Mothers passing was drawn out, agonising, and far from dignified. Only her eyes… The closer the end came, the darker they seemed. On the very eve… her eyes turned velvet-black, impossibly wise and all-seeing Or perhaps it was simply that her face grew whiter and whiter
At the end of the summer, I brought her back from the cottage, and as it was getting late, I decided to stay the night at her flat. In the middle of the night, on her way to the loo, she collapsed and, as we only later discovered, had fractured her hip. For the elderly, thats often a final sentence.
After that, things moved quickly: ambulance trauma unit surgery and then ten days in hospital.
While we were on our way to the hospital, my mind drifted to the time when my father died, hit by a lorry on his battered old bike out on a darkened road. I must have been threeMum was twenty-eight. To spare me the trauma, she left me for a couple of days with Mrs Agnes Barker, my old nursery teacher, and told me Dad had gone on a work trip Mum never remarried; she was too afraid a new man would never become a true father to me.
When she was discharged from hospital, I had no choice but to leave my job to care for her, as we simply couldnt afford a carer, especially with the younger son buying a flat.
So, I moved in for good to her one-bedroom council flat, changing her pads five or six times a day, washing and feeding her. She never complained she simply endured it. If I turned her too roughly, she would let out a little yelp, childlike, then whisper, No, no, its alright now, my dear boy, its alright
I never realised I was so squeamish, so feeble. At night, lying on the sofa by her bed, Id weep quietly in despair. It would sound poetic to say I wept for her, and perhaps thats true, but really, I pitied myself even more.
There was no one to lean on. Both sons caught up with their work and families, and my wife… My wife put it baldly: Well, shes your mother, not mine. To me, shes simply another woman
In that moment, I remembered for some reason bringing home my Mary to introduce her to Mum for the first time. Mum was all smiles throughout the evening. But later, when I returned from walking Mary to the bus, I looked at my mother for her verdict. She shrugged, I dont know, son, something feels off… But youre the one whos marrying her, not me so its not up to me.
Yet, throughout their lives, my mother and wife got along perfectly well.
And now, as in the distant past, it was just Mum and me again. Wed spend evenings chatting after lights out before sleep took us. She told me about Gran and Grandpa, about the time the Germans came to their village, how she and her sister hid behind the garden fence, spying on round, well-fed strangers who played their harmonicas and laughed at who knows what.
Shed talk about my father, whom I could hardly recall. Perhaps I never really did only a shadow lingers in my mind. A large man with prickly cheeks, always reeking of tobacco, lifting me up and kissing me over and over whenever he came home: My boy, my son, son
But Mum started fading fast, and our midnight talks trickled to nothing. I kept thinking she was getting worse because I was cooking such bland, unappealing food. So I began ordering proper meals from a restaurant, delivered hot and neatly packaged. When Id ask if she liked it, shed just shake her head sadly and say, Youve turned into quite the chef, you know, barely touching the meal.
On her last night at home, for some reason, she remembered when fountain pens first came to our town, back when I was in Year Three. Id only heard about them, but Hazel Bennetts father brought her one from London, a marvel of a pen. That evening, Id eagerly shown my mother the pen at home. Upon discovering how Id got hold of it, Mum gave me a proper hiding with the leather belt, no less and then took me, pen in hand, to the Bennetts, to return the treasure to its rightful owner.
Id barely remembered all this, but Mum began to apologise for beating me that day, trying to explain how terrified she was that I might turn out a thief.
I stroked her cheek, burning with shame, though I never became a thief.
In the small hours, when she became gravely ill and the ambulance arrived, she surfaced from her confusion for a moment, took my hand, and whispered, God, how will you get onwithout me? Still so young so foolish
She missed her eighty-ninth birthday by a month and a half. The day after she died, I turned sixty-four.
Even now, I still feel I could have done more. At the end, what I learned is this: love, in its truest form, knows no pride or revulsion, only patience and gratitude for every small moment left.









