Dr Chris Brown’s moving tribute to his mum
Media personality Dr Chris Brown has given a rare insight into life in his family when growing up as he reflects on the sacrifices made by his mother, who is battling Alzheimer’s disease.
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I used to have advice for girlfriends meeting my mum. Don’t be fooled by the whole caring, compassionate physiotherapist for babies and children thing. It’s a trap. Because come nightfall, if you dared stand within 1.5 metres of her and a board game, you saw another side that threatened to send you into self-isolation from her – for life.
In fact, in the midst of a game of Scrabble, it wasn’t unusual for Mum to put dinner, drinks and conversation on hold for an hour, if it meant unleashing nine-letter-word linguistic Armageddon.
It turns out truth isn’t the first casualty of word war, “budding relationships” are. But this competitive streak is no surprise. Mum hails from a family of board game warriors.
In fact, you don’t start a game of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit without taking a week of annual leave and stocking up on snacks. It’s fair to say my family has spent generations prepping for pandemic life.
But today, Mum’s in a different battle. Her sassy spirit and busy mind have taken heavy losses to Alzheimer’s disease. The slow creep of a condition often called “the long goodbye” means the matriarch of the family has fallen silent.
I quietly hope her lack of conversation is merely a by-product of her plotting the ultimate Scrabble return with a 12-letter word – a move five years in the making. It’s unlikely, but since childhood I’ve learnt to never question Mum’s commitment to find a creative outcome for any problem.
And as one of three Brown boys, it’s fair to say there were plenty of problems for Mum to fix creatively. One centred around my first foray into the world of photography, aged nine.
It was a world Mum knew well, as the bumps, bruises and dents on her old Canon SLR camera showed. And with Mum in the shower, I decided to unleash my first National Geographic-inspired masterpiece.
Rather than train the lens on the sleeping dog, I instead focused on more prized game. Through the steam of the shower, I took a shot of mum “in the wild”.
Completely naked. I soon realised my photography was no trivial pursuit. This was a frame with gravity and meaning.
I should probably point out that rolls of film (pre-digital) developed through Fox’s Pharmacy at The Junction in Newcastle were projected frame by frame on a street-facing window. So for a few minutes on a Monday morning, Mum’s steamy private portrait exhibited to the passing public.
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They say a great photograph can change the world. Well, on a smaller scale, this changed Mum’s. She never visited that pharmacy again.
Selflessness is at the centre of many mums’ lives, and mine was no different. That sacrifice of time, social life and sleep is never shirked.
Yet, with three boys all under the age of seven, you wouldn’t have blamed Mum for thinking she’d given up more than her fair share.
There’s no doubt I owe an immense amount to Mum. And maybe I won’t truly appreciate how much I’m in her debt until I have kids of my own.
A gathering of the Browns to mark Mother’s Day isn’t possible, with her care hospice in lockdown.
It’s impossibly hard to be so physically distant from someone for whom touch is one of a few remaining communication tools. But like many others, my mother is a remarkable woman still making immense sacrifices.
The recent [social] distance makes it more important to articulate gratitude to mums across the nation. Or “indebtedness”. At 12 letters, it scores higher on a Scrabble board. Mum would approve of that.
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Originally published as Dr Chris Brown’s moving tribute to his mum