The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (25 page)

THIS NEWS CAME like a bombshell. Of all
the cruel tricks to be played on mum, this was the worst. Just when she had
found a place to see out the rest of her days in comfort, with people who would
look after her properly and let her pass the time away listening to her
favourite music, she had been allowed only four short days of peace before it
was all taken away from her again.

We went back to the hospital that evening
with hearts as heavy and as numb as if they were made of iron.

Mum was in the intensive care ward with the
curtain drawn around her bed. All the usual stuff was there again – NIL BY
MOUTH, the old tubes, the blue plastic mask. She gasped and wheezed for every
breath, and the pink flush had once more disappeared from her face, to be
replaced by that awful, pale grey colour that is never seen in a healthy human
being.

We sat by her bedside that evening,
wondering how she found the strength to carry on like this.

‘She’s a fighter,’ observed Heather, shaking
her head.

This time, there was no recognition of her
surroundings at all. When mum briefly opened her eyes it was to stare straight
up at the ceiling; she never moved her head to the left or to the right, never
acknowledged anyone’s voice, and never looked in any direction except straight
up. Each breath was a battle, requiring effort and concentration. There was no
strength left in her for anything or anyone else.

Both Heather and I knew the end was not far
away now. Everyone knew. Again we sat down by her bedside to wait.

I took still more time off work, and stayed
several nights a week sitting in the chair by her bedside, waking and falling
asleep throughout each nightly vigil. There was never any sign of change. It
had taken mum three months to recover from the devastating effects of the
second stroke, and I didn’t think she had three months of that kind of energy
left inside her.

I was sitting there a few days later when
the consultant came to see me again.

‘We need to take some instructions from you,
as the next of kin,’ he said. ‘There may come a time when your mum may stop
breathing, she could lapse into unconsciousness, or her heart could stop. We
need to know what you would like us to do if circumstances like that should
occur in the near future.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

I must have sounded so stupid. Now, it’s
obvious what he was telling me, but at the time I really didn’t understand.

He put it more simply. ‘Do you want us to
try and revive her, or not?’

Then I understood.

‘Your mum has very little quality of life
now,’ he explained. ‘There will be no improvement and no recovery, I am sure.
So should there be a serious lapse in her condition from where she is now, what
would you like us to do?’

I knew the word I wanted to say, but to
finally speak it out loud was to admit at last that all traces of hope were
finally gone, and we had all accepted as much. A silence fell between us that
was intense. He waited for an answer, and I was afraid to speak it. In the end I
gave him the word that would both seal mum’s fate, and offer her a release from
all of this at long last.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

He nodded and left.

We were sitting in a local steak house one
afternoon, a few days later, having a quiet meal. The events of the past week
had taken their toll on the both of us, and we decided to go out and try to
relax for a change.

The steaks had only just arrived when
Heather’s mobile telephone rang. She simply replied, ‘Yes, okay,’ and ended the
call.

‘That was the George Eliot,’ she said. ‘Your
mum’s just taken a turn for the worse. We have to get there within the next 20
minutes.’

We shot up from the table, paid for the
untouched meal and ran into the car park.

By the time we got to the ward, 20 minutes
had almost elapsed.

The curtains were drawn around mum’s bed
again, and I could hear her fighting for every breath outside in the corridor.
Each time she inhaled, her head moved slightly backwards and her chest arched,
as though it was causing her a supreme effort. She continued to fight like this
for the next five-and-a-half hours, until sheer physical exhaustion overtook
her, and she fell into a deep sleep where her breathing noticeably quietened,
and seemed to come a little easier.

Heather went home to get some sleep. I
stayed with mum all night again.

In the morning the consultant came to see
her, and he shook his head in quiet disbelief.

‘She’s a tough lady,’ he said, more to
himself, I think, than to me.

‘She always has been,’ I replied.

He shook his head again, and walked away.

