Word on a Whim

Watching her breathing for the last time

My lovely old Mum has advanced Parkinson’s and is receiving ‘end of life’ care in a nursing home. Someone from the home will let us know if there is a change in her breathing pattern to indicate that the end is near.  Meanwhile, she is sleeping peacefully and unresponsive. At least I thought she was unresponsive – but today I’m not too sure.

Last weekend, for the sake of making conversation with someone who is comatose, I told her how my journey had taken an hour longer than it should, owing to the M42 being closed for works on the white elephant HS2 viaduct. This Sunday, if she could hear me, she must have been rivetted with the news that there was yet another 6.5-metre-wide abnormal load travelling up the M1 at 10 mph, with all the rest of us trailing along behind it … all deep, meaningful conversation!

I found Don Williams on YouTube singing “The Ties That Bind” and played it to her from my phone, reminiscing about how the song became our favourite about forty-five years ago, when her car, which had previously been Dad’s, had an 8-track cartridge player, complete with a few cartridges that were Dad’s choice of music.

I played the song again and sang along, not too loud, I hope! I noticed her breathing became slightly audible, with a very quiet murmur on each exhalation, and hoped this wasn’t the previously mentioned change in her breathing pattern. Maybe she was either singing along or asking me to keep quiet.

I mentioned it to the carers, and they said they had noticed it too sometimes when they were talking to her, and when I asked a lovely family friend who visited regularly, she had also managed to get this response. So, Mum is still with us!

As I left for the evening, the nurse on duty said he doesn’t think she’s ready to go just yet…

All week, I’ve been carrying my phone everywhere because if I leave it in another room, my current ringtone, Bowie’s “Starman” starts playing in my head, and I think I’ve missed a call.

A funny thing happened mid-week, when I phoned the home to ask if there was any change. Someone took a message and a lovely nurse phoned from another number and assured me they’d ring back if there was any change … so you can imagine how I jumped when ‘Starman’ blasted out later that evening, whilst the phone was in my hand, with that same number on the display.

What followed was a bizarre conversation where I confirmed several times who I was, thinking the caller was being ultra-careful they had the right person before imparting bad news. It wasn’t until she asked, “is Penny there?” that I realised the caller was a resident with dementia, who must have picked up the nurse’s phone and pressed last number redial. It turned into a lengthy phone call!

This is a very strange time, being in limbo, knowing that Mum is going to die soon. Not that she’s had much of a life in recent months, being hoisted from a bed to a chair and barely being able to communicate. Yet she’s never complained bless her. Two years ago, when she was in hospital after falling and breaking her hip, I got tearful, saying how much I hated seeing her like this, and she replied with her typical Yorkshire understatement, “I can’t say I’m too chuffed about it myself.”

Tonight, I’m at a lovely quiet campsite I discovered. Well, it’s quiet apart from the planes taking off and landing at the local airport … but that’s far preferable to people deliberately making a row at the Travelodge, and it’s lovely to be here in the cool fresh air with the wind blowing around the tent.

I feel quite calm, being not too far from Mum, drafting this blog post with song lyrics looping around in my head. Does anyone else have that going on all the time? Whilst I know every lyric of every 70s Bowie song, it can be annoying if I only know a couple of lines so they have to keep playing on repeat!

Tonight’s internal song, as the title of this post might suggest, is James Blunt’s “Carry You Home” and it’s making me weepy …

To separate Sunday from Monday, here’s a lovely mixed-metal dragon sculpture, for no other reason than that was lurking outside my tent:

Monday morning, I packed up my stuff and headed back to the care home, with the intention of sitting there for a couple of hours before heading back down the motorway.

I nipped in the big Tesco just round the corner from the home. As usual, it was difficult to get out of the place, with its long row of closed checkouts, and a queue for the self-service with one staff member ducking around cancelling the “unexpected item in the bagging area” message that happens if someone breathes too heavily near the scales.  Anyone in a hurry was regretting trying to buy alcohol, anything sharp or anything with a security tag. I wasn’t worried about the time; I thought it was possibly a bit too early to turn up at the care home.

As I pulled into the carpark, Bowie was singing “Starman” from my bag. That would be my brother ringing to ask what time I’d be there so we could meet up. I parked and called him back, and couldn’t believe it when he said he’d had a call to say Mum had just passed away. Whilst I was round the corner checking out of the bloody supermarket!

