It’s the domestic details that capture the grief to come: a hall light no longer kept on all night, a half-drunk cup of tea, a tear in the seam of a nightdress. When Celine Marchbank, a photographer, began taking pictures of her mother’s hospital visits in 2009, her aim was just to show the “weird treatments” Sue Miles was undergoing. Just a year later, the collection of photographs had transformed into a delicate, haunting record of the final 12 months of her mother’s life.

In an east London cafe close to her studio, Celine, now 37, talks candidly about the raw emotion of that time. Her mother, she says, never saw the pictures in which she was such an enthusiastic partner.

“She would say, ‘Let’s look at it when I am better.’ Even when they told her that her cancer was terminal, she was so determined that they were wrong. That she was going to be OK.”

For Celine, however, the news that her mother’s lung cancer and brain tumour were untreatable was a turning point. She stopped focusing on the scans, lasers and tubes, and turned to look at the stillness and familiarity around her. “There’s a picture in the book of my mother with a doctor; it’s when they were telling her she had another brain tumour,” she says. “That’s when I thought, what am I doing? This is not what I want to remember her by.” Instead, she began focusing intensely on the time they had together. “Lots of the pictures are just little moments that mattered,” she says.

‘Her windowsill becomes a substitute for the garden.’ Photograph: Celine Marchbank

There are images that capture the vibrant colours her mother surrounded herself with: others focus on her love of stripes – on rugs, socks, and even her cat. “When the diagnosis came in, it seemed natural,” Celine says. “I felt as if everything would soon be gone. She would be gone, the house would be gone – and all our memories.”

Flowers, too, are everywhere in her photographs: bunches of sunflowers, nasturtiums bobbing in rainy window boxes, and her mother’s favourite tulips – which gave the name to the book that the photographs turned into. Her mother’s house was always filled with blooms, says Celine, but as her condition deteriorated, their transient beauty also felt symbolic.

Taking the pictures became something they could share, says Celine. “I think the project made her feel as if she was giving something back, when I was caring for her. She would be telling me to make sure I took enough pictures, but sometimes days would go by and we would just sit and drink tea.”

Earlier photographs capture the changes in shape and appearance wrought by her treatment while, as the book progresses, Sue is glimpsed only in fragments, or out of focus; an arm peeping from a nightgown, the top of her head. Yet, despite this, her personality shines through, from pictures of the TV cooking shows she loved to criticise, to her disappearing determinedly up a staircase on her hands and knees. “She was very strong-minded,” Celine smiles. “I think because she was a single mother, she was so protective. She never asked for help.”

‘Mum was determined to do as much for herself as possible, and never lets on how hard it is for her.’ Photograph: Celine Marchbank

She also had a fascinating life. Her father was a Hollywood correspondent for the Mirror in the 50s. And his job meant Sue had a celebrity-studded upbringing – attending Beverly Hills high school with Farrah Fawcett, being given a pet dog by Elizabeth Taylor, and photographed with Zsa Zsa Gabor.

He was not happy when Sue eloped to Scotland to marry her first husband and found her way to the heart of 1960s counterculture. “I don’t think I could beat her rebellion,” Celine laughs. Mills befriended William Burroughs, and lived for a time at Allen Ginsberg’s house with her first husband, before running the gallery and bookshop where John Lennon first met Yoko Ono. “She didn’t drink and she wasn’t a party girl,” says Celine, “but she was at the centre of that scene.”

By the 80s, Sue had remarried, and had become a chef for restaurants such as L’Escargot – as well as having two children. But 18 months after Celine was born, her parents split up. Looking back, Celine is in awe. “I don’t know how she did it. She was a head chef with two young kids and she would be out cooking most evenings.”

Despite her glamorous upbringing, Celine says her mother was never star struck (seeing Alan Bennett picking up his dry cleaning was a notable exception). When asked by Rose Gray to be a chef at the River Cafe, she “turned it down because she didn’t want to cook just for posh people”, Celine remembers.

And throughout her treatment, Sue remained witty and sociable – when her hair fell out and grew back orange “she would call herself a human orangutan”. Yet she was also surprisingly private.

“She was loud, so you think she would be honest and open but … sometimes it was more of a show, than getting to the core of what she was thinking,” says Celine. “Which reflects the way she was with her illness – she would talk about it, and joke about it, but would never talk about dying and what she felt about that.”

Sue’s cat on her bed at home. Photograph: Celine Marchbank

Because of this, Celine’s photographs, which she detailed in a blog, became a way to express her emotions about her mother’s illness. “I didn’t feel I could speak to my mum about how I felt. She felt very guilty about her illness, because it was lung cancer and she had smoked. I wanted to protect her.”

Some of the most striking images in the book are simple pictures with devastating captions. One of the final ones is of a grey flat sky, under which Celine has written, “My mother died last night. Looking out of her bedroom window, I realise this is the start of the first day of my life without her.”

Yet talking to Celine, it’s clear that the hardest moments came after her mother’s death. As she tries to explain how she felt, there is a mute desperation on her face . Editing her photographs after her mother died helped, she says “but at times the grief felt neverending”.

“I found it so difficult to talk to people about how bad I was feeling, although I had lots of friends I could have spoken to. I think that’s just who I am – I keep stuff in.

“People think you are fine, because you are working and getting on with your life – and it’s been a while. But they don’t realise that the more time goes on, the longer it has been since you spoke to your mum.”

Five years on, she decided to publish the book. “I wanted more people to see it.” And she says she has finally started to feel better.

“I remember one day Mum said, ‘I’ve actually had quite a good life haven’t I? I have done all the things I wanted to do and I haven’t sold out.’”

• Tulip by Celine Marchbank, published by Dewi Lewis (£35), is a selected winner in this year’s Creative Review’s Photography Annual.

celinemarchbank.com