I took the following day off work and stayed
with mum until late the following evening. She had now exceeded by a
day-and-a-half the 20 minutes the hospital thought would see out the end of her
life. The crisis seemed to have passed, and she was sleeping and breathing
normally again.

I went home to get some sleep.

Heather and I were having a late supper, we
were chatting about the bills, and other mundane stuff that seems to take up so
much of life, when the telephone rang. Heather answered it. I knew immediately
what had happened when her voice broke and she started to cry before she
replaced the receiver.

She put her arms around me and told me that
mum had died peacefully in her sleep only five minutes ago. Suddenly the bills
didn’t seem to matter any more. Death puts everything else into perspective.

WE MADE THE final journey to the hospital
in silence, Heather and I. This time there was no need for speed, no panic, no
sense that we might be too late: we knew we were too late. We parked the car as
usual, and walked down the winding corridors of the hospital’s thoroughfares,
until we came at last to the intensive care unit. The nurses at the reception
desk smiled kindly at us, and one of them came over.

‘We’re all very sorry,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘and thank you for
all you’ve done for my mum over the months.’

‘It was a pleasure,’ she replied. ‘Your mum
was no trouble at all, she was lovely.’

Heather put her arm through mine and we
leaned gently against each other.

‘There is some paperwork I have to go
through with you,’ resumed the nurse. ‘It can wait though, if you’re not up to
it right now.’

‘No, I understand,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

The nurse started to explain several sheets
of paper to me, but I wasn’t really listening. I signed them at the bottom
without knowing what I was signing for.

‘Never sign anything without reading it
first,’ my dad had always said to me.

‘Can we see her?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ replied the nurse.

The curtains were drawn around mum’s bed.
When we passed through them, the first thing I noticed was the silence. Mum had
been fighting noisily for every breath; now there was no breath, and no noise.
She lay on her back with her neck arched and her mouth open, in the same
posture I had seen her when the battle for every breath was raging. I kissed
her one last time on the forehead.

‘Goodnight, mum,’ I whispered.

Beside her bed were her personal things,
gathered up from the windowsill – her toothbrush, shampoo, a bottle of
moisturiser. In collecting her things, someone had moved a small glass vase of
flowers which had belonged to the lady in the opposite bed, and had placed them
on top of mum’s radiator. Flowers on the little girl’s radiator:
How
wonderfully fitting
, I thought.

We left mum’s unused toiletries with the
staff to be distributed to the patients as they saw fit. We thanked the nurses,
and left the hospital for the last time.

When we got home, I telephoned my Aunt Ellen
in Ireland. She cried, and said it was for the best, and asked me to let her
know when the funeral would be, so she could come over.

The following day, I started to go through
mum’s private papers. I felt like I was betraying her, somehow; that these were
none of my business. But if I didn’t do it, who else was there? I found her
will, where she left all her jewellery to my daughter Rebecca, and a small sum
of money to my son, Daniel. The house came to me, and that was it.

I stood there, looking around. It is
surprising what we gather about us in a lifetime. In every corner of the house
there was a reminder of mum; some little ornament, a book, a picture. We leave
the tracks of our footsteps through life with the knick-knacks we leave behind.

Within a week, those who needed to know had
been told and an entire life which had taken over 80 years to unfold was
legally wrapped up, tied with a bow and marked, ‘Finished.’

We arranged the funeral for the following
week at the crematorium in Coventry, and at 10 o’clock, on a cold, drizzly,
November morning we gathered to pay our respects. Rebecca and Daniel were
there, along with Heather’s three grown-up daughters, who had never met mum but
who came with their partners to show support for me. I was very touched by
that. My old mates came with their partners, and the rest of mum’s family from Dublin, as promised.

It was a quiet farewell, but I think my dad
would have approved.

The service was calm and dignified, and when
it was over, we trooped back out into the cold and drizzle to gather and
reminisce. There was a line of wreaths and flowers beside a wall outside the
chapel, and we all went along reading the inscriptions in turn. There was one
from Steve at mum’s last home; she had only been with him for four days, and
yet he had taken the trouble. I was sorry she had not been under his care from
the very beginning.

