As my mother lay dying on a hospital bed, I went shopping. After long days at her bedside, doing my best to buoy her spirits, helping her sip water from a cup because she was too weak to hold it, after almost daily round-trips from home by rail to that hospital in my old stomping grounds, my shopping urges became fairly frequent. As the toll of her illness and slow painful death overwhelmed me, I shopped, then some more, and then some.
Neither of us knew she was dying at first. My mother was tired and ready, she often told me, to shuffle off at 84. Her body was a bit of a wreck but her brain still worked; she still cared about the cryptic crossword and the state of the Labour party. It encouraged me to hear of her antics during the morning medical catch-ups, and so her death just didn’t fit into my picture, even when a bumbling junior doctor took me aside to tell me she was very ill indeed.
Having recently left a big career and sold a big house to make a transatlantic move to be nearby, as she grew old in her housing association flat in Bromley (the same flat I grew up in), facing her death was something I could not contemplate. I listened to the doctor but did not hear. Instead, I thought about shoes.
Freestyle spending became my opiate, a life-affirming pastime and a happy place, away from the despair of critical patients and weeping families. Silk blouses, boots, eyeshadow palettes and undies are pretty, after all, and taking them home made my world a bit beautiful. I don’t remember showing her anything, but she did notice and admire a rather fabulous 60s cut vinyl coat.
The term retail therapy, coined in 1986 by the Chicago Tribune and defined as shopping to improve the mood of the buyer during periods of stress or depression, is often casually or comically applied to periods of intense spending, especially by women. For me, there was nothing funny about it. As I stared from train windows, stumbled through hospital corridors, met social workers, safe-guarders, test-givers and an occasional doctor, contemplating a trip to the shops subdued my escalating emotional pain.
I’m not the only one. So common is it, that researchers at Melbourne University have advocated spending as therapy as a psychological disorder called oniomania, existing on a spectrum with shopping addiction or compulsive buying disorder. Like any addiction, it comes with a withdrawal and comedown period; unless you keep shopping, of course. The good news is that an oniomania tendency is often short-lived.
My mum and I had always connected over clothes; common ground in a relationship that was at times divisive, although no more so than most; we were simply different women separated by generations and expectations. As a kid in Canada, she would take me off to get the latest haircut, dress me in nice frocks and was always at the top of her fashion game. Over the years I had become used to sharing the fun of fashion with her. She was always eager to discuss her own life in clothes, and kept the standout pieces long after she was able to wear them. She was my first style icon; I remember her sitting at a Singer sewing machine, or with knitting needles working wool into a bouclé poncho – maybe in a pantsuit, always wearing a nude Revlon lipstick.
After my mother died, I had to clear her flat, which no one tells you can be one of the most painful parts of the process, sifting through all those memories, all those feelings, all those things. In her bedroom I found an unused Oscar de la Renta for Vogue kaftan pattern from 1973; I know this because she dated the envelope. It felt like a direct message from her, a special gift.
In the months immediately after my mother died I continued to shop, filling the hole that grief ripped through me with yet more stuff and a new mantra: “Mum would have wanted me to have this.” Beautiful things made me feel better. Putting on something a bit fabulous made it easier to leave the house on my darkest days, and it wasn’t just about clothes. I had to hear live music, stand in front of great art, live large for my mum because she no longer could. A lot of my purchases were frivolous, but I think she would have heartily approved of the green glitter platform shoes I bought for a landmark birthday party.
Before that birthday, when friends rallied round my daughter and me, proving there can be love in grief, there was another, much more significant outfit to choose. As her youngest child and the only one able to attend her funeral, I had to choose what my mother would wear in her coffin. I picked a dress she had made herself – a long navy number with a delicate gold pattern and cuffed sleeves, as much a tribute to her lifelong creativity as it was a glamorous goodbye: she had been born into a family of war women who sewed and knitted and put themselves together beautifully, but had little money. A scarf to hide her neck malformed by cervical dystonia, the onset of which led my proud mother to become ashamed of her appearance, to stay indoors much more than she should, pinned with a maple leaf brooch to honour the country that was her home for over 20 years and where three of her children were born.
I chose not to see her in that last ensemble but, as the coffin was carried in, I imagined her as she had been, and the only way I choose to remember her now: stylish and beautiful. I wore an old black and white dress, a new coat and a large Air Force Blue hat, to honour her days in the post-war Women’s Royal Air Force.
As the months passed my grief lifted, and my shopping compulsion has been put to rest. I now think more than twice about buying things. I envisage my daughter having to get rid of all the stuff when I’ve gone. I hope that’s a long way off, but I will still pencil in a Swedish Death Cleaning in about 20 years. My talented girl is doing brilliantly well in sewing classes, carrying on a family tradition, and doing her part for the slow fashion revolution.
I like to think some of my shopkeeper friends miss me. I met some wonderful women on those excursions, women with their own grief stories, who were kind enough to share them. I still pop in for chats now and again, but the debit card stays in the wallet.
I have many regrets about my mother’s death – what I did or didn’t do – but not about the shopping. I acknowledge the comfort it gave me, and cannot say it will never happen again. The second anniversary of her birthday since she died is fast approaching, and I plan to make that kaftan at last. I’m going to wear it somewhere she loved and that holds special memories. If you see me swanning about in it, please don’t ask me where I bought it. I made it myself, and won’t be buying anything to cheer myself up.
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