The nurse we had spoken to as we left had said that returning "after nine..." might be best because the shifts would be changing at eight o'clock, but it is very hard to sleep (at least it is for me...) when you think that the telephone might ring at any second bringing bad news. This was one of the many reasons that a career in the Fire Service would not have been for me; I could never settle, never relax if there was a bloody great bell in the room which could ring at any time.
So Saturday dawned and, against all the odds, my mother had made it into yet another day.
After grabbing one of those breakfasts you force yourself to have because you never know when you might get to eat again, we arrived at the hospital where I spent the next thirteen hours at mum's bedside watching her as she played "Knock Down Ginger" with Death's Door but eventually survived another day which ended with me almost feeling too exhausted to make the long drive home.
During that time we'd gone through such extremes that I need to write some of them down in order to remind myself on which day what particular thing happened.
There were extreme lows and, at at least two points in the day I was holding her hand as she seemed to be drifting away, and her mind was dredging up confused memories that were from weeks and months ago, or false memories of both her church ministers smoking, or thinking that my bedside vigil yesterday had been done by a completely different person which did make me, perhaps in an unkindly way, wonder why I had actually bothered.
There there were two separate half hours of extreme lucidity and action when you wondered whether she was actually ill at all, such was the flow of words and conversation about all manner of things, and we chatted away nineteen to the dozen, sometimes becoming so exasperating that she might even provoke the odd sharp retort, before the weariness started to come over her again and then cycle of loose bowels, not being comfortable, wanting to rest and wanting but not wanting to eat and drink would start again.
A doctor came by at one point in the morning to talk to us frankly about mum's prospects which were not good, and depended upon which of three different problems that they ought to be focussing upon, and later on, during the evening, another duty doctor was called at one point to assess certain symptoms that she thought she had, but it seemed another stroke, at least, had so far been avoided.
By the time I'd held her hand for several hours, it became obvious that she had decided to hang on to this world for at least another day and that all of these efforts to keep her calm and soothed and as happy as we could would mean that we'd be digging down deep again to mine them all over again on another day, and perhaps another and another.
Meanwhile, events on the ward progressed as they will. One patient died during the morning and we almost got THE talk from her doctor as it was us, "the wrong family" who were hogging the "Relative's Room" (with its massive picture of a snail) at that point as our mother was being cleaned up again. Later that day, various doors were sensitively closed as the body was transported away, and it might be flippant to suggest it, but it seemed as if the ward tried its best to limit itself to no more than one of those to any given day.
The nurses remained kind, and the one who came to plump mum's pillows before she came on duty seemed to have a particularly good relationship with mum, although her suggestion that she ought to get a "muscly man" to move her did prompt the second of mum's half-hours of excited activity that day. The first had come after hours of dozing when she suddenly sat bolt upright and bellowed "Nurse! Oh, Nurse!!!" at the top of her lungs, almost frightening us half to death ourselves because it was just so sudden and out of nowhere.
Wards are not quiet places and, when you're trying to get someone to drift off into a restful sleep, or trying to get them to access any happy thoughts that they insist they don't have (even though two of them are supposedly sitting right with her...) the noises of the phones bringing and the shredder chugging scan seem sometimes to be heightened to us at least, although it was the pump in her drip that mum thought was someone playing the radio far too loud.
My sister and I drifted off home after another frustrating hour around the time mum's sleeping pill was administered, with my sister telling me that I've got far more patience with mum than she has but this, I reminded her, was just because I'm convinced that almost every moment is going to be the last and I'm trying to make sure that whenever that moment comes it is as pleasant a moment as it can be, and that I'm convinced that there is no point raking up old wounds and any unpleasantness at a time like this.
I don't know, maybe I still romanticise the process myself. Maybe I think that I'll learn something from this strange transition from being in a state of living to otherwise. Maybe I'm hoping for some insight, even though I know that nobody ever gets it. Perhaps I'm just wondering whether any fond memories of her parents or her husband might yet emerge from the fog, because, as things have looked grim at times, it has looked as if her final thoughts might be of her late, lamented most recent gentleman friend, or of a bowel movement, neither of which would be the memory I would most like to draw from this long, protracted and sad experience.
