How I cope with being mum and dad to eight of them

Mother of eight Angie Millthorpe died from cancer, leaving instructions on how to bring up the 
up the children. Sheena Hastings talks to her widower Ian.
Ian Milthorpe, has written a book about the loss of his wife Angie.Ian Milthorpe, has written a book about the loss of his wife Angie.
Ian Milthorpe, has written a book about the loss of his wife Angie.

IAN Millthorpe was born, reared, worked, married and still lives in the former mining community of Grimethorpe near Barnsley. He knows about back-breaking work, having been a tunneller down the pit for many years. The town has bravely borne pit closures, job losses on a brutal scale and all the widespread poverty and heartache that went with them. For decades it was a place in mourning.

Like many small mining towns and villages, the values Ian grew up with were traditional: the men sweated out long hours underground, while the womenfolk looked after the home and family and had a hot meal on the table when their men came home exhausted. Ian, the youngest of eight children, and his wife Angie, the youngest of five, were no different.

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Looking back, Ian, now 51, recalls the first time he went out with Angie Yoxall, a local girl he had eyed across the school playground but had never 
thought he’d have a chance of dating. They were both 14, her friend had acted as intermediary, and that initial outing was spent laughing and talking for five hours in the local park.

Few people believe that love found so young is the lasting kind, but Angie and Ian’s romance endured for 35 years, cut short by Angie’s death from breast cancer in late 2010 at the age of 48.

Looking back to their early days, Ian says: “She was perfect, as beautiful inside as she was outside, with a smile and a laugh that lit up a room. I knew I’d never find a better girl anywhere, no matter how long or how far I looked.”

They were inseparable for 10 years then married. Angie wanted a big family, and their first son Ryan was a honeymoon baby. By 1991, they had added Damon and Reece to the family.

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One day two years later a shell-shocked Angie told Ian she’d found a lump in her breast. It was malignant and soon afterwards the 30-year-old had a mastectomy and radiotherapy.

Today Ian knows all about cooking, cleaning, washing, doing the supermarket run, talking to teachers, plaiting hair, supervising homework and all of the jobs that used to be exclusively his wife’s domain. He first experienced full-time parenthood while Angie was having cancer treatment.

“I was a normal sort of Dad before that, I suppose,” he says. “I did a bit of washing up, the gardening and DIY and enjoyed playing with the kids at weekends, but everything else about the home and organising them was Angie’s department.”

Although the couple wanted to have more children, they were unable to do so for five years after Angie’s surgery, during which time she had to take anti-cancer medication which could severely jeopardise a pregnancy.

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As soon as she was declared to be in remission in 1998 they tried and had another son they called Connor. Twins Jack and Jade arrived in 2002, followed by another boy, Corey, and in 2007 little Ella completed their squad of eight.

“Life was hectic and noisy, but we loved it,” says Ian. “Angie was a very organised person, so the school uniforms were laid out ready in military style every night.”

In 2004 bad luck was to revisit the Millthorpe family, when Ian woke up one morning with a terrible headache followed by vomiting and loss of consiousness. Rushed to Sheffield’s Hallamshire Hospital, he was told he’d had a brain haemorrhage and surgery was needed urgently, but he had only a 30 per cent chance of full recovery. Having come through the operation well, he was then attacked by meningitis.

Despite recovering, the years of working in the pit had left Ian’s lungs with only 50 per cent of normal function. He would need a medical before returning to work, but would never pass it, so, at 42, he was forced to retire early. The coalfields were in shreds by then, and there were few other job to be had.

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“It was hard, mining was the only thing I knew. But I didn’t want to end up like my dad – fighting for every breath.” The main benefit of adjusting to life at home full-time was that he got to make up some of the time he had missed while working 12-hour shifts. The family got used to a new sort of normality, with Dad often doing the school run and learning to share work previously done by Angie.

In 2007, shortly after the birth of their eighth child Ella Rose, Angie went to the doctor with a cough that had persisted for weeks. An X-ray showed there was a shadow on her lung, and this was diagnosed as the return of the breast cancer she thought she had left behind her for good.

