As a girl, Mum was a dancer
This morning, I was sorting through my cache of hotmail e-mails that go back seventeen years. I came across this message that I sent to my brother Paul on September 2nd, 2007. At that time, our mother Doreen was residing in a residential home in Beverley and reaching the end of her life. She died just eleven days later at the age of eighty six.
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Dear Paul,
We all went over to see mum in Beverley today - me, Shirley, Ian and Frances. We had Sunday lunch in "The Rose and Crown" - it scored a measly five out of ten on my edibility gauge.
Mum was asleep when we got to her room - lying on her new bed which has sides and electronic vibration through a super-duper hospital mattress. This is for her painful bed sores and especially her painful feet. She's probably drugged up too. I doubt that she is ever out of that bed now and wonder if she will ever make it to her chair again. Her "Sunday Express" was unread like Saturday's "Daily Express". She lives in a kind of slumber - fading away with only occasional flashes of her old spirit.
As on previous visits she asked me how old she is. She had no recollection of Katie's visit in mid-August and was surprised that Shirley and I had been to France. We bought her a little souvenir in Lourdes but getting it out of the little paper bag seemed like a test in the Krypton Factor. In the end we had to get it out for her and she stared for a moment at the back of it as if not realising where the front of it was. I put a new picture on her wall of some bluebell woods and rather sweetly she said it reminded her of her childhood in Rawmarsh when she would walk to her bluebell wood past the "fever hospital".
I asked her about "When you have passed away" and she confirmed - no religion - just a simple ceremony at the crematorium. I think I am going to get in touch with the British Humanist Society who will conduct funeral ceremonies now. Maybe one of their reps might visit mum in Westwood Park and get to know her a little before the inevitable end.
She was very thirsty when we were there and seemed to appreciate the non-alcoholic drinks we plied her with. I don't think the staff have time to persuade and cajole residents to eat and drink.
It's very nearly twenty eight years since Dad died - Sept 14th 1979. If there were a heaven I would think that Mum will be meeting up with him again before this month is out. She's so weak and thin and sleepy.
Neil
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On the day that she died I was at work and what happened that day still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Apparently, the residential home phoned the school where I worked at ten in the morning. They urgently wanted to tell me that Mum was fading fast and perhaps I might like to get over to Beverley to be with her. Beverley is about an hour and twenty minutes by car from Sheffield. Mum died at around two thirty that day. However, I never got the phone message until four o'clock when I just happened to be at the school reception desk.
Judith, the lead receptionist told me she had received the phone message but I did not pick up my classroom phone when she tried my number. I said, "I am not always in my classroom. I may have been elsewhere! Why didn't you send someone to find me?" Judith apologised most profusely but it was far too late. Mum was already dead.
Afterwards, I thought of all the times I had "gone the extra mile" for that school and this seemed to be my reward - denied the opportunity to be at my mother's bedside when she died. The manager of Westwood Park residential home later told me that she had stressed to Judith that it was an important call and wondered why I hadn't phoned back.
Sad memories. My Dad never came to terms that he wasn't with his eleven year old daughter when she left us.
ReplyDeleteThe state my mother was in... she wouldn't have even known I was there. I admit that it would have been for me.
DeleteI'm so sorry that happened to you. I stayed at work one time when Katie's aides had to take her to emergency, never again. She's more important than work. I imagine you were angry for a long time, to not pass on that very important message is beyond the pale. She couldn't have gotten up off her bottom to track you down?
ReplyDeleteShe didn't need to leave reception.
Delete1. She could have scribbled a note for a pupil "runner" to bring to me. There were always two on duty.
2. She could have kept phoning me.
3. She could have told any passing teacher.
Your mum was lovely. That non-action by the receptionist is the unforgivable kind.
ReplyDeleteJudith may have had many matters to process that morning and she was not the sharpest pencil in the box.
DeleteShame on that receptionist not locating you for the phone! It seems the staff not having time to cajole the patients to eat and drink is common everywhere. It's one area where maybe volunteers could make a difference, they'd have the time to sit and talk and help with food and drinks.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I saw my mother in the home, I helped her to drink water or orange cordial. Thing is that drinking = urination = extra work for the staff.
DeleteI've been with a couple loved ones in their last days in elderly care places. My grandfather, who was half blind and nearly deaf by that point, essentially just stopped eating one day and starved himself to death. He was 90 at that point, tired of living and not wanting to linger the rest of his days in such a place so I never begrudged him for doing that, but it really rubbed me wrong how cavalier the staff was about what he was doing. They never said a word to us about him not eating despite it being fairly obvious that he wasn't. Still, I do think such places have their spot in society and it was probably more humane than any care I would have been able to offer him in his last days while I was busy with my family and life.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened with the school was unfortunate and it would leave me feeling a bit bitter too.
Sorry your grandfather departed in that manner but it is interesting that there was no official communication from the home.
