Day nineteen of Blog - the end?

I set myself a goal of nineteen days of blogging and this is the last post of the nineteenth day.  Time to decide to stop or not.  I am delighted to have kept it up for the length of time I set myself.  Now the question is do I stop?  Let me know what you think.

It sounds  depressing, the title, but  lifted my spirits a bit!

Death Duties

She was nine months pregnant  with eight  children, in her early forties and her own mother was dying, quietly but remorselessly in her front room.  It was difficult to grasp the size of her burdens.  I remember feeling genuinely appalled.  We’d known Paul and Pat for years. Had even been on holiday with them and their kids.  Their huge home always rang with laughter, babies, toddlers and smiling older children peeked out from wherever you looked.  As new parents ourselves we loved their easy acceptance of family.  Their home was so full there was always room for more and perhaps the fact that you too squeezed in made no difference at all.  How many homes feel like that nowadays? 

When I complained about the tribulations of three children Pat comforted me with, “Yes, three is by far the worst. After three then the older ones can really help and there’s much less work.”   I could sense she meant it and her eight-year-old daughter was more competent with a baby than I.  Years of practice meant she knew when milk/ nappy change/ sleep was required and did it all quickly and quietly while singing a tune popular at the time.  I was amazed at  this home of abundance and would come to marvel and to learn.  So many people are willing to give you loads of advice about bringing up children, but invariably the trained professional who gives it is on her second marriage, and despite knowing all the theory, has the most appalling and obnoxious children imaginable.  To me, Pat managed. She did it and deeds mean much more than words.  Paul, her husband, was a quiet spoken intellectual with a ready smile and impenetrable calm.  How he pursued his studies in that house of children was a mystery he kept to himself. 

On one such visit to their house Pat broke the news that her mother was dying and had moved into their home to spend her last few months.  Pat was hugely pregnant and as she told us of hospitals and doctors and treatments that did no good, the tears fell.  Her mother had been a special women with infinite supplies of love and, although in her eighties, was going to be terribly missed.  We commiserated, distressed that on top of her newly expected baby this burden had been added.  I was telling her how sorry I was, how difficult it must be for her, how I wished I could help in some way.  She answered very clearly and I will never forget what she said, “All my life my mother has given me everything she possibly could and I can’t tell you the honour of having her here in our home now”.  Apparently all her brothers and sisters had fought to be the one chosen as the home she decided to end her days in but she had chosen Pat’s.   People moan and complain over the smallest things. I know I do, but looking at Pat I realized that whatever the circumstances a wonderful metamorphosis can make even pain and loss a sweet lesson of love and gratitude.  Those with grace and heart do it so easily it makes the rest of us look afresh at this world and ourselves.  What we should be could be and what effort we choose to make that transformation. 

When I observed Pat cope, there was no instant miracle, no sudden sainthood granted.  She wiped up shit, fed, laughed, cried and shouted at the moon but she persevered.  She held hands, wiped brows and constantly turned the pillows so that a cool freshness touched the cheek.  She joked and laughed and turned her mother so that bedsores would not form nor bitterness of mind be allowed to linger and fester.  She made it all look so easy and effortless - as if it were all nothing.  Her mother would wait until only Pat was available before asking to be toileted.  Only Pat did it without showing a trace of disgust, a twinge of resentment or a sad sag of the shoulders.  Her mother’s favourite visitor was a sour old gardener whose ritual greeting to the patient was, “God, are ye still here? Someone should do you a favour and shoot you!”  Pat cringed at his bluntness but saw the honesty was a salve for her mother.  Other visitors drained her, like the relatives who came and had long conversations across the bed that somehow did not include the patient, as if talking around or about the patient sufficed.  When her mother could no longer talk, Pat reminded visitors that the sense of hearing is usually the last sense to be lost.  Imagine the horror of lying listening and being unable to communicate, alone in a vulnerable world of gossips and backbiters.  Pat always kept a one-sided conversation going, telling her the good and bad things happening to everyone. 

Touch became their secret signal long after her mother could no longer talk.  One squeeze for no, two for yes, and three for laughter.  The gardener got most of the laughs.  Then the squeezes stopped.  Still she held her mother’s hand for ages and was silent as if trying to hold on to something too precious to lose.   Dying took time and it drove Pat beyond her limits, into territory no one willingly chooses to go.  Emotionally drained, physically exhausted, she fought tenaciously, coming bounding back determined to stay the course.  She described going up to the roof of a hospital during one set of painful treatments for her mother and screaming and crying and shouting at God at the top of her voice.  Then, emptied, she went down to her mother refreshed and ready once more.  As the end came it seemed impossible that a human being could hold on to life with hardly any flesh on her frame.  There were no more periods of lucidity and it seemed to Pat that her mother had already gone and that this silent shrunken shape was a parody, a husk that had been left behind. 

Still she went on, no longer expecting a response, just talking, stroking and wetting the dry silent lips.  When the end finally came, Pat remembered begging for its deliverance.  It no longer seemed cruel but an act of merciful release.  During the funeral there was laughter once more and it seemed that her mother’s spirit was back in the house again.  Stories were told and memories shared and brought back again and again, as if needed to rub out the sorrow of this past period.  As I looked around the room I saw so many faces that had watched a death coming -  That had learned what love means, what pain, what depths of pain, loving can bring.  A mighty lesson of living and dying had been learned.  I discovered that you couldn’t intellectualize it, pay someone to do it for you, avoid it or deny it.  Death comes for us all.  But when you face that final parting, who will be there for you?  Who will wet your lips?  This is a mighty skill and art, and unfortunately for all of us, there are less and less masters out there and hardly any students prepared to learn.