The oncologist told her it was terminal but chemotherapy would hopefully give her a little more time. In a matter of seconds a whole family was turned upside Iown. Angie, after sobbing all the way home, determined to stay as cheerful as she’d ever been and keep life as normal as possible. She wanted to enjoy every moment of time at home, days out, and the usual family break to Thornwick Bay near Bridlington. It was Ian who fell apart, veering between tears of despair and raging anger.

“She was everything to me. We didn’t go out, didn’t drink – our only night of partying in the year would be New Year’s Eve – we just wanted to be with each other and the family. She was the perfect wife and mother, so thoughtful, kind and hard working, as well as playful and fun to be with. I just kept asking myself ‘why her?’ – especially as there was no breast cancer in her family.”

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The couple told their older children the awful news, and the family drew closer together in its grief. Angie took chemotherapy well and continued to run the house as ever, but her usual tireless strength was failing and she began to transfer her skills in a systematic way to her husband in preparation for the day when she would no longer be around.

“She taught me to do the ironing, and I was terrible at first. I was instructed in how to make the kids’ favourite chicken curry, and when I got her a wig after her hair fell out, she said I could use it to practice plaiting the girls’ hair. I kept asking myself how I was going to cope with bringing up the children by myself, how could I be both mum and dad to them?”

One day she suddenly asked Ian the date of one of the boys’ birthday and he got it wrong. “You’ve got to know the kids’ birthdays, Mill,” she said. “What if you forget one?” She started 
to test him regularly, and instruction began in how to bake a birthday cake.

Angie took an old exercise book and put together an instruction manual for Ian. Over months, her lists of pointers and hints on how to bring up the children and look after the house grew, and as her illness took its toll, she began to gently channel the children’s emotional demands away from her and towards her husband.

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“There wasn’t a selfish bone in Angie’s body,” says Ian, his eyes filling up. “Ella came in crying one day after she’d fallen and hurt her knee. She was only tiny, and naturally ran towards Angie. Angie said: ‘Go to dad, let him nurse you...I’ve got to go and do other things’.

“Now I know that would have been very hard for Angie, who would have wanted to grab Ella and cuddle her herself. But it was part of her wanting to prepare us for after she was gone. She was such a natural mother that she even wanted to look after us when and make sure we’d be okay when she wouldn’t be around.”

Twelve months after Angie died on October 19, 2010, Ian’s sister-in-law Lynne suggested Ian should have a go at writing a book about Angie, her illness, and her “rule book” to help the family to go on.

Ian had spent the first few weeks sobbing for hours each night after the children were in bed. He could not sleep in the bed he used to share with Angie, and to this day uses the sofa in the living room. While he says he doesn’t believe time heals all wounds (“You just manage to cope somehow...”), he did see some value in the idea of a book.

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“At first I thought I’d give it a go as something I could maybe self-publish and give to the children so they never forgot the details of our lives and all the little things about her that we loved. I especially wanted to do it for Ella, who was only two and a half when her mum died.”

He sent the 40,000 words he initially wrote to a list of literary agents, and one of the top names came back within hours saying: “This is extraordinary.” He was given help from a co-writer to add more detail to the story (some harrowing accounts of Angie’s illness are included), and on publication Mum’s Way swiftly made its way to the top 10 bestsellers on Amazon. There is now talk of making the book into a film.

“I was a bit surprised by all this, but I’m glad everything is written down for the kids,” says Ian. “I never want them to forget how beautiful and wonderful their mum was.

“People around the town have been great – I can’t walk down the street without someone saying, ‘‘Well done, you’ve done Angie proud’. Women tell me how it has made them cry, and some have asked whether I’ll write a follow-up.” The answer to that is yes, and Ian is currently explaining in Dad’s Way how the family has managed since Angie’s death.

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“I don’t know what I’d have done without her help and patience before she died and the rule book has been very useful, but I can’t keep to every instruction 100 per cent. Sometimes, when I know they’re doing something that’s okay on the computer, I do let them stay on it more than the hour Angie wanted. It’s the only way I’ll get a few jobs done.

“I think I’m doing okay but the pain doesn’t go away, and I know there will never be anyone else for me. I worry about being alone when all the kids are gone, but I guess I’ll get busy with the grandkids. She used to say 
‘what’s past is past, what’s done is done’. But I’ll never be done with loving Angie.”

• Mum’s Way by Ian Millthorpe with Lynne Barrett-Lee is published by Simon and Schuster, £6.99.