DeleteThat's pretty awful but I always look for reasons why such things happen as you not being notified. Could the hospital have actually told staff why you were needed? Was the school aware that you might need to be called away and the reason? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. You missed your chance to say goodbye, whoever was responsible. Not nearly as grave, but I was once accused of not inviting my stepfather's daughter to the scattering of his and my mother's ashes. His other daughter who I have regular communication with, failed to pass on the message to the rest of his children. Take nothing for granted, make no assumptions and don't trust people in such serious situations.
ReplyDeleteJudith knew that I might get an important call from the residential home. She was, as we say in Yorkshire, "a bit thick".
DeleteWhat a caring son you were to your mum.
ReplyDeleteI will never go in a nursing home, I have a contingency plan.
I used to work two nights a week in one when our children were small. I saw things that still upset me.
The fact that you were not given the message appalls me.
It was appalling. I was denied closure and the making of an important memory.
DeleteIt can‘t be changed, but it won‘t be forgotten and forgiven, either.
ReplyDeleteYour account of your mother‘s last days is very poignant as we have only recently had the 2nd anniversary of my Dad‘s death, and my Mum is 80 now. She‘s better than she‘s been in years, but of course she won‘t be around forever.
I wasn‘t with my husband when he died, nor with my Dad, but to this day I am glad that Steve and I hugged and kissed that day before I left for work, and that all ofnus were with Dad the afternoon before he died in the small hours of that night.
Healing memories that make the closure more bearable.
DeleteI expect many of us feel that sense of being robbed of the opportunity to be with a loved one at their death, for so many different reasons.
ReplyDeleteI was in New Zealand when my dad died, earlier than expected, and I still feel guilt that I was not there.
Unlike you, I could have had proper "closure" but through her incompetence Judith denied me that.
DeleteA sad moment but it happened. The receptionist was at fault but all this has passed and your mother would have remembered your previous visits and perhaps looked at the bluebell picture and had happy memories of childhood.
ReplyDeleteThat is true but I suppose that I am thinking more about me and the denial of "closure" - a proper ending.
DeleteSo sorry to read this. How on earth could that receptionist not go and look for you with news like that? That is totally unforgivable.
ReplyDeleteShe did not need to leave her post at the reception desk. She could have scribbled a note for a pupil runner to bring to me. And she could have tried again on the phone!
DeleteI missed a phone call when my dad died, but I doubt I could have arrived in time anyway. So, selfishly, I'm rather glad I didn't need to go that day. My cousins who is a nurse, and had also seen her own dad after he died, said not to see the body because it was not a memory I would wand to have, and I think that was right. I was however present when my mum died at home, and pleased to be so because I was able to help my dad. These moments stay with us all our lives, and it is sad yours is such a bitter one.
DeleteBereavement is awful unfinished business for us all. Yours was made even worse.
ReplyDeleteSo sad the school, and receptionist, somehow couldn't be bothered.
ReplyDeleteThat is another line in the long list of why I don't like people.
I am left wondering why the residential home didn't call the school at least one more time when you didn't call back. Your mother may have chosen to die when family wasn't there. I have seen this happen. But I can truly understand why you feel undone about it all to this day.
ReplyDeleteSadness amplified.
ReplyDeleteI find myself sitting here filled with venom for your school receptionist. She should have personally run through the halls hunting you down after receiving that phone message. I'm so sorry you had to experience that. As Northsider said, "Bereavement is an awful unfinished business..."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had so many moments with your Mom and, hopefully, many happy memories to comfort you then and now, Neil. What a sweet photo of her!
ReplyDeleteIt's cool that you saved your e-mails going back that far. I also have an e-mail archive but I never look at it. Maybe I should! That does seem a rather grievous lapse on Judith's part.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely shocking and pardon my language but "Bloo*y Judith! This brought memories of me receiving a phone call from a neighbour informing me mum's curtains were shut! The headteacher took me straight away and my fears were confirmed - mum had died in her sleep. We are just up the coast, near Whitby shortly moving to Guisborough but we often tootle to Beverley on our motorbike - well not much biking this year as we've been decluttering!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's never easy, and we probably never forget. I wasn't present at the very moment of death for either of my parents. With mum it was sudden (she had a stroke at home and died shortly after arriving by ambulance in the hospital); with dad on the other hand a long process with more than one "close call" along the way. With a slightly different flow of information I "might" perhaps have been able to be there at the very end for one or both of them. But it did not turn out that way, and I'll never know, so I never saw any point in blaming anyone (myself included).
I'm so sorry that happened, Neil.
ReplyDeleteWe find those last moments so sacred and it's such a loss to miss them.
Your letter to Paul is so descriptive and stylish. In a similar situation my words would be much closer to the way I speak.
I'm sorry the anger and pain of that memory still haunt you. Being 'a bit thick' doesn't preempt empathy.
ReplyDelete