Mother; An Elegy

My nephew wrote the following poem to be read as my mother's ashes were left, close by my father's, in the garden of remembrance at a London Crematorium.


An Elegy

A memory somewhere
Between a glow and an ache
Your hands heavily veined
Blue, like
The veins of a violet
Skin petal soft.

I remember
The sweaters you knitted for me as a child,
The blue rinse, the strong tea in bone china
The diaries in which you meticulously
Noted the price of a steak and red wine dinner in Coz
My grandfather and David on a fishing boat under the midday sun
Sledging in the fading lilac light, and the fear
The fear of almost everything, and yet
A fear that must have been overcome
Pushing a pram and a child up a small street
In Norwood as the sirens wailed.
 
A memory somewhere
Between a glow and an ache
A single pink carnation
In a vase
In a drab service station near Kinross.
And pity is something
We learn for our elders
Perhaps too late.

For me this poem evokes fond memories of my mother with precision.; the medium is apt.
Thank you John.

Mother XI: The Last Post

The period between a death and the funeral of the deceased has something of a dreamlike quality about it. Emotion blurs, anaesthetised in some way.  There seems to be much to do but most of the necessary work is dealt with by professionals; registrars, funeral directors, clerics, caterers, lawyers, bankers.  Apart from dotting a few "i's" and crossing a few "t's" surviving family have little to do but  help with the travel and billet needs of the members of the extended family travelling, at short notice, from their distant homes to be present at the funeral.
For me the dream period ended at 1.15pm last Monday, 7th June when I and a surprising number of other mourners gathered together at Dunfermline Crematorium to pay their last respects to my mother, Gladys.  The 'Celebration and Thanksgiving Service' was conducted very competently and pleasantly by the Reverend Douglas Aitken.  Douglas, officially retired from the church for several years, is a practised professional and I like to believe that mother would have approved of his address which he skilfully balanced between gravity appropriate to the occasion and levity to relieve its sadness.  Douglas opened, and set the tone for all that followed, with the idea that death should not be seen as extinguishing the light but as putting the lamp outside because dawn is breaking.
Dunfermline Crematorium is an easy environment. It is a light and airy glass and polished wood building.  At the 'business end' of the chapel, floor to high ceiling windows look onto acres of undulating grassy parkland as I listened to Douglas reciting Helen Steiner Rice's, 'Legend of the Raindrop' and sang with the congregation through 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' and 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind', I watched through the windows eternal life continuing; birds flying through gently swaying trees answering to an unseen, unfelt breeze; cloud shadows on the grass.
After an emotional gathering among floral tributes outside the crematorium the 'Celebration' of mother's life continued, first over drinks and sandwiches at the local hotel here in Dollar, later at my sister's home.  At the end of the evening, as I reflected on a day that had been far from easy for me, I concluded that emotional release is a far more powerful intoxicant than alcohol!

Mother X

At seven-thirty yesterday morning one of the team of people nursing my mother at St Margaret's Hospital phoned to say that her condition had deteriorated overnight and that they expected her soon to give up the ghost.  I was not surprised by this.  Since, over three weeks ago, the hospital first expressed their fears for mother's imminent demise her poorly condition appeared, until the middle of last week, to remain remarkably stable.  Through recent days however, the draining of colour from her face and her need of an oxygen mask have been clearly indicative of a sharp decline in her condition.
Yesterday was a very long day.  Soon after receiving the phone call, my sister and I and our respective partners, drove together to the hospital.   Mother was unconscious, and although her lungs were obviously congested she was breathing regularly into her oxygen mask.  The information her nursing team gave us suggested that we would not be staying long at her bedside but the morning passed slowly into afternoon with no noticeable change.  We had in the room a newspaper, the truly awful 'Sunday Post', which we were each grateful to read from cover to cover.  We read and re-read labels on bottles and jars, the essential trappings of  hospital rooms.  We talked about nothing.  I was reminded of the passage in 'Wolf Solent' (Ch 24)  in which Wolf, a bored schoolmaster, passes time allowing an ink-stain on his schoolroom wall to feed into his mind imaginings of escape.  By early evening we were beginning to wonder quite what we should do, as far as we could see mother was again 'stable'.  The hospital made a 'family room' available to us, somewhere we could, if necessary, take it in turns to rest through the night.  But it was not to be necessary.  Quite suddenly mother's breathing quietened and slowed until it finally, almost exactly twelve hours since the morning phone call, it stopped.  Mother had lived over a month into her ninety-second year.  He life had been a good life.  For the better part of it she enjoyed comfortable abundance and good health; until last December she had never been admitted into a hospital as a patient.  Her life ended apparently painlessly and peacefully.
Requiescecat in pace.

