This feels a bit weird posting this on the BCG but I'm not really sure what to do with myself. I've been off work for the last two weeks after damaging my sciatic nerve and so I've spent most of my time lying in bed and posting on this site. So it feels like this site has been part of my life for those two weeks.
A few minutes before midnight on Friday I got call from my sister to say my mum had be taken to hospital with severe breathing difficulties and that the outlook was not good. She asked me to get there as soon as I could. My mum lives in Birmingham and I live in West Sussex and so it is normally a two and a half to three hour drive to get there. As I can hardly walk let alone drive, my wife grabbed the car keys. We had both gone to bed and so we hastily got dressed and started our long drive.
It is funny the things you do on a long car journey when you do not know if your mother is still going to be alive or not when you get there. Rather than actually discuss the very reason we were in the car we talked about me hurting my back and leg, movies coming up that I wanted to see and recent scripts I'd read here on Critique regarding the Sitcom Mission comp. We ended up playing the alphabet game where you take it in turns to name a category of things beginning with a, b, c etc.
We got to the QE hospital in Edgbaston at just before 3am. We parked in a disabled bay as it was just outside the main door. We were met by a nurse who was expecting us (a bad sign right there). I remember cracking a joke that because I was walking with a bad limp and I was carrying a walking stick I was, in fact, correctly parked. My uncle was there to meet us too. He said my mum was in her own room and that I needed to prepare myself because my mum did not look like my mum.
Oh my god...he wasn't telling lies. She kind of looked like my mum but also not like my mum. She was this emaciated form, incredibly pale and covered in a clammy dry sweat. Her hair was kind of dank and tied back out of the way that suggested a necessary function as opposed for being for any other reason. Apart from an oxygen line feed to her nostrils there was no other machinery in the room. This was because no machinery was needed. Nothing could be done. It was just a matter of time they told us and during that time they would just try and make her as comfortable as possible. My sister sat to her right. She was beyond distraught. She wears her emotions on her sleeve and I could not decide who out of my mom and my sister actually looked the worst. My uncle sat near the foot of the bed. He was trying to be strong for us all and himself but the cracks were there for all to see. My mum seemed to be in a kind of part sleep, part daze and part coma. The sounds of her breathing were soul destroying and you would think that each tortured wheeze was going to be the last. At three certain points during the time there we all thought the end was going to happen at that moment. The groans and wheezing reached such a pitch that I just wanted my mum to finally have peace and to stop the suffering. But it didn't and she stayed in that state for hours on end. The nurses would come and go and do what they could to at least attempt to make things better.
I am quite a private person and it is not my thing to bare all my emotions in public, I am not against it, but we are all different. I'm just not wired that way. There was a point in the early hours of Saturday morning that my sister had popped to the toilet and my wife and uncle had popped outside for a few moments to get some air. I leant in close and whispered a few things to my mom and then said my goodbyes. The others came back shortly after and then we all just sat there at the bedside as the hours ticked by.
At 4pm I had been sitting at my mums side for 13 hours. I was exhausted. Actually, because I am also kept doped up on medication, the job of which is to make me sleepy and relaxed, I pretty much felt like I was beyond exhaustion. Some more family members arrived at that point and I decided I wanted to drive home, get some proper rest and take stock of all this. So we drove home. When I got back I took more medication for my pain. My wife said we'd drive back the following day to be with her again. I was asleep in no time at all and I awoke at 12.09 in the afternoon as my wife gently shuck me awake. She said there was a text on my phone from my uncle. It said 'please ring me when you get this message'. So I rang and he told me she had died a little earlier that morning.
And so now I'm sitting here at home with my ipad in my hand not sure really what to do. I started writing this about 2pm and I've just noticed it's nearly 5pm. God alone knows where that missing time has gone in-between. I've told a few people and my wife has informed a few people but it just feels weird. I'm not even sure why I've posted this here. I guess I just had the need to talk about it.
Def.
