cherrycolouredfunk
Bluelighter
I've never posted anything here before. I keep a journal on another site, writing is catharsis for me. I use it when I feel the need to self destruct. Of course it only works sometimes.
Today is a special day. I wrote this a couple of years ago. It took drugs (speed) to get me to get this down on paper, it had been bottled up for a long time. I decided I'd like to share it now....
It's hard for me to read especially today.
______________________________________________________________
Christmas Eve, a greeting card day, snow outside and the house warm with the scent of frankincense candles. Dad had gone to the hospital to sit with Mam by himself for a while, Jennifer and me were to go later in the evening. They had told us she would not be able to make it home for Christmas. The operation to fit a metal rod in her leg to support the tumour damaged bone had gone well, but they needed to keep an eye on things spreading elsewhere.
I heard a car pull up in the drive, one door close then another. The familiar gentle sound of a throat being cleared outside told me Mam was home. She had begged with them to allow her to spend Christmas with her family, bargaining with the nurse like an excited child. So she was home. Our last Christmas together. No arguments, no anger just happiness and our Mam.
Christmas passed and faded, Mam was back in and out of hospital. The staples taken out of her leg, the scar healed, she slowly learnt to walk unaided again. I spent a lot of time with her in that last week of my holiday. She was wonderfully happy, almost healthy. Things for a while seemed normal.
Holidays over I moved back to University to start the last part of my final year, oblivious to the vicious nature of what was to come.
I didn't go home much in the next month, uni essays and exam revision was piling up. I'd ring home when I could at least three times a week, her voice always pleased to hear mine, the smile audible in her voice. I'd tell her things were fine and talk to her about my work, complain about messy flatmates and just enjoy hearing her voice even if she did tick me off every now and then for not working hard enough.
I remember the day Dad told me. They had discussed it, Mam wanted to keep her dignity for however long she could. No more sickness, trips backwards and forth from hospital. She was to have no more treatment. It didn't mean we had given up hope, we were just slowly letting reality tell it's truth.
It seemed to happen so quickly, too fast. At first it was just day trips to sit with a drip in her arm. The cancer was spreading. Everywhere. Cursing through her veins and eating her insides. The confusion was mild at first, a mixture of heavy drugs and her own mind clogged and unable to deal with her bodies inability to function properly any more. Soon the day trips became night stays, the night stays two days, two days became three. The three turned into weeks. She wouldn't be coming home, there would be no begging with nurses this time.
I remember knowing that it was the end, that her time to go had come but my mind still had a reluctance to believe it. I kept on going, half numb just functioning because it was the only thing I knew how to do without thinking properly. I remember being so scared every time I had to walk through her ward doors, the words my Father would say to me and Jennifer to gently prepare us for how she would be. She was deteriorating rapidly. Her mind taken over by the excessive amounts of calcium in her body. Her pale blue eyes, so wide in her small shrunken face, like a scared little child's. She was terrified, her mind all to aware of what was happening. Nonsense conversations, that somehow made perfect sense. Looking at my Fathers face, feeling the tears come to my eyes as she tells him in a muddled way how she wants her funeral to be.
The next few days are all blur, the choice was made to move her to a hospice. She didn't decide this for her benefit, always being the considerate one Mam remembered how Jennifer felt about Grandmas house when she had died at home and she didn't want the undignified hassle of being carried out of the house on a stretcher and out onto the road for every nosy idiot to gawp at. My mother never once thought about herself, just one of her many admirable qualities.
Me and my sister sat on cold white sterile seats holding hands as Dad made plans with the doctor to have her taken to the hospice in an ambulance. An Aunt came to take Jennifer and me to the hospice, Dad was going to follow right behind the ambulance in his car.
The hospice was in a tiny village nearby, a place I had not been to since my late school days. I remember the smell as soon as I walked in the door, sharp and sweet - Ammonia. We got there about an hour after Mam and Dad. She was sat in a chair, dressing gown and blue and white blanket draped around her shoulders. Eyes wild her hand grabbing Dads, happy recognition crept over her face as we her two daughters walked into the room. Kneeling down on the floor beside her I just talked to her. She was still coherent and just like her old self still so able to express her irritation at people fussing over her! This made me smile.