Mother IX

Shortly before lunchtime yesterday a call came from St Margaret's to tell my sister and I to go there at once. Together with our respective partners we arrived at the Hospital to find mother awake, aware and relatively communicative. Connected in one way or another to a plethora of gadgets; electronic controls for drip feeding saline and blood, automatic blood pressure and pulse rate readers, a pneumatic bedsore preventing mattress and a device that warms air and circulates it under a plastic cover to keep body temperature stable, she appeared nonetheless to be comfortable. A nurse fed her with ice cream, of which she ate a full tub, and tea.
We spent the afternoon taking it in turns to sit by her bed, visit the hospital café and take a little exercise strolling around the hospital car parks (There are five!). As the afternoon dragged on into evening with no obvious deterioration in mother's condition – she was by now sleeping peacefully - we decided to return to Dollar.
Expecting to be summoned back to the hospital at any time we had dinner and turned in for a less than settled night. At nine o'clock this morning – post the doctors' rounds – my sister phoned the hospital and learned that mother had spent a quiet night and that shortly she would be offered breakfast and given a wash. If we hear no more from the hospital this morning we shall go there this afternoon at two-thirty, normal visiting time.
The peaks of this emotional roller-coaster sharpen!

Mother VIII

When I left the hospital yesterday afternoon I did not expect to see my mother again. Since I first arrived here I have doubted that she has known me as who I am but she has seemed to recognise my presence and, to a degree, responded to my attempts to make simple conversation. Yesterday however she appeared to be oblivious of even my presence or of anything else around her. She moved her head a little and with an emaciated hand tried pathetically to adjust her counterpane. Her arms are a patchwork of black, blue and purple a consequence of several intravenous invasions for drugs and nutrients; I can only wonder at the colours of the parts of her body that are covered. During my visit I was interviewed by a senior member of her team of doctors. He told me that she has been having transfusions because she is losing blood somewhere internally and that he would like to perform an endoscopy to 'see what is going on'; to do this he must have my permission. Reluctant to have mother subjected to further distress I refused, for the time being, to give my permission. I would wait to make a decision, I told the doctor, until this morning.
When I phoned the hospital this morning I was told that mum had had a peaceful night and that this morning I would not recognise her as the person I had left yesterday afternoon; she was sitting up in bed and 'chatting' to her nurses.
The roller-coaster we are riding runs on!

Mother VII

Through the nine days that have passed since mother was taken to Hospital, I have driven several of the many possible routes from Dollar to Dunfermline, all of which have been pleasant forty-five minute rural rides. Attractive at all times, presently the scenery has been made more so with fresh spring dressings of blossom and new leaf. Exciting plays of light on steeply undulating, now shower-soaked, now sun-drenched landscape emphasise colour and form under chaotically dynamic skies. The journeys to and from the hospital have provided something of a healing unguent to their purpose.
For several days, post the operation to mend her hip, I have wondered why the professionals at the hospital thought it appropriate to put my mother through the rigours of an operation. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday she was insensible, still affected by anaesthetic; on both Wednesday and Thursday she slept through my visits. I quite expected that each time I parted from her would be the last time I would see her alive. Yesterday I found her awake and sitting up in bed. As well as the intravenous saline drip she has had since she arrived at the hospital, she is now being fed nutritious drinks through a feed pipe into her stomach which her doctors, one senior and two junior, and her dietician hope will help to strengthen her enough for her to be able to resume normal feeding. I had a meeting with the two junior doctors who appeared to believe that a full physical recovery is possible. They also told me that mother has had no painkilling drugs for four days; as she feels no pain she has no need of them! The evidence of my - admittedly layman's - eyes causes me to dispute the doctors' optimism. If they are proved to be correct I shall be amazed but, if nothing can reverse her dementia, I wonder what is to be gained for mother by her making a full physical recovery. Restored to full physical health she will be in excellent condition to meet with yet another accident and begin over a painful process of hospitalisation and repair. Alternatively she will be condemned to a life so physically restricted as to make the care and attention she is presently receiving rather pointless.
In solving so many of the problems of how to keep us alive, our technically-more-capable-than-ever-before society seems to have created some interesting moral difficulties. I quite understand that if the means are available they will be, perhaps must be, employed but I do but question, in many cases, to what ends?

