Drink took away our loving mum

More beds are to be made available in the Capital for the growing number of people who suffer brain damage due to excessive drinking. The 12-bed extension is being built at the Forthland Lodge elderly care home, in Alemoor Park, Restalrig, for victims of chronic alcohol abuse.

A PhilL Collins song played plaintively in the background as the coffin slid behind the red curtains at Warriston Crematorium. There had been no ceremony at all to mark the passing of 44-year-old Jacqueline McLean.

But from the tear-stained faces of her four children, each clutching a red rose in memory of the mum they had adored, there was no doubt how much she would be missed. Nicola, 28, Kelly, 26, Daniel, 20, and 18-year-old Jason paid their last respects to their mother, who died after a 20-year battle with alcoholism, in a brief service on Monday.

Her death was the final chapter in the story of an ordinary Edinburgh family whose lives were turned upside down by the horror of alcohol dependency.

Twenty years earlier there was no reason to suspect that Jacqueline and Ian Marjoribanks were any different to any other happily married couple with children.

During the summer holidays there would be trips to the beach and Ian would take the boys on fishing trips to Eyemouth or the girls for swimming lessons at the Commonwealth Pool. But behind the doors of the family home in Livingston, the family hid a dark secret. Despite maintaining the happy facade of family life, Jacqueline was becoming ever more dependant on alcohol.

After having her first child, Nicola, the young mum started spending time with friends and neighbours who enjoyed a drink. It wasn't long before her descent into alcoholism began.

"We were fed and clothed and the house was always tidy," recalls Kelly. "Our mum had to keep sober during the day to pick us up from school and she always looked presentable, so it was a long time before we realised that she had a drink problem."

Jacqueline attempted to keep her problem under wraps and for the most part managed it. But over the years the clues were there: her children would find empty bottles in the laundry basket and their mother would drink from mugs instead of glasses so it would look like she was enjoying a cup of tea instead of something much stronger.

The sham could not last, however, and Ian – who had always been aware of the problem – finally issued an ultimatum to his wife: if she didn't stop drinking he would leave and take the children with him.

Kelly says: "I remember him explaining to us that alcoholism is an illness and that it wasn't our mum's fault. Many times he said that without the alcohol she was a wonderful person and a wonderful mother. He still thinks that."

Kelly was 13 – and her youngest brother Jason just six – when their father moved out. Initially the children stayed with their mum in Livingston but it quickly became clear this arrangement wasn't going to work.

Around this time, Jacqueline met and married Ron McLean and, as a result of her continuing problem with alcohol, Ian took his three youngest children – Nicola had already left home – to live with him in Clermiston.

"The alcohol meant we were robbed of a mum as we were growing up. Jason was just six at the time," says Kelly. "But the effect it had on my mum was the hardest thing to deal with. We loved her so much."

Losing her children had a devastating impact on Jacqueline. She tried Alcoholics Anonymous but it didn't last and she started drinking harder. But though Jacqueline was wracked with guilt about the way she had neglected her children, Kelly believes the loving environment provided by her mum and dad in the early years had a huge effect on how she, Nicola, Jason and Daniel are now.

"My sister and brothers are all really close," she says. "My brothers still live with my dad across the road, so I see them all the time."

Jason and Daniel both work and Nicola, who lives in Meadowbank, has three children: Cameron, nine, two-year-old Luke and her week old baby Dylan. Kelly is a full-time mum to Aaron, nine, Rhys, four, and two-year-old Rachel.

Over the years, Jacqueline kept in sporadic touch with Kelly by phone and, though she had little contact with her grandchildren, she always sent cards and presents on birthdays and at Christmas.

So when Kelly gave birth to her daughter Rachel in August 2006 and didn't hear from her mum, she knew immediately that something was wrong.

Kelly contacted Ron and discovered her mum had suffered organ failure and was in intensive care at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. "I couldn't believe we didn't know," says Kelly. "She had been in a few weeks and if we'd known we would have been in to see her."

Kelly went to the hospital as soon as she could. "It was horrible – she had tubes down her throat and needles all over her," she says. "We all visited excepted Daniel – it was hard for us all but he is really soft-hearted and found it too upsetting."

After almost two months, Jacqueline left hospital but both she and her family knew she didn't have long.

"In December I found out mum was in St John's in Livingston," says Kelly. "Her skin was yellow and she was groggy. Sometimes she knew what was going on, sometimes she didn't."

Kelly tried to make Christmas as normal as possible for her children and visited her mum in the evenings. On January 3, the family were told to say their goodbyes and Jacqueline died the following morning. She was just 44.

Her grief-stricken children assumed the normal funeral arrangements would go ahead. Sadly this was not to be. The siblings' relationship with Ron had been strained for some time and, as Jacqueline's next of kin, he had the final say over how she would be laid to rest.

"He said he was making arrangements," claims Kelly. "Then the following week he announced there would be no funeral and that he was following her wishes. My mum wasn't always there for us but I know there's no way she wouldn't have wanted her children to be able to say goodbye."

After days of silence, Kelly says Ron told the family they could have ten minutes with the coffin before the cremation. Last Monday, together with old friends of Jacqueline, they filed into the room at Warriston Crematorium.

"There was no minister and just a CD playing my mum's favourite songs," says Kelly. "We sat in silence and it was the most horrible thing in my life."

Edinburgh Evening News