We laid on some food and drink at our place
in Nuneaton, and a few people came back. By the early evening, everyone had
gone, and the funeral formalities were over.

The following Saturday morning, Heather and
I waited at St. Paul’s cemetery in Holbrooks for the funeral director to
arrive. There was just the two of us.

It may seem completely inappropriate here,
but I will now tell you a funny story. I have to really, as it will explain why
my father’s ashes had been under our hall table since he had died five years
earlier, and why he was only being buried with mum that morning.

One day, just a week before he died, dad had
called my mother and me to the armchair in the conservatory where he used to
sit on nice afternoons. ‘When I die,’ he said, ‘I want you to take me home.’

My dad had been born in Dublin in 1921, and
had died in Coventry in 2002; he was 81, and had lived in Coventry since he was
30. But despite the fact that he had been in England longer than in Ireland, he always talked of Ireland as ‘home’. ‘I think I might go home for a holiday this year,’
he’d say, meaning he’d go to Dublin. So that November afternoon, we knew he
meant he wanted to be buried in Dublin.

 ‘Oh, don’t be saying things like that,
Benny!’ exclaimed mum. ‘You know talk like that upsets me.’

‘Now, Rose,’ he replied, ‘these things have
to be said. It’s just a fact of life, that’s all, and I would like you to take
me home when the time comes. Promise me now, Rose.’

Mum promised him, and changed the subject.
She had no intention of burying him anywhere outside Coventry, but she didn’t
want to talk about dying, either, so she just agreed to anything he wanted to
shut him up. I knew mum and her little ways, but so did my dad.

‘I mean it,’ he went on. ‘Martin, I’m
trusting you to make sure your mother takes me home. Now, will you promise me
that, son?’

I said that I promised, and he finally let
the matter drop.

When he did pass away, I reminded mum of our
last promise to him, and booked her a return flight to Dublin. I couldn’t get
the time off work, so she was going on her own.

‘You can spend a few weeks with Aunty
Ellen,’ I said. ‘See to dad as soon as you get there, and then have a little
holiday. It will do you good.’

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ agreed mum.

A few days later, we drove out to Birmingham airport. Dad was in a little square wooden box with a brass plaque on the lid –
he had been cremated, obviously – and mum intended to take him on the aeroplane
as hand luggage. She was carrying his casket in a Sainsbury’s plastic carrier
bag, and, so that she didn’t draw attention to it and upset the other
passengers, she had placed a bag of carrots on top of him.

‘I wish you were coming with me, son,’ she
said, as I kissed her goodbye at the departure gate.

‘It can’t be helped, mum,’ I said. ‘Have a
nice flight. Call me when you get there.’

I drove home from the airport and waited for
her to call upon landing at Dublin. The flight only took 40 minutes, and
because I knew the flight number, the touch-down time, how long it would take
to clear customs and so on, I had a pretty good idea when I could expect her to
call.

Right on the button, the telephone rang. It
was mum, but she was hysterical and in floods of tears.

‘Oh son, I can’t find your daddy anywhere!’ she
wailed.

‘Well, he can’t have gone far, can he?’ I
said, laughing.

‘Don’t be making jokes at a time like this!’
shouted mum. ‘I’m very upset!’

‘Well, how could you have lost him?’ I
asked.

‘I don’t know!’ she wailed. ‘One minute he
was there, and then next minute he was gone. Where can he be?’

‘Is Aunty Ellen with you?’ I asked. I knew I
would get more sense from my aunty.

‘She is. Do you want to speak to her, son?’
sobbed mum.

‘Yes, put her on.’

‘Hello Martin, this is your Aunty Ellen.’

‘Hello, Aunty Ellen.’

‘Oh Martin, what in the name of God is she
like?’ asked my aunt.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied.