Mother VI

Last Saturday morning my mother had an operation to replace 'half of her hip'. The operation is normally effected with epidural anaesthetic but because mother was 'too fidgety' the epidural had to be supplemented with a general anaesthetic. She remained semi-conscious for the remainder of the day so I did not visit the hospital on Saturday. I visited her on Sunday afternoon when, although she seemed to be comfortable and was able to communicate with me, she was still very drowsy. Today she seems to be clear of anaesthetic and although making no sense she was speaking clearly throughout the visit.
This most recent fall and subsequent surgery has considerably altered mother's circumstances. For the time being there is no apparent reason why she should not make a full recovery from her operation but I now doubt that 'Ashley House' have the necessary facilities to serve her future needs which, I believe, will need a bigger nursing element than a non-nursing care home can offer. As far as getting mother satisfactorily settled the position seems not to have altered from that of eight weeks ago.

Mother V

A doctor from Dunfermline hospital phoned this morning to report the latest news concerning mother. X-rays and scans indicate that she has a fractured pelvis, a case for surgery which, subject to further discussions amongst the hospital personnel concerned, will be effected during today My sister and I can, apparently, veto this operation but to do so will condemn our mother to living out whatever is left of her life bedridden, dependent on painkilling drugs but far from necessarily free of suffering, and at high risk of a fatal chest infection. Reasoning that the professionals involved consider that she has a good chance of surviving an operation, my sister and I have raised no objection. It is painful to think of any fellow being suffering, particularly so when it is someone to whom one has had close association for life.
I feel the pains from the horns of a dilemma stabbing into me; the choices concerning mother's future. On the one hand if we allow nature freedom to take its course mother will be saved a good deal of short-term inconvenience but be at risk of having to endure a painful, albeit probably early, end to her days. On the other hand, by employing currently available surgical skills and clinical technology, she can be repaired to continue, with appropriate intensive care, to live the demented semi-life she has been living certainly since her accident last December and in increasing degrees for many months before that, more or less indefinitely .
My exposure, through mother's trials and tribulations, to the problems of old age and dementia has made me aware of the colossal scale of the problem and its cost to our society. How long, I wonder, until those presently canvassing for electoral support based largely on promises of least painful expenditure cuts will wake up to the savings to taxpayers to be made through quietly and efficiently disposing of the demented elderly? Presently nearer to seventy than to sixty; my concern, I believe, is justifiable!

Mother IV

At 3p.m.last Monday, mother's 91st birthday, there was to have been a meeting at 'Ashley House' involving all parties concerned with mother's well being and her future. On Monday morning the management of 'Ashley House' advised my sister and me that the meeting was postponed until the following day. On Tuesday morning they further advised us that the representative from Social Services, a key advisor, had been called away urgently. As she could not be present the meeting must be abandoned until further notice; there would be telephone contact on Friday to make a new arrangement.
On Wednesday morning mother fell from her bed, dislocating her hip. Presently she is 'comfortable' in Dunfermline Hospital. This accident has put things right back to where they were a month ago. All I can be sure of is that I shall need to be here for at least another few weeks.

