Hymn

Last Post

“Hello” said the smart silver-haired lady with easy familiarity, “I am so sorry.”  An old man nodded with gentle kindness.  I didn’t quite not recognise them.  Then I understood as she took her place at the church organ.  Of course, she’s played at Grandad’s funeral.  She was adding her full stop to the generation.

I was surprised and quietly touched by the filling pews.  Not just Nana’s few remaining peers but an age group down, her children and her neighbours’ children, and those there to support my mum.  Nana’s grandchildren.  And great-grandchildren.  Beautiful little S, beaming brightly in contrast to the sobriety of the day.  Her infectious gaiety lifting spirits in a terribly un-English way: making us feel happier and sadder and guilty for the conflict all at the same time.

It was a slightly odd affair though.  No coffin.  No Urn.  No focus of sorrow.  In many ways it all felt quite abstract.  She’d decided, many years ago, to donate her body to Medical Research.  A very noble gesture, to be sure, but driven more by hard nosed financial considerations than a desire for the advancement of mankind: “Don’t want to go wasting good money on a coffin,” she’d said in her typically unsentimental way, “only to burn it.”  It’s a fair point.  It’s not cheap to die these days.

Of course, all that business had taken place with unseemly haste after the death.  We had forty-eight unrefrigerated hours before the body was deemed unusable.  In that time, there’d been a surreal and distasteful discussion with the authorities about the quality of the corpse and whether it was good enough to cut up.  Not an easy conversation to have before she was actually cold.  But then, she, her spirit, her soul, her essence, call it what you will, had gone with that last breath.  Perhaps earlier.  It was just a shell now.  Still, I pity the poor students that find that wrinkled sagging bag of bones in their locker for the next three years.  And in an ever-diminishing form.  It would put me off doctoring, I can tell you.

And what was left were memories.  I loved my Nana.  But she was a miserable old cow most of these last years.  Tough as old boots and as stubborn as a mule.  And a terrible bully to my mum.  But my Nana, nevertheless.  Familiar strangers remembered her smile.  And she did smile.  A lot.  Admittedly, most of the time it was because, being deaf as a coot, she responded to almost any inquiry with a polite grin.  But a happy face nonetheless.  Her son was pleased that she was remembered thus.  And so I am.

I’ve sometimes wondered if all this was appropriate for a public forum.  I think it is.  This is the last post for her.  Goodnight Nana.  God Bless.

Clear

This was our first and only opportunity to get it sorted.  It needed to be done before Christmas.  For Mum’s sake.

Nothing had changed for nearly two weeks.  No-one had been in and no-one had touched anything.  Her sugar bowl was on the table ready for breakfast, along with her grapefruit bowl, her best hat and pin all ready for Church, cards ready for writing.  I don’t know what else I’d expected: in the end, everything happened so quickly and since then there’s been so much to do. 

I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve cleared Nana’s things this year.  Of course, most went as she shifted into sheltered accommodation.  But this was her home now; made to feel as much like the Old Place as possible with her pictures and photos, her dresser, tables and chairs. A bewildering number of hats and coats.  She always insisted on putting on her best clothes when she went out - even the Family Doctor remembered her as always looking smart and part of such a handsome couple with Grandad.  And, of course, her personal things.  An ever-decreasing spiral of possessions.  At each point she shed a little more.  This was all that was left.

We boxed and packed away the Keepsakes and Precious, bagged the Donations and threw the Unsaveables away.  Throwing things away was the hardest even the valueless.  We’re a family of terrible hoarders and I fully expect to unwrap some of these same things when the next generation passes.

We wheeled out the remnants in relays.  A cruel number of trips through the Home.  The remaining residents, imprisoned by infirmity, watched us in silence.  Their tired eyes betrayed resignation and foreboding: each wondering who’d be next, unceremoniously evicted by time.

“Merry Christmas” wished the staff before asking if we knew of anyone else who might want to stay.  I didn’t.

Line

Tonight it was me trying to talk on the train.  Trying to have a conversation on the phone.  Trying to console my mum through the static and the interruptions.  Fucking useless signal.  Nana died at a quarter to four as I was on my way to the hospital. 

Stroke

S cried and the phone rang.  Calls in the early hours are rarely a Good Thing and this one didn’t break the rule.  I was at the hospital within the hour. 

I knew the woman in the crib was her but today she was unrecognisable.  It wasn’t the oxygen mask or the In and Out tubes, the missing false teeth and glasses or her messed up silver hair, today her face was red and swollen and sagging.  She fidgeted.  But only down one side.  Not in a nervous controlled manner, like impatiently tapping fingers on a table, but in a primitive, unrestrained and random way.  I held her hand but she didn’t hold mine.  The skin was surprisingly smooth and soft.  Her wedding ring still looked brand new.  The skin on her arms and legs looked like old parchment though; pearl white but carrying crimson blotches of anonymous bruises.  Here and there she was punctured by assorted devices, some connected some not.

In the bed opposite a woman lay with her husband sat beside: her suffering the constant attention of doctors and nurses; him watching the television and cocooned with headphones.

Though deaf, I whispered “It’ll be all right”, not knowing what that meant.  I choked as I told her we loved her.  I couldn’t complete the sentence about Baby’s first tooth.  They say the unconscious can hear though, don’t they?  But every sentence of small talk took on unwieldy significance making it impossible to utter.

The agitated old lady in the next bed continually pulled out the tubes and monitor leads and called for help.  She took off her gown and lay droopy and wrinkled and naked before us.  We pulled the curtains around her until the nurses came.

