TEXTS 10th Dec 2014: 9.13 –
Mum: Good morning hope u slept well see you later alligator xxxx
Me: In a while, crocodile..! Good morning.. I slept VERY well… I’m just going to have a shower. See you later xxxx
That was the last text Mum ever sent me… Funny, that someone of her generation, born in 1933, was so used to texts, and the three of us used them such a lot… This was a lovely last text… Reading it, I heard the 1950s song in my mind… They ADORED Rock ‘n’ Roll, and were amazing dancers.
When I arrived at the hospice, Mum seemed her usual bright self, but weaker, less comfortable, more restless… She kept re-arranging the things on the tray across the bed. Everything had to be in order, and she kept changing the layout until she was happy with it. She’d start to do her crossword puzzle, then decide her glasses weren’t quite clean enough. So I’d clean them, but she wasn’t happy with exactly how I placed the box of cleaning wipes in her bedside table… She made me empty the contents of her bedside table onto her bed, and put everything back exactly as she wanted it. This went on all morning… Most of the day…
She asked one of the nurses “How much longer have I got to wait? How much longer am I in here?” I thought she was confused… I thought she was asking when she could go home… The nurse had to quietly explain to me that Mum meant how much longer did she have to wait until she died. She had spoken to the nurse before and she was impatient to go to my father. She told me he was waiting for her, sitting on a bench with the dog we had when I was young. Sometimes, when she talked, she stared straight ahead, looking at – through – the wall opposite her bed… She told me “they” were all waiting… She could see them… My father and the dog… Her mother and father… Her sisters… The dog Snowy that she had as a child. She was eager to get to them…
I had some photos of my house on my iPad, photos of my garden taken in the summer – she’d only seen it in winter because we hadn’t lived there for long… So, I showed her these photos, including some lovely ones of our cat – she loved that cat as much as I did! – and she whispered: “It’s so lovely! How can you bear to be away?”. I told her that I missed it in the evenings when I was alone in their flat, but that I enjoyed the days in the hospice with her, so didn’t miss it then. This was true… Every minute of each day was precious, and every evening alone in the flat was hideous. It was exactly as they had left it, but with a few of my things scattered around. Even the clock had stopped… Mum had said “I bet you haven’t wound my clock!”… Joking… Accusing… They’d bought it as a wedding present to themselves, and Mum was the only one who could keep it going. It needed careful winding every week, and of course no-one had tended to it since she’d been admitted to hospital. The silence of the flat echoed more than the chiming of the clock, which had been there my entire life… Every phone call, it seemed, had been disturbed by the loud chiming of this clock, so now, sitting alone in their flat at night, the silence only added to the sadness, but I couldn’t bring myself to try to get it working, in case I broke it…
When the Doctor did her rounds, Mum told her that her toe was painful. It was so strange… Here she was, dying of oesophageal cancer/ starvation, and yet it was her toe that was hurting her… Seeing that she was restless and weaker, the Doctor gave her morphine and a relaxant… In the afternoon, she called for a nurse to take her to the bathroom… The nurse was surprised “You managed yourself yesterday” she said… It was hard not to be abrupt and say “She is dying. Of course she is getting worse!” because everyone there was so kind, so helpful and understanding…but it did seem, to me, an odd comment. While she was in the bathroom, they changed her bedding. Mum called me into the bathroom to help her change her nightdress. I was shocked to see exactly how tiny she was… Like a child. The cancer had taken all her flesh and left just bones… No wonder it hurt to lie in bed. To sit in bed. To move… I hadn’t wanted to see, coward that I am… I hadn’t wanted to look because I was afraid to see, but in the end I was grateful because I knew everything, and that is how it should be.
In the afternoon, we were chatting, and I was telling her about how wonderful the Internet is, for music… “You can think of a song from your youth, find it, buy it, play it immediately…” I explained… “What would you like to hear, if you could hear any song?” With no hesitation, she whispered “Walking my baby back home”… Of COURSE!….. That was one of the songs I clearly remember them singing when I was a child… I still knew most of the words… Both my parens sang so well… and the house was often filled with their singing. I downloaded and played it, there and then, while Mum closed her eyes and whispered along, with Nat King Cole…
We watched her favourite TV quiz and, as usual, she knew so many answers! It had become part of our routine, this quiz, and during that time, more than any other, I just couldn’t believe that one day, at 5pm, she would be dead and I would not be watching it with her. It wasn’t something I’d ever watched before, not the sort of thing I even liked, but this was different. It was just “normal”, sitting watching a TV programme. It wasn’t talking about her funeral or how she met my father, not about my future or her death or medication or any of that. It was just normality… I’d sit in the chair next to her bed and sometimes glance at her instead of the screen, and I just couldn’t believe that one day very soon she would not be there.
I left just before “Coronation Street” came on… It had always been her favourite soap, the original soap she had watched as a young woman. She hadn’t missed an episode, but that evening as I left she said she was tired, and would go to sleep instead of watching it… As always, as I left the room, I turned back only very briefly. For the entire time she had been in hospital, since 18th November, every single time I walked away from her, I thought it would be for the last time. Every single time she was still alive when I walked back into her room, I was grateful…
Email to colleague 10th December 2014:
It’s hard for me, but right for them so I’m trying not to be selfish in my thoughts. I can’t grieve for Dad until Mum has died too. It’s awful staying alone in their flat. They had a wonderful marriage and its a fitting end. I just pray Mum dies as peacefully as Dad. But it’s so hard watching them suffer and it scares me for the future. I’ve no siblings, no children. It’s hard to imagine facing death and illness like that all alone or even with a spouse. It’s a very precious, special time. Mum can’t swallow anything so I give her water to rinse and spit out, and even hot choc to do the same. The nurses can’t do that for her or all the other tiny things. So I’m so grateful to be able to be here.
“Walkin’ My Baby Back Home”
Gee, it’s great after bein’ out late
Walkin’ my baby back home
Arm in arm over meadow and farm
Walkin’ my baby back home
We go ‘long harmonizing a song
Or I’m recitin’ a poem
Owls go by and they give me the eye
Walkin’ my baby back home
We stop for a while, she gives me a smile
And snuggles her head on my chest
We start in to pet and that’s when I get
Her talcum all over my vest
After I kinda straighten my tie
She has to borrow my comb
Once kiss then I continue again
Walkin’ my baby back home
She’s ‘fraid of the dark so I have to park
Outside of her door till it’s light
She says if I try to kiss her she’ll cry
I dry her tears all through the night
Hand in hand to a barbecue stand
Right from her doorway we roam
Eats and then it’s a pleasure again
Walkin’ my baby
Talkin’ my baby
Lovin’ my baby
I don’t mean maybe
Walkin’ my baby back home.