At this time of year, mid-Spring, to call a leaf a leaf lands… flatly. One word, for the myriad possibilities that the concept of ‘leaf’ contains. The trees that hem the hospital grounds are multiple gradations of green. Queen amongst them, one stunning specimen that is a pinky, salmony, rhubarby red. Sunlight between the branches has a champagne-like quality. Leaves are soft and floppy, starfish bobbing on waves of breeze. They have not yet thickened enough to rebuff the light, not yet lost their translucence.
I’m getting carried away, but -
isn't this the most accommodating time of year? Space enough for everything, plenty of light to go around, the sun’s presence a suggestion rather than a command. The breeze still carries winter’s chill on its tail, the air tastes freshly concocted… I fancy that even the spaces between notes of birdsong are easier to hear.
Come summertime, I confess, I am weary of the weight of green, the sun’s stickiness, the way daylight spills bleach over the dark.
As we near the entrance it strikes me that, as hospitals go, this one is really rather pleasant. On this crisp, bright, unhurried Sunday, at least.
Mum is more alert today, though I have to prod her awake when we arrive. Since she began getting better, there has been a spaciousness around her, too. A relief, perhaps; a peacefulness that comes from simply being alive, not being required to do anything more than try, just a few times, to put one foot in front of the other.
Is this in fact how she feels, or is it me, carrying in spring from outside?
I have had some mixed and jarring feelings around Mum's recovery or otherwise. As anyone who has experience of a loved one developing dementia will comprehend.
As I write that, I have a niggling sense that I am laying claim to something that is not mine. A sympathy thief, am I? It is my dad who has truly suffered over the last three years, he who has plunged bare-armed into the thorns. For want of a better analogy. My hypochondriac, anxious and impatient father, who has found himself caring, full time, for someone slowly being fretted away by this ghoul of a disease. Though the looking-after of Mum pre-dates Alzheimer’s, by many years.
Turns out my uncertain and often defeatist Dad is also resolute, stoic, devoted. Selfless. Heroically so.
He, too, of course, is being slowly dismantled.
I, meanwhile, have observed. Helped out by 'mumsitting', one morning a week. Have felt things, yes. She's my mother. But the disconnect from her has eroded into quite a deep fissure, over the years. I suppose I found it necessary. For self-preservation. An unfortunate and unforeseen effect of several years of therapy.
I put my feelings for Mum in aspic. Screwed tight the lid. Stashed the jar on a shelf, within reach but in a cupboard I scarcely open. Mumsitting once a week, dusting the jar, wiping off any gritty bits, putting it away. Job done.
After the warning call about her deteriorating condition, a part of me was relieved to feel something. Relieved when anticipatory grief tugged on my hair in the dark hours, yanked my head backwards, look! LOOK!! This is your MOTHER! You’re going to have to live without her!
Stills flicking past, all the years, months, weeks, days, hours that I have loved her, condensed into Mum's beautiful smile, Mum's tentative vulnerability, Mum visiting me abroad, me and Mum on that walking holiday together, me and Mum at the ballet. The warmth of Mum beside me on the sofa.
All the good bits.
The way she would assure me that the wonky left eye I saw reflected in the mirror was no such thing, not at all! Quite straight, when I turned to look at her. Sucking on one arm of her specs, peering intently at me for added impact. One of the things she knew I needed to be true. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t.
A feeling of Mum, a sense of Mum that came rushing over me, not like a wave, but more like hundreds of fallen leaves, thousands, whipped up by a storm, raining down on me. Mum. Auburn hair. The colour of dying leaves.
I wept. I realised a world without my Mum in it is more than just a possibility.
Don't leave without me seeing you. Don't go before I can come and hold your hand. Don’t go yet… I need to be holding your hand when you leave…
And then the storm passes, the leaves are strewn at my feet. In their crispness, the underfoot crunch, is that unmistakable aliveness – sharp, crumbly, damp, rich.