Dad stayed there that night. Next morning we returned to find her lying down, still talking sometimes sense, other times she was only voicing her confused thoughts. I went back to university that night. I was running away, unable to look at my mother the way she was any more, knowing she was dying but not yet convinced that she had fully gone. I went out and got drunk, something i'm not proud of but I needed to escape.
The phone call came at 8am the next morning, My fathers simply said he words 'Helen, I think it's time.' The bus ride home wasn't real, I knew deep down what was happening, my reality failed to allow me this. Just needing to hear a friendly voice I rang my ex who had still been there for me a lot in the past few months.
I arrived back at the hospice sometime after 10am. She was lying in bed, her skin pale yellow, lips cracked and dry from the constant breathing through her mouth. The room smelt as a room would smell when someone is unable to recognise the signals they need to empty their bladder. She had an automatic morphine driver kept by her bed, I remember the sound of its soft click every now and then as it kept her topped up.Her breathing was in intervals. Breath in 1,2,3,4,5,6 breath out. Six seconds every time, on the fifth breath my heart would stop desperate to hear hers follow my exhale. They said she wouldn't make it past lunchtime. My eyes stole glances at the clock, not really wanting to know the time but needing to. We all sat round her bed, Dad, Jennifer, me and her sisters. It was too much for Grandad, he waited outside.
She was in a deep drug sleep. We exchanged stories and smiled through the tears, taking only slight comfort in the fact she was still breathing but knowing that the next one could be the last. Every so often she would let out a sweet gentle noise, a sigh that sounded almost content. She wasn't in pain anymore, she was going. Now we just had to wait.
12pm, 1pm, 2pm...her breathing was now shallow and almost scarce. Her lungs were shutting down, every exhale came with a wheezy rattle. 2.30pm the nurse came and closed the door, years of experience on their side, they knew.
2.45pm 19th February 2002 she took a breath but there was no wheeze, no rattle and no exhale.
But fuck I need her so much. Her strength and stamina, her ability to handle anything thrown her way without once complaining, how she could always love and carry on regardless. I need that.
Her fragile movements, gentle caring way and soft calming voice. I miss them. Sitting close to her, talking or just being comfortable in silence. I want to.
I want her to see how I've grown up, would she be proud of me? I have things to tell her, questions to ask her and there are things she still must teach me. Sometimes a girl just needs her mother but I want and need mine so much it's breaking my heart.
I can't remember the last words I said to her or even when they were. I hurt when I think of all the times I got angry, called her names or took a tantrum with her. If she was here today, if we had grown older together, would I be different? Would I take her for granted or would I appreciate her for the wonderful human being she was?
I will forever regret that I wont have the chance to experience the progression from mother and child to mother and older daughter. Always wish that I had told her I loved her more often than I did. Constantly worry that one day I wont be able to remember the sound of her voice or the feel of her hand as she squeezed mine to reassure me.
She didn't get to see me graduate from university, leave home properly or start my first job. She missed out on comforting me when I broke up with my first serious boyfriend, giving me advice about problems or even just telling me now and then not to be so stupid! She wont have the chance to meet my future husband, share in the excitement of my wedding or hold my first born. I did and will continue to do all of these things for her through my own heart and spirit.
People often leave without saying goodbye, but inside you they always remain. I will think of her when i'm sleeping and every day I am awake. Hear her voice in my ears whenever I am scared. See her face if I feel lonely, but most of all above all of this, I will smile each and every time I think of her, see something that reminds me of her or smell her in some flowers. Even if it's perhaps the smallest little thing I will go to that special place where she rests in my mind and share my whole life with her.
She is with me, inside me and beside me. She follows me wherever go and helps me in whatever I do. It was only her body that ceased to function on the 19th of February 2002. Her energetic spirit, love and strong character will live on with and through me because after all, I am 50% her creation. I share her genetic make up her pattern and structure. What made her also makes me and I will carry her with me for the rest of my life.
