Hymn

Two faced

Gran saw me enter the ward and smiled.  As she caught sight of Mum her face contorted into the miserable wizened mask she keeps for show.  In a moment the positive frustration of being bored by the hospital disappeared and was replaced by the crushingly familiar whinging.  I reassured Mum that with her, Gran could relax enough to be honest.  In my heart it felt like the old woman’s most vicious kind of manipulation. 

Glad tidings

Why do so many mothers want to share their most miserable pregnancy and birth experiences with those expecting?  If we have to hear about any more stitches, forceps, drugs, pain, haemorrhoids, weight gain, tit loss, sleep deprivation or utter destruction of any life apart from baby, I swear I’ll punch someone.  What purpose does this woe serve? Encouraging warning or damning curse? I wonder.

Sheep in wolf's clothing

Tonight, with my Mum finally away convalescing and after lying in a ward for three days, Nana has become a gentle and frail old lady.  We talked about how her sister went deaf in one ear after contracting typhoid at the age of 21, about baby, about mum being poorly and unappreciated, about all sorts of stuff.  It was nice.

Pyrrhic victory

She finally managed to do it.  She got herself dressed (after a day of being too poorly) and, knowing Mum was out, pressed her alarm.  My Nana is in hospital.  Already the nurses have confessed to finding nothing wrong with her but her panting and unresponsiveness are enough to keep them checking.  I wonder if Nana knows she’s left home for good?

Woodn't

Uncharacteristically, I hadn’t rushed in.  I’d let the wood ‘acclimatise’ to the room.  And now after a week’s settling, I am pleased to see every single damned blank was warped beyond use. If I had a wood burning fire, I’d have some very expensive fuel, as it is, I’ve just seen £50 of timber not go up in smoke.

Get Up

Nana has pressed her alarm button every day this week.  Sometimes more than once.  Always with a different complaint: feeling sick, can’t breath, pain here or there.  Every time the same response from the Emergency Doctor or Paramedics: there’s nothing untoward for a woman in nineties - on the contrary she’s remarkably healthy for her age.  Their shared and repeated diagnosis does no good.  Still she complains.  Today she was too weak to get up.  Too weak to eat.  Too weak to talk.  The Doctor summoned by my mum, summoned by the Home Help could find nothing wrong.  Again.  “But I want to go to hospital.”
‘But there’s nothing to warrant it.’ 
“But I want to go to hospital.”
Slowly the outsiders inevitably must abandon my mum to her fate.  All day she climbs the stairs at her mother’s beck and call.  No longer too weak to talk.  Or eat. But much, much too weak to get up.
Exhausted, my mum leaves an hour before the Evening Help arrives.
By the time, the Help arrives, my Nana is in her dressing gown sitting watching television downstairs.

Bookcase

It started as such a simple proposition: build a single bookcase instead of the multitude that currently litter the soon-to-be-nursery.  For once, I have prepared plans and soon the Versailles of Bookcases has materialised - on paper at least.  This is an opportunity to create, to build, to use Power Tools.  I am unstoppable.

Woeful Oblivion

It was always a hopelessly brave decision by my Mum to have my Gran stay over Christmas.  Most of the time when she’s not complaining of feeling unwell or wishing she was dead, my Nana sleeps.  After the last few days of ceaseless complaining, she’s reduced my Mum to a sobbing wreck.  What’s unusually horrific though is my Gran’s seeming oblivion to her weeping daughter just a few feet away.  Even when the Emergency Doctor is there - called out needlessly again.  The insensitivity is utterly astonishing and completely demoralising.