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My mum kept her cancer secret too – and it’s left a lifetime of sadness

Georgina Fuller with her mother, ‘the life and soul of the party’
Georgina Fuller with her mother, ‘the life and soul of the party’

Damian Lewis’s beautiful tribute to his late wife, Helen McCrory, who died last week at the age of 52, came as a shock to many who had not known she was ill. “She has exhorted us to be courageous and not afraid,” he wrote. “As she said repeatedly to the children, “Don’t be sad, because even though I’m about to snuff it, I’ve lived the life I wanted to.”

McCrory, a star of stage and screen from Peaky Blinders to Harry Potter, and the National Theatre, sounds much like my late mum, Maggie.

Like McCrory, my kind, fearless mum kept her cancer a secret from many of her closest friends and family. The only person she really shared it with prior to her death 16 years ago was her husband, my stepfather, who happened to be a GP. She didn’t tell me about her bowel cancer until two months before she died and underplayed the trauma of it; the cancer, she said, was quite treatable and they had hopefully caught it in the early stages. She hated putting people out, and was always adamant that my siblings and I should carry on enjoying our lives rather than worrying about her.

I was in my 20s when she died, and fully ensconced in my life in London, but I would have dropped everything if I’d known how ill she was. I would have comforted her and gone to see her in hospital on that final, fateful weekend, and remain devastated that I never got the chance.

The church was packed with friends and family at her funeral a few weeks later – it was standing room only at the back as many students of Mum’s, a much-loved teacher, came to pay tribute. Many were as stunned by her sudden death as we had been. Having to deal with their grief on top of my own made it even more difficult.

Georgina Fuller: ‘My kind, fearless mum kept her cancer a secret from many of her closest friends and family’ - John Lawrence for The Telegraph
Georgina Fuller: ‘My kind, fearless mum kept her cancer a secret from many of her closest friends and family’ - John Lawrence for The Telegraph

Now a mother myself, to a 12, nine and six-year-old, I can understand Mum’s need to protect us. “The best gift you can give me,” she once said, “is to be happy and successful.”

I have tried to honour that as much as I can but, clichéd as it sounds, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her and regret not being there when she died. I often talk about her to the children and tell them how much she would have adored them.

McCrory told her beloved children, Manon and Gully, about her diagnosis well before her death, but other friends have spoken of being in the dark on her illness, including John Vincent, the chief executive of LEON, with whom she worked with on the #FeedNHS campaign throughout the past year.

“My immediate thought was, no, they’ve got that wrong. I didn’t know Helen was ill,” he said of hearing the news. “Part of me wondered if I should have known. Was there something I missed?”

Carrie Cracknell, who directed McCrory in Medea, said the performer did not want her illness overshadowing her life. “Very, very few people knew, and I only did because we were planning to transfer a show to Broadway and we had to cancel that because she was undergoing treatment. We were sworn to secrecy.”

Helen McCrory, with her husband Damian Lewis, told only her closest family and friends about her cancer - Clara Molden for The Telegraph
Helen McCrory, with her husband Damian Lewis, told only her closest family and friends about her cancer - Clara Molden for The Telegraph

Ann O’Flynn, head of information and support at Macmillan Cancer Support, says that keeping things quiet is more common than we realise. “Everyone responds differently and people often don’t know how to tell their loved ones and friends about their diagnosis,” she explains.

This can sometimes be because, like my mum, they don’t want to burden others – but also because they are still trying to accept it themselves.

The impact for some cannot be overstated; in my case, it’s left a lifetime of sadness that I couldn’t be with her and give her the support she needed in those last few months.

It must have been so hard for her, so often the life and soul of the party, to suffer in silence like that. It was courageous and selfless in many ways, but it doesn’t make it any easier to live with.

“The person living with the cancer made a personal decision not to talk about it,” O’Flynn says, which we have to respect – particularly if, like McCrory, they are famous and want to retain privacy for their family.

My mum wrote me a letter before she died and jokingly ordered me to wait until after she had come out of hospital before visiting her. “The demands,” she wrote, “will begin when I get home!”

Living with a diagnosis must be incredibly hard, but the loved ones that live with it for the rest of their lives can suffer terribly, too.

For information and support on cancer, contact Macmillan’s support line on 0808 808 00 00 or visit the website

Read more: ‘Why I didn’t want anyone to know I had cancer’

Did you wish to keep your cancer diagnosis private? Share your experience in the comments section below