Today is a special day. I wrote this a couple of years ago. It took drugs (speed) to get me to get this down on paper, it had been bottled up for a long time. I decided I'd like to share it now....
It's hard for me to read especially today.
______________________________________________________________
Christmas Eve, a greeting card day, snow outside and the house warm with the scent of frankincense candles. Dad had gone to the hospital to sit with Mam by himself for a while, Jennifer and me were to go later in the evening. They had told us she would not be able to make it home for Christmas. The operation to fit a metal rod in her leg to support the tumour damaged bone had gone well, but they needed to keep an eye on things spreading elsewhere.
I heard a car pull up in the drive, one door close then another. The familiar gentle sound of a throat being cleared outside told me Mam was home. She had begged with them to allow her to spend Christmas with her family, bargaining with the nurse like an excited child. So she was home. Our last Christmas together. No arguments, no anger just happiness and our Mam.
Christmas passed and faded, Mam was back in and out of hospital. The staples taken out of her leg, the scar healed, she slowly learnt to walk unaided again. I spent a lot of time with her in that last week of my holiday. She was wonderfully happy, almost healthy. Things for a while seemed normal.
Holidays over I moved back to University to start the last part of my final year, oblivious to the vicious nature of what was to come.
I didn't go home much in the next month, uni essays and exam revision was piling up. I'd ring home when I could at least three times a week, her voice always pleased to hear mine, the smile audible in her voice. I'd tell her things were fine and talk to her about my work, complain about messy flatmates and just enjoy hearing her voice even if she did tick me off every now and then for not working hard enough.
I remember the day Dad told me. They had discussed it, Mam wanted to keep her dignity for however long she could. No more sickness, trips backwards and forth from hospital. She was to have no more treatment. It didn't mean we had given up hope, we were just slowly letting reality tell it's truth.
It seemed to happen so quickly, too fast. At first it was just day trips to sit with a drip in her arm. The cancer was spreading. Everywhere. Cursing through her veins and eating her insides. The confusion was mild at first, a mixture of heavy drugs and her own mind clogged and unable to deal with her bodies inability to function properly any more. Soon the day trips became night stays, the night stays two days, two days became three. The three turned into weeks. She wouldn't be coming home, there would be no begging with nurses this time.
I remember knowing that it was the end, that her time to go had come but my mind still had a reluctance to believe it. I kept on going, half numb just functioning because it was the only thing I knew how to do without thinking properly. I remember being so scared every time I had to walk through her ward doors, the words my Father would say to me and Jennifer to gently prepare us for how she would be. She was deteriorating rapidly. Her mind taken over by the excessive amounts of calcium in her body. Her pale blue eyes, so wide in her small shrunken face, like a scared little child's. She was terrified, her mind all to aware of what was happening. Nonsense conversations, that somehow made perfect sense. Looking at my Fathers face, feeling the tears come to my eyes as she tells him in a muddled way how she wants her funeral to be.
The next few days are all blur, the choice was made to move her to a hospice. She didn't decide this for her benefit, always being the considerate one Mam remembered how Jennifer felt about Grandmas house when she had died at home and she didn't want the undignified hassle of being carried out of the house on a stretcher and out onto the road for every nosy idiot to gawp at. My mother never once thought about herself, just one of her many admirable qualities.
Me and my sister sat on cold white sterile seats holding hands as Dad made plans with the doctor to have her taken to the hospice in an ambulance. An Aunt came to take Jennifer and me to the hospice, Dad was going to follow right behind the ambulance in his car.
The hospice was in a tiny village nearby, a place I had not been to since my late school days. I remember the smell as soon as I walked in the door, sharp and sweet - Ammonia. We got there about an hour after Mam and Dad. She was sat in a chair, dressing gown and blue and white blanket draped around her shoulders. Eyes wild her hand grabbing Dads, happy recognition crept over her face as we her two daughters walked into the room. Kneeling down on the floor beside her I just talked to her. She was still coherent and just like her old self still so able to express her irritation at people fussing over her! This made me smile.
