The numbers game: 14 years since my dad – ‘Poppa’ – died on the 14th of April, the day following my birthday. We always imagined he hung on through the 13th, determined not to spoil the day for me. Now, we find ourselves counting and failing to remember exactly – was it 4 months Mum was in The Hope, or a year and 4 months, or 2..? I find I’ve been telling people an untruth: she will be 95 this year, not 96 at all! It seems both to matter and not matter at all. When I phone my landlady about the broken boiler, I mention my birthday. Oh I can never remember how old I am, she says. It’s either 72 or 73.
As usual my lovely landlady is not at all well, and she’s also feeling the cruelties of time passing. Quickly we settle into an antiphonal lament for what is lost: how did that happen..? where did it all go..? you know, I remember when I was a child even… it just flies… and I’m thinking, is this it? is this all there is, this life? and the children, they don’t want to know, as soon as they think I’m rubber-necking, they start yawning and turning away… oh I know, you can’t tell them anything… somehow I thought I would do more, travel to more places… now, though…
It all seems to have happened so fast, without warning. One minute we’re anticipating another 5 or 6 years of the slow attrition that is dementia, preoccupied by the quality of Mum’s life or the state of her dress. We’ve grown accustomed to marvelling at her loss of interest in how she looks, she who was famous for her elegance. How many coffee stains she has down her front, her tendency to wipe her nose on her skirt or a tablecloth – only her squeamish relatives notice. Her needs have shrunk: warmth, lack of pain, hot drinks, sugar, sleep. Her manners, though remain intact, or almost: ‘would you mind awfully if I nodded off?’ she asks from her hospital bed. A moment later, another, older self emerges: ‘what’s she on about?’
Even though we’ve had years to grow used to the steady deterioration in her mobility, her posture, her capacity and her interest in anything outside herself, we are not ready. The sudden onset of pneumonia, her admittance to hospital and what appears to be a big stroke take us by surprise. Steep steps downhill follow rapidly, the days of high agitation, laboured breathing and confusion – ‘where will you stay tonight?’ ‘where are my Sunday things?’ – giving way to a day when she is simply asleep and can barely be roused. Her breathing is shallow but suddenly seems effortless. She twitches and murmurs, sometimes cries out, like a puppy lost in a dream world, but she seems peaceful. All the lines have vanished from her face; only the creases round her mouth return occasionally as she makes a chewing motion with her lips. As I watch her sleeping, I think she looks to have done with all this life business – enough, finished. Not a pretty picture, but there is a kind of dignity, even a beauty, in the way she is at ease in her own skin, for the first time I can remember.
As if a tap is turned on, my head fills with imperatives: not just the inevitable to-do list which simply being the ones left alive seems to generate – Contact Muriel! Find Tony’s number! Make a list!! – but with well-worn exhortations to my son, my friends, family, myself – ‘Get out there! Go places! Use every minute! Seize the day!’ – and then, from somewhere deep inside myself, the routine cautions which dogged my early years – ‘Concentrate! Do your best! Sit up straight! Shape yourself! Try harder! Be nice!’ Always a worrier, Mum was preoccupied – too preoccupied, we thought – with status, with how we appeared to the rest of the world. Embarrassment, shame even, were ever-present possibilities to be guarded against, respectability the ultimate goal. Its pursuit absorbed all her energies and required an iron will.
No wonder she’s exhausted. Suddenly I see what’s she’s been up to these past few months: one by one the straps that hold it all in place have been discarded. Her slight frame gives; flesh spreads. She abandons her bra, then tights, wears any old thing. She indulges her craving for sweet things, licking marmalade out of the pot. She obsesses about the time of the next meal. Today, she seems to have stopped eating altogether. When sleepy, she sleeps. So, it’s done. She no longer has to keep that face prepared to show the world. She’s ready to let go. And in myself I feel the stirrings of something, some dark impulse buried beneath the carapace I've built over the years. That shell has been the surface I present to protect myself and to disguise my inadequacies; staying in control in order to succeed the lesson I learnt from both my parents. It’s enabled me to achieve a good deal but I’m finding, in writing at least, that the ties that bind can be a stranglehold as well as a support. All my life I've flouted Mum's advice and example. Sitting by her bed now, I wonder if I can mirror her new readiness to let it all go while there's still time, and see where it takes me.
In fact it didn’t quite end there. Rallying for a day or two, she kept us guessing to the end; long enough to make it back home to St Georges for a final 24 hours. We spent countless hours with her in those last few weeks. I read to her from whatever I had at hand, chattered on about any old thing, even sung to her a bit. I also found, after a lifetime of keeping our distance from each other, that suddenly touch was what we needed. The end, when it came, came suddenly and very quietly, in the evening of 19th April. Since when, I have been surprised by the weight of the loss, side-swiped by grief at inopportune moments, impatient in any company that isn't family.
The poem On Falling by Joanna Klink dropped into my inbox at the end of last week. I read it as metaphor before discovering at the end that it is really about a tree! There's the beauty of poetry, I guess!
All photos taken in the Botanics on the morning of 13th April
All photos taken in the Botanics on the morning of 13th April
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