After grabbing one of those breakfasts you force yourself to have because you never know when you might get to eat again, we arrived at the hospital where I spent the next thirteen hours at mum's bedside watching her as she played "Knock Down Ginger" with Death's Door but eventually survived another day which ended with me almost feeling too exhausted to make the long drive home.
During that time we'd gone through such extremes that I need to write some of them down in order to remind myself on which day what particular thing happened.
There were extreme lows and, at at least two points in the day I was holding her hand as she seemed to be drifting away, and her mind was dredging up confused memories that were from weeks and months ago, or false memories of both her church ministers smoking, or thinking that my bedside vigil yesterday had been done by a completely different person which did make me, perhaps in an unkindly way, wonder why I had actually bothered.
There there were two separate half hours of extreme lucidity and action when you wondered whether she was actually ill at all, such was the flow of words and conversation about all manner of things, and we chatted away nineteen to the dozen, sometimes becoming so exasperating that she might even provoke the odd sharp retort, before the weariness started to come over her again and then cycle of loose bowels, not being comfortable, wanting to rest and wanting but not wanting to eat and drink would start again.
A doctor came by at one point in the morning to talk to us frankly about mum's prospects which were not good, and depended upon which of three different problems that they ought to be focussing upon, and later on, during the evening, another duty doctor was called at one point to assess certain symptoms that she thought she had, but it seemed another stroke, at least, had so far been avoided.
By the time I'd held her hand for several hours, it became obvious that she had decided to hang on to this world for at least another day and that all of these efforts to keep her calm and soothed and as happy as we could would mean that we'd be digging down deep again to mine them all over again on another day, and perhaps another and another.
Meanwhile, events on the ward progressed as they will. One patient died during the morning and we almost got THE talk from her doctor as it was us, "the wrong family" who were hogging the "Relative's Room" (with its massive picture of a snail) at that point as our mother was being cleaned up again. Later that day, various doors were sensitively closed as the body was transported away, and it might be flippant to suggest it, but it seemed as if the ward tried its best to limit itself to no more than one of those to any given day.
The nurses remained kind, and the one who came to plump mum's pillows before she came on duty seemed to have a particularly good relationship with mum, although her suggestion that she ought to get a "muscly man" to move her did prompt the second of mum's half-hours of excited activity that day. The first had come after hours of dozing when she suddenly sat bolt upright and bellowed "Nurse! Oh, Nurse!!!" at the top of her lungs, almost frightening us half to death ourselves because it was just so sudden and out of nowhere.
Wards are not quiet places and, when you're trying to get someone to drift off into a restful sleep, or trying to get them to access any happy thoughts that they insist they don't have (even though two of them are supposedly sitting right with her...) the noises of the phones bringing and the shredder chugging scan seem sometimes to be heightened to us at least, although it was the pump in her drip that mum thought was someone playing the radio far too loud.
My sister and I drifted off home after another frustrating hour around the time mum's sleeping pill was administered, with my sister telling me that I've got far more patience with mum than she has but this, I reminded her, was just because I'm convinced that almost every moment is going to be the last and I'm trying to make sure that whenever that moment comes it is as pleasant a moment as it can be, and that I'm convinced that there is no point raking up old wounds and any unpleasantness at a time like this.
I don't know, maybe I still romanticise the process myself. Maybe I think that I'll learn something from this strange transition from being in a state of living to otherwise. Maybe I'm hoping for some insight, even though I know that nobody ever gets it. Perhaps I'm just wondering whether any fond memories of her parents or her husband might yet emerge from the fog, because, as things have looked grim at times, it has looked as if her final thoughts might be of her late, lamented most recent gentleman friend, or of a bowel movement, neither of which would be the memory I would most like to draw from this long, protracted and sad experience.
Still reading.
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