Open Secrets - Chapter 1

Open Secrets

So, to begin at the beginning     ………….It's boiling hot.  It's past the longest day.  The Centre opens on July 6th. My mother is dying.

These are all facts of life and there’s nothing much to be done about any of them, especially the last one.

We are living through a prolonged hot spell, which would be fine but is not fine because work is ridiculously busy and the heat makes everything twice as difficult as it would be if it wasn’t so stifling.  And then, because it’s stifling, mum can’t breathe, which, when we visit, means that we run around opening and shutting windows and doors endlessly, trying to generate some more oxygen without letting her get cold.

When I do the opening and shutting of doors, I think about the Celtic folklore of opening doors and windows to let the dying person’s soul fly away freely.  Mum won’t be the first person to die in this house, although she may be the last.  If I had my way, I'd raze the damn' place to the ground and salt the earth.

I’m not being mean, but I wish it wouldn’t take her so long to die.  Not that I want her dead, you understand, but she’s barely alive. Her quality of life can probably be measured in negative terms.  Sometimes when I’m sitting with her, her eyes will flicker open and she’ll whisper “Help, help,” in a reedy little voice, but none of us know exactly what sort of help she’s after, least of all her I suspect, and even if we did, we probably couldn’t supply it.

Just at the moment, I can't properly remember that thing William Faulkner said about the past  -  only the bit about it not being the past.  Time, after all, is relative  - can't help thinking that the way it is now, the bulk of my relatives would be better off in the past - thanks to my friends, Albert and William, for their insights into the human condition. 

Being silly here.  Time to get the mop and bucket out and clean the kitchen floor.  Mopping is silent and won't disturb mum's sleep.  The grey flagstones of the kitchen floor don't look much better for being washed, but at least I know they're clean.  A mild but pleasant aroma of Aqua floor cleaner overrides the smell of sickness for a little while.

I have mopped, I feel better.  Time for a mug of tea.

I couldn't help reflecting, as I parked outside the house this morning, how forlorn it looks.  It’s nothing to do with the lawn (recently mowed by my brother). The gate opening onto the path up to the front door is neat, doesn’t squeak when you open it, the front door itself is freshly painted. All the same, a lonely air of disuse seemed to me to surround the gate, the path, the house and the garden. It's as if the house itself is aware of the energy running out of it as its owners dwindle away. 

To be honest, though it’s home, I’ve never been very fond of it as a place. I loved it as Home, the safe haven, when I was younger, certainly, but never particularly liked its physical presence.

These days, with the back garden all overgrown with trees so that it’s dark and damp and dank, it’s really unpleasant. The dry stone wall at the back of the house is covered with moss and brambles are creeping over from the field behind the house. The herbs growing in the rockery seem to have mostly died. There’s also moss all over the lawn and underfoot near the fruit trees is muddy and slimy in equal measure. When my father was alive, I think he encouraged all the growth in a “playing chicken” sort of way. I think, in his head, he planned to die quietly in the greenhouse or the garage or even when talking to the robin at the top of the garden. He encouraged the organic invasion of his land by Nature as a way of being absorbed back into the natural cycle.  Unfortunately for all of us, the NHS got to him before Nature, but that's a whole other story for another day.

The floor has been mopped, I've finished my mug of tea, mum's asleep.  The clock is ticking away the remaining minutes and seconds of her life and I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs wondering what I should do next.  I know that just being here is very important, so when I can  (most Thursdays and assorted other days too) I rock up at around 7 am, do a handover with my brother and then settle down to pass the time until someone else appears in the late afternoon.  I am here, a warm physical presence, fetching,carrying,tending,mopping, a little pulse of life in an arid landscape of sickness.

Even a few weeks ago, I would read to mum and we'd have some little chats and even a few laughs.  Now she's gone past that stage and mostly just lies in bed, so thin that she barely makes more than the tiniest of bumps in the bed clothes.  We get her to eat what we can, she drinks her fortified vitamin stuff, sometimes she watches a bit of tv although how much that registers, heaven alone knows.  All of this doesn't fit in very well with the other part of life, the frantic activity of home,family,work, ongoing dynamic activity for two thirds of the time at least and then this no man's land of sickness punctuated by carer's visits, the occasional appearance of a doctor and (mainly) my brother and sister taking over from me on the death watch.

Last month, the doctor popped in.

"Try to get out of bed.  Eat plenty and try to keep active," he said, meeting neither my mother's eye nor mine.  Then he ran away, leaving his prescription pad behind.

My mother turned her head slightly to watch him go.

"Doesn't inspire confidence," she commented and went back to sleep.

I