Mother III

Yesterday evening I was housebound. For the better part of the day wet snow had been falling here, driven by gale force winds. A few miles along the road to Perth the landscape is once again blanketed with snow. I long to be home in Messinia. My daughter, Annabelle, had been here for the weekend together with her partner, Ben, and their two toddler daughters who we took this morning to visit their great-grandmother at Ashley House. Although she had no idea of who the children were, their being there brought a rare smile to mother's face. The visit had brought her some pleasure so was worthwhile. I can not know what the children, Lara three and Poppy twenty months, made of the frail old lady they know as 'Nan' and wonder what, if any, picturess of her and of Ashley House may have been implanted into the childrens' minds; I wonder if, for those who suffer dementia towards the end of long lives, such misty images latent from very early childhood, restore to become part of a kaleidoscope of shadowy thoughts , floating in time and space, that seem to be all that the condition permits to be in their daily experience of life.

Mother II

Yesterday morning I made a visit to Ashley House Care Home to visit my mother. My sister and I have been concerned that too much visiting at this early stage might not help mother to settle into her new home so yesterday's visit was my first since last Friday. Mum was much calmer than she had been during my last visit but seemed very weary. She lay almost corpse like on her bed with closed eyes deeply sunk into darkened sockets but she roused herself well enough to shuffle along to the dining room for lunch. She was quite unaware that I had not visited since Friday or that my sister, who had visited on Sunday, had visited at all. To know that many people are ending their lives in this way disturbs me; to see my own mother in this condition is particularly distressing. I think I know what would make her happy but can do nothing to give it to her. I believe she dreams of going home to a place, filled with long dead friends and family, somewhere between where she lived with her parents and siblings and the place in which she lived with our father when my sister and I were children.

Mother

Last Thursday my mother was transferred from Alloa Community Hospital to Ashley House Care Home at Milnathort. When I visited her there yesterday she said nothing about the move; she could remember nothing. Nor did she say anything about how she liked or disliked her new surroundings. She knew only that she did not want to be where she was; she wanted to be back in her own home. Dementia, I now understand, manifests in many different ways. In my mother's case it began to develop a longish while ago, perhaps two years or more, but the earliest symptoms were either ignored or taken as the kind of odd behavioural quirks to which most of us are occasionally subject. Although she continued to live alone, keeping herself and her home in good order her behaviour became increasingly odd and out of character. Last December she fell either off of or from her bed. The following morning my sister, who lives nearby and called daily on our mother, could get neither response to her calls nor entry into the house so was obliged to call the police to force entry. They found mum on her bedroom floor not seriously injured, she had fractured bones in an arm and in her shoulder, but apparently not in pain and quite unaware of her predicament; she was immediately transferred by ambulance to a local hospital.
The incident marked a rapid acceleration of her mental condition to one that the health service considered inappropriate to living alone. Since then she has been held in the dementia wing at the Alloa Community Hospital pending a place being found for her at an appropriate care home.
Alloa Community Hospital is, if a touch NHS spartan, pleasant and comfortable but it was a great shock to me to see my mother there. When I had last seen her, in December, she was behaving quite strangely and saying odd things but seemed to know what was going on around her. When I next saw her, two months later, her conversation made little sense at all and she looked so very frail and weak. I was also shocked to realise that she was but one of a dozen or more folk in her ward in similar circumstances albeit of various ages. For the first time in my life I was aware of the colossal scale of the problem of looking after people who are no longer able to look after themselves. This has caused me to consider, again for the first time in my life, what the future might be holding in store for me!
'Ashley House' is also pleasant and comfortable and far from spartan; it has the ambience of a multi-starred hotel. The residents are more of a mixed bag, most seemingly suffering from no more than physical frailty. With time perhaps mother will settle to enjoying, as far as she is able, her life at 'Ashley House; I hope so. As I was typing that I was increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of even thinking it. To live in such a place with its nauseous niceness, its entertainments and organised outings would, for me, be hell on earth. Why should it be any different for my mother?