Our cubicle was noisy too.  The Sister showed us how to silence the alarm on her monitors as her vital signs so frequently went outside normal limits it was impractical to check every time.  We watched the numbers change and the heart beat line redraw itself.  Beneath all the bleeps and buzzes, Nana rasped for each breath.  Each one made the sound of ice cracking over distant thunder.  Each one was a reflex struggle, a body in mortal combat.  Periodically, nurses came to drain the fluid from her lungs.  In between I cleaned her mask of the sludge she exhaled.  Nasty yellow froth that reminded me of expanding foam filler.  The mask seemed to irritate her; each time I took it off to wipe her nose and mouth and chin, she calmed ever so slightly.

I stroked her head but mostly we sat and watched and waited. 

I left past a man standing outside in the rain having a quiet cigarette.  He wore a dressing gown and slippers.  He had his wheeled saline drip still attached.

Clean Hands

The Old Place is nearly gone.  Sold to pay the fees of the nursing home.  Not the parental gift as intended.  Grandad would be unspeakably sad if he knew.  Even though he’d understand that there’s no alternative.  The garage is the last redoubt.  My Old Car has languished there ever since I moved South.  Age took their car from them so they let mine sleep at the end of the garden in the simple concrete prefab.  Like a cork, it has plugged the door leaving the place largely intact from the time Grandad died.  Nana never came here: it was always His space.  Of course it was, he was the Man of the House.  His workbench and cherished tools.  He built my toy lorry here.  Paintpots and brushes.  Spare tins still full from the last time he painted the house.  Kept for touching up the sills.  The cobbling implements he’d inherited from his father.  He fixed Nana’s shoes with them.  Everything still there.  All meticulously cared for. 

My Old Car is a sad looking affair.  It’s sunflower yellow paintwork heavily disguised by dust and dirt.  Mice have made a plush home from the upholstery.  The tyres are quite deflated.  Of course, it won’t start after all this time so we push it, unceremoniously, to the main road and a waiting trailer. 

I wanted to rinse my hands before making the journey home.  I’d bypassed the house to retrieve the car.  I went in through the back door.  Through the bright plastic curtain of streamers that hung over the opening.  The ribbons that would flutter gently when they had the door ajar and always threatened to ensnare a running grandchild like a cobweb.  Of course, there was never a single cobweb in the house. 

There’s not much left inside.  Mostly stripped for local charities; museums even.  But the water’s still on.  And next to kitchen sink, a bar of soap.  Imperial Leather.  Always stuck me as the height of sophistication.  Luxurious.  It has such a perfume.  When I stayed over, I’d go to bed smelling of it.  It was my last waking scent.

New people are coming.  This will all be theirs soon.  Our finger tips are slipping.  At least we have clean hands.

Cosy

She grows frailer each time we see her.  The more she’s looked after, the less strength she has, it seems.  I made her a cup of tea; used her favourite cosy and her best cups and saucers.  We gave her S to hold and coo over.  She smiled.  We took her to have her tea.  Only then did I realise where I’d seen her ill-fitting cardigan before.  It was grandad’s.

What's Left

The house is slowly emptying: first Grandad died, then so did Nana’s heart, she’s not long moved but the rooms are dusty for the first time since 1936 and the flocks of sparrows in the garden are no more.  It’s just the objects left.  Stuff soaked in memories; some mine, some theirs.  The furniture I transformed into spaceships as a child, battered board games from Sunday afternoons, crystal cruet sets for our salad teas, flickers of images of staying over.  On my own.  In ‘my’ room.  And her hats and pieces of jewellery and his paintings and silver cigarette cases and lighters (he smoked?!) and pristine implements and utensils from the 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, wedding gifts, all still shiny and in perfect working order, the mangle, the Singer, the boxed electric iron sitting next to the entirely solid one, a steel, two coronation’s worth of memorabilia.  And the private things, the photographs, her scrapbooks of greeting cards and the cards she’s kept that proclaim a lifetime’s devotion: always starting “My Darling Wife” and closing “Your Everloving Hubby, Reg xxx.”  And we sift through what’s left, looking for the important things, the things that matter and we’re profoundly disappointed by the inadequacy of them to represent that Home.  Just ghosts.  Just echoes of our lives there.

Passing

I’m stunned.  A close family friend has died.  Died but no-one says “dead” do they?  Passed Away.  She wasn’t old.  At least she wasn’t Dying Age.  Then my concept of age is growing more confused the older I am.  Things don’t fit into the neat categories of youth anymore.  She wasn’t old like Grandad.  That hurt because I would miss him, not because it wasn’t fair or that he’d been married for so long.  But she’s gone.  Three weeks since an emergency operation to remove an “infection,” released but a heart attack and readmission later and she’s gone.  Body overwhelmed by the stress of trying to cope.  It buckled and collapsed under the pressure.  But it’s her husband’s loss that I feel most acutely.  What happens now?  When the comforting fog of The Business has gone - what then?  God, what a crushing weight that gaping hole must be.  And, pathetically, I regret her not seeing Baby; not having had them visit more; not having popped in when we were passing nearby.  It’s so easy to be careless in life and how terrible to be reminded this way.  I had to wipe my tears from Baby’s face.

Shit Happens

They warn you about moments like these.  You know, when poo goes everywhere, all over clothes and it’s spread further as you try to clear it up.  And there’s so much of it.  Hardly seems possible from one so small.  But this time it’s not a screaming newborn, it’s a woman in her 90’s shedding real tears.

Making Ends Meet

Nana met her Great Granddaughter today.  I have never seen her so happy.  All she could say as she held Baby in her arms was ‘She’s so beautiful.’  She said it softly and over and over again.  At the opposite ends of life, linked by a few genes and some miraculously improbable bits of luck - a connection unspeakably strong.  I could have watched them together for hours.