She was still warm, and looked exactly as she had the previous day, but so perfectly still, not breathing.

When I started writing this on Sunday, the title of my post ended with a question mark, which I’ve just removed.

I wonder if “The Ties That Bind” would be appropriate for the service?

Love you forever, Mum xxx

“BIN YOUR LITTER – OTHER PEOPLE DO”

This frame, exported from my Dashcam, wins the prize for the most irrelevant and patronising road matrix sign that has ever distracted me on the motorway. What made it worse is that the next sign, which I almost missed because there was a lorry in the way, bore a pertinent message that the M1 was closed between junction 29 and 30.

Of course it’s important to bin your litter! It’s awful to see rubbish strewn along the roadside, but please could these overhead notices on fast roads be limited to relevant messages about the road ahead, allowing us to concentrate on the traffic, rather than taking advice on how we should behave?

It’s the “other people do” that riles me … hitting on the sheep mentality of the human race, with the implication that people are less likely to chuck their litter out of the car window if they are told other people put their litter in a bin!

Whilst that was the prize winner, the other entries during the four-hour journey were: “DON’T HOG THE MIDDLE LANE” (mostly ineffective, and on four-lane motorways, we now have third-lane hoggers); “DON’T DRIVE TIRED” (strategically placed when approaching the services), and “J40, 10 MILES, 6 MINUTES” (do people see that as a challenge?).

Finally, I arrived at my Mum’s care home. She was peacefully sleeping in her chair in the community area that was busier than usual for a Sunday, a bit like the roads had been. I kissed her awake and wished her happy Mother’s Day, and her lovely face lit up with recognition. She asked me who all these people were. At first glance it looked as if there were twice as many residents as usual … but us extras were just old children who’d come to visit our ancient mums on Mother’s Day!

I got chatting to a man who looked like a wizard, with long grey hair, whilst our respective mums dozed off again. When he told me his mum was approaching her hundredth birthday, I realised he was probably heading for eighty. He told me he had no intention of moving into residential care, and I replied that it wasn’t for me either. I told him it worried me that (in years to come) I might have a medical episode in a public place and get carted off to hospital – and then you’re in the system and what if you can’t get out?

When he replied that he hadn’t really thought about it to that extent, and looked a little concerned, I wished I’d kept my trap shut or talked about the weather, or something equally interesting … the motorway matrix signs, maybe?

Visit over, I headed to the Premier Inn. I normally book a Travelodge and was interested to see how the two compared. Premier Inns are slightly more expensive than Travelodge, and both do “dynamic pricing” making them more expensive if there is demand owing to an event, but Sunday is generally cheap, so I decided to try it as my usual place has gone a bit seedy in recent months (people smoking outside in pyjamas, pungent tobacco smells, hooded kids on bikes tapping on windows with deliveries, stuff like that).

My room at the Premier Inn was nice and quiet – perhaps because it was at the end of a corridor. Also, there wasn’t the constant banging of doors that reminds me of the start of the 1970s TV sitcom “Porridge” that was regularly on our TV, with the prison cell door slamming with an echo …

The layout of the room and the facilities were pretty much the same as I was used to down the road. The only thing that let it down was that, although it looked very clean, the ensuite smelled slightly of male piss. It was a smell I recognised from when I worked at a warehouse and the ladies’ toilets would sometimes smell that way if the floor had been mopped without changing the water that had been used to mop the floor next door in the gents’.

With the bathroom door closed, it was cosy as I stirred boiling water into my instant mash (not a pot noodle fan) and tucked into my salad box, whilst enjoying a drop of wine I’d decanted into a plastic water bottle to bring along.

Next morning, not too early, I visited Mum again. She asked how long I was here for, and I said I’d head off at my usual time, when they started getting lunch ready. When she remarked that I normally visit two days running, I reminded her I was there yesterday. We then had a recap of Mother’s Day, which gave us something to talk about …

Back down the motorway, I was pleased to find Greggs at the services had some spicy wedges left. I got home at a reasonable time, and unpacked the ridiculous amount stuff I’m compelled to take away with me just for one night.

I also binned my litter … because other people do.