Now, here you are after all, sitting by your bed. I bend over you, small and slumped in that high-backed chair, wrap my arms around you, bury my nose in your hair, your hair that stands every which-way in scribbles of silver and grey and smells only of you, not of hospital - and I hear myself saying – ‘Oh, it does me good to see you, I miss you!’
Does the feeling speak the words, or vice versa? Does it matter?
And something settles in-between us, something simple, and grateful. A pleasure in your presence that I haven't felt for so long, Mum. I haven't felt it since I began feeling more exasperated by you than affectionate towards you.
I haven't felt it since the fleshiness that was our mother-daughter bond wrinkled and sagged. Since it became the case that you could no longer mother me.
Now and then I reflect, with a melancholy that has an oddly plastic edge to it, on the last time I recall you tending to me, applying a dressing over a weeping wound on my back.
The child in me can no longer relate to you.
If you aren't my mother, who are you to me?
‘You’re a beautiful-looking woman!’ you suddenly say. I believe you – which in itself is remarkable. I do not find myself beautiful, not at all. (That knack of yours, Mum, of it not mattering whether or not it’s true.)
Nothing much further is said, but I am just happy, happy to be there with my Mum, who I didn't expect to pull through… Before this visit, I drew some Tarot cards, and one of them, the Four of Wands, is a joyous celebration. Judging by the other two, the angel of Temperance and the Wheel of Fortune, I think the message was that you had been standing with one foot in each world, what will be will be, the timing is not my concern. And that something joyous lies ahead for you, some joining-together on the other side…
I couldn't see what joy remained for you, here. Couldn't see a good outcome for you, given the dementia, and the frailty, and the strain on my heroic Dad, and all of that, and you know, well... And here I step back from the brink of things best left unsaid.
What did I mean by no good outcome - for you, for Dad, for me? More suffering, further deterioration, you sliding away faster, yet slowly; more messily, everything so tangled and just getting pulled tighter, tighter… The spaces in-between contracting, congealing.
No hope of any connection with you.
Hoping, rather – yes, in all honesty, hoping to hand you over to something celebratory beyond my reach. Be happy, Mum. I have nothing left to offer you. Even though, I suppose, I don’t know, I can’t find the words, I am grasping at the gaps…
We have always known each other so well, Mum. So well. Like the one that became two, in order to know itself.
I miss that. I have missed it for many years.
What I have also missed, what was, maybe, oh I don't know – maybe it was always kind of missing - is a sense of joy… When was the last time I laughed with you? When was the last time we both smiled our beautiful smiles in each other’s company? (Yes, I believe my smile is beautiful. Because we smile the same way.)
I would like to laugh with you. Chuckle. Sit beside you and share a little bit of joy. That would be some kind of celebration…
Is that possible? I try a light-hearted quip, but you don’t smile, just widen your eyes, stroke my hand.
There is something in your gaze that is an invitation.
On this uncommonly spacious day, I understand how much an empty space can contain. Perhaps it is into the cracks that the feeling fell… Into the gaps amongst the tangle, the frustration, the sadness, the hoping, the fearing. There are spaces, even, amid nothing. I just never thought to look in there…
I love this piece so much Lizzie, it moved me to gentle tears. Perhaps not sad tears, perhaps they came more from a feeling of connection and a sense that we are all in this together. Because watching our parents getting older and their minds potentially start to go is a lonely place to be in one's own head. You have made that place less lonely. Thank you for your beautiful words.
Your words are poetry in motion, tumbling out, it seems, like leaves. This conversation - you speaking directly to your mum - choked me up ❤️ There are photographers, women mostly, who have documented their mothers experiencing dementia. I don't know if these would resonate with you, or if they'd be too difficult (or frustrating even) to look at, but some notable ones are Helen Rimell and Cheryle St Onge... Perhaps you know of them already... Their images came to mind upon reading your beautiful, honest prose.