Dad stayed there that night. Next morning we returned to find her lying down, still talking sometimes sense, other times she was only voicing her confused thoughts. I went back to university that night. I was running away, unable to look at my mother the way she was any more, knowing she was dying but not yet convinced that she had fully gone. I went out and got drunk, something i'm not proud of but I needed to escape.
The phone call came at 8am the next morning, My fathers simply said he words 'Helen, I think it's time.' The bus ride home wasn't real, I knew deep down what was happening, my reality failed to allow me this. Just needing to hear a friendly voice I rang my ex who had still been there for me a lot in the past few months.
I arrived back at the hospice sometime after 10am. She was lying in bed, her skin pale yellow, lips cracked and dry from the constant breathing through her mouth. The room smelt as a room would smell when someone is unable to recognise the signals they need to empty their bladder. She had an automatic morphine driver kept by her bed, I remember the sound of its soft click every now and then as it kept her topped up.Her breathing was in intervals. Breath in 1,2,3,4,5,6 breath out. Six seconds every time, on the fifth breath my heart would stop desperate to hear hers follow my exhale. They said she wouldn't make it past lunchtime. My eyes stole glances at the clock, not really wanting to know the time but needing to. We all sat round her bed, Dad, Jennifer, me and her sisters. It was too much for Grandad, he waited outside.
She was in a deep drug sleep. We exchanged stories and smiled through the tears, taking only slight comfort in the fact she was still breathing but knowing that the next one could be the last. Every so often she would let out a sweet gentle noise, a sigh that sounded almost content. She wasn't in pain anymore, she was going. Now we just had to wait.
12pm, 1pm, 2pm...her breathing was now shallow and almost scarce. Her lungs were shutting down, every exhale came with a wheezy rattle. 2.30pm the nurse came and closed the door, years of experience on their side, they knew.
2.45pm 19th February 2002 she took a breath but there was no wheeze, no rattle and no exhale.
02/07/1952 - 19/02/2002
See you in the next one.
But fuck I need her so much. Her strength and stamina, her ability to handle anything thrown her way without once complaining, how she could always love and carry on regardless. I need that.
Her fragile movements, gentle caring way and soft calming voice. I miss them. Sitting close to her, talking or just being comfortable in silence. I want to.
I want her to see how I've grown up, would she be proud of me? I have things to tell her, questions to ask her and there are things she still must teach me. Sometimes a girl just needs her mother but I want and need mine so much it's breaking my heart.
I can't remember the last words I said to her or even when they were. I hurt when I think of all the times I got angry, called her names or took a tantrum with her. If she was here today, if we had grown older together, would I be different? Would I take her for granted or would I appreciate her for the wonderful human being she was?
I will forever regret that I wont have the chance to experience the progression from mother and child to mother and older daughter. Always wish that I had told her I loved her more often than I did. Constantly worry that one day I wont be able to remember the sound of her voice or the feel of her hand as she squeezed mine to reassure me.
She didn't get to see me graduate from university, leave home properly or start my first job. She missed out on comforting me when I broke up with my first serious boyfriend, giving me advice about problems or even just telling me now and then not to be so stupid! She wont have the chance to meet my future husband, share in the excitement of my wedding or hold my first born. I did and will continue to do all of these things for her through my own heart and spirit.
People often leave without saying goodbye, but inside you they always remain. I will think of her when i'm sleeping and every day I am awake. Hear her voice in my ears whenever I am scared. See her face if I feel lonely, but most of all above all of this, I will smile each and every time I think of her, see something that reminds me of her or smell her in some flowers. Even if it's perhaps the smallest little thing I will go to that special place where she rests in my mind and share my whole life with her.
She is with me, inside me and beside me. She follows me wherever go and helps me in whatever I do. It was only her body that ceased to function on the 19th of February 2002. Her energetic spirit, love and strong character will live on with and through me because after all, I am 50% her creation. I share her genetic make up her pattern and structure. What made her also makes me and I will carry her with me for the rest of my life.
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