoned and we had one of our strained conversations. He said something and I started screaming furiously at him. Something broke in him, too, and he poured out all his grief and fears. At the end of the conversation, we were together and we knew we need never discuss the past again. It was such a relief to share the burden of Erin's illness with him. When I made the decision to stop treatment in February last year, I thought the worst choices were over. But they were only beginning. Every day, I had to decide if the morphine she was receiving was helping or making her worse. John helped with those choices. He kept on helping me after she died. It was like therapy for him, an outlet for his grief. I had to be watched and looked after. I forgot to eat and my weight dropped. I had the classic symptoms of depression, but I was worse than depressed. Depression comes if you lose your job - I'd lost my daughter. I had stayed with my friend Val in Twickenham for the months before Erin died and John and I remained there for a few days afterwards. I wanted to escape, to go off and find a project to convince me that it was still worth breathing. We went to Blackpool the weekend after Erin's death. I'd never been there and I don't know what I expected but what I got was smack-in-the-face proof that life does go on. I could see it in the laughing crowds and the chip wrappers on the pier. It helped. Standing in a take-away, we saw a woman driven to exasperation by her daughter, a girl of Erin's age. As they passed us, the woman said: 'Want a little girl? Take this one.' I nearly screamed. It upsets me to see children crying and parents shouting. I feel like asking: 'What if they were only here for a few years?' We take so much for granted. In September, three months after Erin's death, we went to Holland and bought a 26ft catamaran. That November, we sailed to France and moored near a 13th century fortified town called Aigues-Mortes. We stayed there all winter, working on the boat. Although I still felt overwhelmed by grief, living on the boat meant I could trick myself into getting up in the mornings because we had this to mend or that to repair. At the moment we are working our way down the coast and our treasures on board are Erin's toys and photographs. My nightmare is that the boat sinks with the loss of our memories, so we have only a carefully-chosen selection. The rest are with friends. As we get to know people, we tell them our story. Their reactions always surprise me. One woman noticed a picture and asked who it was. I said it was our daughter, who had died. Without missing a beat, she picked up an ornament and said: 'This is lovely. Where did you get it?' She never mentioned Erin again. Someone else said: 'She suffered so much. The end must have been a relief.' I was fed up making people feel better after I'd mentioned Erin, so I burst out: 'No, it was horrific.' I know it's upsetting. If a child can die inexplicably, what hope is there for older people? But I don't want to hide Erin like some shameful secret. If she's part of a story, I mention her. It's up to others to take it as well as they can. John and I don't talk about the end, we concentrate on memories of the things she used to say and do. It's our way of keeping her real. John cries and so do I, often every day for weeks on end. We take out the pictures, weep, shut the book and get on with living. When I remember her with no hair and tubes everywhere I tell myself it isn't right to wish she was still here. It doesn't work. I end up asking: 'Why couldn't she have been well?' I'm not sure that time is a great healer. I hoped somebody would say: 'It's unbearable now, but you'll be better in X years.' It's not like that. I've let my emotions rip in the hope that the pain will run dry. I saw a bereavement counsellor but I found it didn't help much. John, who was less able to show his grief, benefited tremendously. But I do feel that I'm emerging from a blackness, just a little. Up until a month ago, I sensed Erin's constant presence. Not a ghost, just a warm feeling. I imagined her as a little angel, helping me survive the worst. She has gone now, moved on, and so must I. John and I have discussed marriage but it's too soon, although we do need each other. If I had found myself at the end of it all without him or Erin, I would have been left wondering: 'What the hell was that all about?' My faith in the existence of a benign being has been severely shaken. I tend towards the Buddhist view of life in which you take responsibility for your destiny. Sometimes, I feel guilty and ask myself if I contributed in any way to her death. I was a good mother and, until she became ill, she was a happy child. There's no family history of cancer, so I often wonder if it was the area we lived in, something she ate. I need an explanation. The memory of Erin's bravery is a tremendous booster. She never held it against any of us. We had to hurt her and she would cry, but soon she'd be smiling at the person who gave the injection or inserted the tube. If a baby can be so strong, what right have I to give in? I know I was right to spare her more drugs and radiotherapy. The day we took the tubes away I whispered: 'You're free now.' Because we were in the public eye, I was afraid of condemnation. Yet I didn't receive a single hostile letter or phone call. One woman came up to me in a shop and said: 'Good luck.' Others said: 'We hope we'd have your courage.' There's a willingness out there to try something other than the slash, poison or burn treatments but who ever hears about them? I discovered the Texas centre where I took Erin for alternative treatment through a friend. In America, anybody can telephone for information about a range of alternative therapies for each form of cancer and look at success statistics. Now I want to see something like that in this country and I'm prepared to compile it myself. During my spare time on the boat, I've begun writing a book in celebration of Erin's life, describing the choices I made about her treatment which, I hope, will help other parents. As far as becoming a parent again myself, I honestly don't think I could go through with having another baby. If something went wrong I just don't think I could cope. And if it was a girl, she would feel that she was living in Erin's shadow and she'd resent it. Erin wasn't like me in many ways but we were friends, such friends. I might not have that with another child. What the loss of Erin has given me is a determination to work with dying children. They're so much better at handling death than their parents. There must be a way to communicate that to the whole family. But I'm aware that as I come into contact with the world again I have to live. I have to earn. Maybe that's a sign of recovery. Sailing around the world will always appeal but, without Erin, it seems a bit pointless. We're planning to head to Corsica to work on boats for a while. It's a start, a way back into so-called normal life. Erin burned so brightly and briefly. I wouldn't have missed the joy of her life in return for being spared the agony of her death. I've learned from her not to be worn down by the bad things but to look to the good things that the future may bring. Every day, she helps me live and it's up to me to do something that makes everybody remember that she was once here with us. And I will. * THE Rainbow Centre, which helps families of children who have died or are suffering from a life-threatening illness, is desperately short of funds. In memory of Erin, Tony Head and his girlfriend Sarah Fisher have compiled The Famous Rainbow Recipe Book (Ł4.99, Ashgrove Press, Bath), containing dishes by celebrities. Donations to the Rainbow Centre can be sent to PO Box 604, Bristol BS99 1SW. GRAPHIC: Cynthia Lund and daughter Erin: 'The memory of her bravery is a tremendou booster. If she could be so strong, what right have I to give in?'Now Cynthia is back together with Erin's father, John ----------------------------------------------------------- Bentley's Bedlam http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.