I think that my mum's illness, its sly and stealthy onset so that at first we could believe what she told us - I'm just having a bad day - coincided with the collapse of her role as mother.

Not entirely, of course, the job is never taken away entirely: once a mom, always a mom. But its shape morphs and evolves and moves so that at times it is difficult to grapple with, to grasp firmly, to pin down: that's what I do: I'm a mom.

When children go to school. Start college. Leave home.

You're never out of a job.

But you can feel redundant.

As if of all the balls you were juggling, you had dropped one. Or two. Or all three.

And it's in the searching, in the flailing about that follows, that Depression can slide in. Unseen. Innocuous. Into the cool gap left by departingallgrownup children.

Mum has always maintained the Depression is about loss. Loss of direction. Loss of self-confidence. Loss of self.

See. Here's the thing. Become a mother - like she did, like I did, like my maternal grandmother did - at 25 (such neat symmetry: you'd think there'd be some tidy security in that?) and do little else than raise one, two, three, four children for 18, 19, 20 years and you become defined by them. By their needs, their demands, their presence.
And then they are gone.