The following morning, on Friday 5th December 2014, Mum was taken to the hospice in an ambulance. She was in a wheelchair, sitting just in front of me. It seemed to be quite a bumpy ride, and I was worried she was being thrown around too much… that the wheelchair might suddenly tip over. Nothing felt stable. Before it set off, she kept turning round to whisper to me, but I was worried about her straining her throat. Once the journey began, she sat in silence, looking out of the window, and I wondered what it felt like to be on your very last journey in this world. To know that you will never see the outside world again. To know absolutely, that your days are numbered. We happened to go past her sister’s house, where Mum lived for a while after her brother-in-law died, to help look after her 3 nephews/nieces… She turned her head slightly as we went by… Then we went past the house I lived in as a teenager… The house my parents adored… Again, she turned her head to look… It was only a short journey, maybe 15 minutes, and all too soon we were at the hospice. They had originally expected to be admitting both my parents, and knew Dad had died… They greeted us with both respectful sadness and professional cheeriness… were so kind, so understanding, not just with Mum, but with both of us. For the first time, I felt I was treated as part of this story. That I wasn’t just a person standing in the room, asking questions or smiling sadly, but part of what was happening.
Waving the ambulance away again was particularly difficult for me, somehow. I suppose, knowing they were driving back to the hospital where Dad still lay, in the morgue… A nurse wheeled Mum along the corridors, decorated with tinsel, Christmas cards, and other decorations. There were carols playing quietly in the background, and it felt a million miles away from the hospital we’d just left. I loved Mum’s room – it overlooked fields and there were even a few sheep close to the edge of the garden… It was light and bright, and I thought, all things considered, it was a good place to spend your last few days on earth. I was surprised that she just said it was “ok”… I thought she might really like it – she was always keen on nature – but I suppose she had many more things to think about than the view from her room.
She was settled into bed with so much professionalism and kindness, while I was given a brief tour of the hospice. I liked it immediately; it felt that it was somewhere I could just “be”… Where I didn’t have to pretend to be ok, where I didn’t have to be on my guard wondering what I was going to be told next… I went back to Mum’s room and we waited for her to be officially checked in with the duty doctor… There was an awkward couple of minutes when a young nurse popped in to ask if she wanted a cup of tea… The poor thing was very embarrassed when she was told by another nurse that my Mum could neither eat nor drink… It was quickly written up on the board outside in large letters, to avoid it happening again.
And so started the most precious week of my entire life… My parents had always, as Dad said, done everything together. So, my relationship was always with “my parents”, and to be completely honest, I had always been a “Daddy’s girl”, even when I grew up… Mum always used to say I could twist him around my little finger, and it was always Dad I telephoned for advice, to talk things over with. Mum was….. just Mum… She taught me to sew and sewing in one form or another has been my life… I loved her dearly, but I never had one of those special “mother-daughter” relationships like many women do. For this week, though, it was just me and Mum… Time really seemed to stand still… Miracle of miracles, the very thing which was going to kill her – the fact that she was no longer receiving any form of nutrition or hydration – also allowed her to be able to enjoy her last few days because it meant that she stopped coughing… She’d had a terrible, constant cough for years – years – because of the throat cancer, but in the last couple of weeks it had become almost unbearable, because she could no longer swallow at all… Suddenly, overnight, it dried up, and she did not have to use all of her energy for coughing…
I discovered the hot chocolate machine in the day room and Mum and I worked out that if I just dabbed a tiny amount on her lips, allowing it to dissolve, she could actually taste it… She loved chocolate – so do I! – so this little luxury became the highlight (or two) of our day… Each afternoon, her sister and brother-in-law visited, and during that time I went to the day room for lunch, which I’d pre-order in the morning. There was never anyone else in there, and I could just sit and be, and let my facial expression do whatever it wanted to instead of smiling… I loved every minute of being with Mum, but at the same time, I was conscious that she was watching me, to check I was ok… because that’s what Mum was like. She was dying of starvation right in front of me… Her voice was a tiny whisper… Her husband of 59 years was lying in the hospital morgue, but it was me she was concerned for… Wondering how I was going to cope without either of them… “How will you cope?” she’d ask… “With all this to deal with?” and I reassured her that I would be perfectly fine…
I thought back to the letter I’d written to Dad only a couple of weeks – but a lifetime – ago, when I said that it was Dad’s letter, not Mum’s. At that time, I had absolutely no idea that my Mum was going to die… So, rather than write HER letter, I made sure that every single thing that had to be said was said.
The previous afternoon, the day my Dad had died, Mum and I had talked about their funeral, and Mum had said she would like my cousin to read a poem. So, when I’d got back to their flat, I had emailed my cousin, explaining:
“What a day.. A momentous day.. Your parents have been, as always, amazing support. I love the “last photo” of my parents and will be eternally grateful for that. Mum seems ok. She just wants to be with Dad. I just want her to stop coughing, to stop having this awful discomfort. I’ve been terrified of “how” this cancer will finally kill her. It has scared me so much, to think of her suffering. So, what is happening now IS awful, but hopefully she will have a peaceful, pain free time in the hospice… I have braved their “Funeral Plans” notebook. A difficult task. Mum mentioned today that she would like you to read a poem at her funeral. I know it’s a bit premature to discuss this, but she has been talking about it and I’m reassuring her that I will make sure everything is as they both wanted. Would you be up for reading a poem do you think?”
So, the subject of “The Funeral” cropped up throughout the day. I’m sure plenty of people find the strength to do this. To plan the funeral of someone they love but who is dying, while they are still clinging onto their life. To discuss the details with them… It is so hard, though. We both knew she was dying. She was surviving on fresh air and love alone. But, it is still a very hard conversation to have…made all the more difficult because Dad was already dead and I hadn’t yet been to register his death, or to see the funeral directors. I wanted to spend every minute of my days with Mum, because I didn’t want her to die without me being there, since Dad couldn’t be with her. I knew I had things to arrange and I wasn’t putting it off because I dreaded it (which I did), only because I couldn’t bear to think Mum would draw her last breath while I was at the Registrar’s Office or at the undertakers’…
“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross