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I
remembered a friend’s words: “Even though you’re sick, you don’t need to
look sick.” Sound advice, but I felt and looked awful. Helpless and
sore. Worried and drowsy. Poignant and grateful. After feeding me with
soft foods, my daughter helped me raise my butt onto the bedpan and
looked into my eyes. Probably to avoid looking “down there”.
Lying flat was not conducive to having a pee, so there was rather
a large area to wipe and dry. I needed her help. A look of horror
appeared on her face. I burst out laughing and she joined in, realising
that the game was up and I knew that she hated what she had to do for
me.
The tables had turned. This was my daughter. The one I had fed,
whose cheeky bum I had wiped 25 years ago. In so many ways life was a
cycle and the hands of time had shifted turning my daughter into my
mother. From the dependant to the independent to the depended upon. Not
only did she care for me during those difficult days but also for my
mother who had exhausted herself mentally with worry over my condition.
As I laughed and joked with my daughter and smiled gratefully at my
mother, I wondered whether they were as confused and concerned as I
was. They got on so well, grandmother and granddaughter, and joked that
it was because they had a common enemy, me!
Sometimes in life you don’t choose the moment but the moment chooses
you. This was such a moment. I was a Londoner and loved my city. I
loved being at home. In my space. Alone. Had I been in hospital in
London, but for my friends’ visits, there would have been nobody loving
to take care of my needs. I was reminded of a dreadful documentary I had
recently seen about the elderly in hospital. I too could have been
lonely and distressed as a cold, wet, hungry dog locked out on a
miserable winter’s night.
But I was not alone. I was visiting my mother and children and,
before we had time to sneeze, I was on my back going through medical
procedures. Up one end, down another, the needles, wires and cameras
twisted around inside me like snakes working their way through the maze
of organs. The doctors had been decisive and gone into immediate action.
I had collapsed, breathless and weak and they thought that I was a heart
attack waiting to happen. After much prodding about with their invasive
tests, they concluded that I had a problem but was not in immediate
danger and referred me back to my doctor at home to continue treatment.
During the past few years I had tried to hide the seriousness of my
illness from my family and regaled them with tales of my exploits on
rediscovering my joie de vivre as I accepted the doctors’ advice
to enjoy life. “You have a few years left,” they said. “See you soon and
be careful how you cross the road!” Nobody knew when their time was up.
I, however, knew that despite enjoying my “lonely” life, spending more
time with my family had become a priority. We were part of the same
skein and without them there would be no quality of life.
Back in my daughter’s flat I muck in and do her chores. “Put your
glasses on when you do the washing up. The dishes aren’t clean enough,”
she growls. “Look, you didn’t sweep that corner, the one that’s
impossible to get to,” she chides, sounding exactly like me just a few
years ago. Obviously she expects her brilliant Mum to do the impossible.
She wants me to be normal. And healthy.
The other day she caught me putting some whites (mine, I hasten to
add) in with the delicate coloured wash and shouted, “You’d wash
yourself in there too, if you were thin enough to fit in!”
I was confused, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. I thought I
was helping her but it seemed that she felt I was more of a hindrance;
that I didn’t have her high standards, wasn’t as pedantic or perfect as
she’d like me to be. I recalled how I hated having her in my kitchen
when she came to stay with me, that I had my own way of doing things.
Like mother, like daughter.
With my son, a chef, we keep out of each other’s hair: I am his
guest first and his mother second. Women seem to have an added
perspective. I decide that peace must reign. I wear my glasses to wash
the dishes, I am meticulous with the cleaning and separate out the
different categories of laundry. Anything to keep my new “mother” off my
back, to be able to laugh and say “One day you’ll have to wear glasses
to wash glasses!”
As I sit there sewing on endless buttons lost over the past few months,
I admiringly watch the efficiency with which she wields her iron like a
magic wand, turning crumpled rags into the beautifully pressed garments
they were designed to be.
I wonder what has changed my once messy miss into a meticulous monster!
Having driven myself spare for years with my nagging and complaining
about the state of my children’s tidiness, I knew the changes had
happened in spite rather than because of me. Yes, my daughter has
definitely turned into “my mother” and combined with my real mother,
life is now a long series of “complaints” as they seek to house train
me. It doesn’t occur to either of them that I learnt from one and taught
the other.
My sense of humour seems to be a family trait and I was now certain that
it has protected us in times of stress and allowed us to overcome
our frustrations with each other, underpinning the caring, loving and
tolerant relationship we have. Nobody’s perfect. Not my mother, not my
daughter, not my son and not me. But when we laugh at each other and
with each other, we are as perfect as families could hope to be. And
it’s no fault of theirs that they want me to be fighting fit.
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