‘Are you sure she had your daddy on the
plane, Martin?’

‘I left her at the departure gate, he was
with her then.’

‘Martin, would you ever check at Birmingham airport to see if anyone has found your daddy?’ asked Aunt Ellen.

She made it sound like he had recently
developed a habit of wandering off.

‘Okay, I will,’ I agreed. ‘Just go back to
your house and I’ll call you there later.’

‘Right-oh, Martin, we’ll do that, God
Bless.’

The line went dead.

I got into the car and drove back to Birmingham airport. I thought I would start with security.

‘Has anyone handed in a funeral casket and a
bag of carrots?’ I asked the slightly startled security guard.

‘I’ll check,’ he said.

He whispered into his shoulder radio. I
couldn’t hear what he said as he wandered a few paces away when he made the
enquiry. He came back to me after a couple of minutes.

‘As a matter of fact, they have,’ he said.
‘You can pick them up at the supervisor’s office.’ He gave me the directions.

I took dad’s casket and the carrots back to
our house and called Aunty Ellen’s house in Dublin.

‘Oh, that’s great news!’ said Aunty Ellen.
‘I’ll tell your mum. Where was he?’

‘Someone must have found him and handed him
in,’ I replied.

‘Was he in Lost Property?’ she said. Like it
really mattered.

‘No, the security people had him,’ I said.

‘Oh that’s good,’ she said.

Mum stayed two weeks with her sister and had
a wonderful holiday, and never got round to taking him back – it was shortly
after this that she began the first stages of her Alzheimer’s. For five years,
dad had stayed put under the small telephone table in our hallway at home.
Which is why, on the morning of mum’s burial, we interred my dad at the same time.
I knew I’d not fulfilled my promise to him; but I also knew he’d have wanted to
be here, with mum.

The funeral director’s van drew up next to
us at the cemetery.

He got out holding mum’s casket, and Heather
and I got out holding dad’s. The three of us walked slowly down the short path
to the small open graveside.

‘Do you want to say a few words?’ asked the
funeral director.

I felt as though I should, but the words
just wouldn’t come.

I shook my head.

‘Shall I say a short prayer?’ asked the
funeral director.

‘Yes please,’ I said. Suddenly a lump had
come into my throat, and I knew my voice was shaking.

We placed the two small wooden caskets,
side-by-side into the cold, damp hole. The funeral director read a passage from
the bible that was very moving (and which I sadly cannot remember now), and
when he was finished, he said: ‘I’ll leave you to your thoughts,’ and slowly
walked away.

Heather and I stood there, arm-in-arm by the
side of the hole in the ground. I looked down into the cavity to read the brass
plaques on the two caskets for the last time.

BERNARD SLEVIN

BORN 21/6/1921

DIED 15/11/2002

ROSE MARY SLEVIN

BORN 8/9/1925

DIED 15/11/2007

I kept looking at the dates of death on the
two plaques. It hadn’t hit me before, but Mum had died exactly five years to
the day after dad; I wondered if she had been waiting, fighting for every last
breath until the right day came, when she could finally let go. I wondered if
dad had been waiting for her.

I stood up from the graveside and thought
about mum. I thought about the forest of my socks pinned to the ceiling and
walls. I thought about the giant Christmas goose. I thought about Michael and
the Irish band, and how they had played many a ballad and jig for mum,
transporting her back on those soft Celtic airs to a more romantic time in her
youth. I thought about the friends she had made on her sad and lonely journey:
Captain John, who believed he still lived on a boat; the old fighter pilot,
whom she had wanted to marry; Joyce, who had believed that everyone else was a
bit gone in the head; the whistling woman, who had just stopped whistling one
day; the old lady who had been dragged out of bed by her feet; and the man in
the grey macintosh.

I thought about all the letters I had
written for her. I thought about the innocent delight she had derived from our
old and bedraggled Christmas tree. I thought about Bruno and his shaved bum.