Tag: Mother

Saving the Cockroaches.

lizaaitken

My friend suggested cockroaches through the letterbox, or even better fire ants but I’m remaining sane this time.  My boys hurting, he has been treated unfairly, bullied and intimidated by an imbecile, twat, selfish f……there I go, now back to sane.

As a mother, it really hurts deep in your insides when someone trips your kids up in any way.  From the playground to adulthood, it doesn’t get any easier, it hurts like bloody mad.  I think when you have children, you learn what fear is for the very first time, you realise that you can be demolished quite easily, without even being known or seen.

I’m a rational human being, I’m a carer, I love people for their flaws and forgive more than most.  But when it comes to my boy this rather weird, screwed, insane woman emerges from my bed each morning.  I am a witch, crow, hag and potential murderer!

No, I couldn’t kill, but god do I fantasize about it on occasion, alone in the dark, driving down a quiet road, I’m not me anymore I am the avenger of all the wrong in the world, I am the saviour of the righteous and the slayer of all the nasty little shits I can find!

What can I do to help myself, help my boy so his mum isn’t locked away.  I have to remain sane and share my sanity with the world.  I have to bury that demented cow that keeps getting up every day and find her good kindhearted sister.  I have to be grown up and get on with life.  I have to forget that revenge is a dish best eaten cold or frozen.

I believe all this crap I read about being good and kind.  I think like attracts like and we are only given what we can deal with in life.  Every challenge is a lesson and a new door is opening and all that good stuff.

So now, I have to think about my wonderful boy and be even kinder when it comes to cockroaches!

Losing Mum

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My mum died on Sunday 26th October at 23.00. The death certificate states she died the next day as the doctor took a while to get to her, he said he was sorry for our loss but he was busy.

I feel like I’m walking around in a different season or maybe in a different world completely at the moment. It’s not the same here without my mum, but nobody seems to know that, life goes on just like it did the day before she died. Everybody is moving far too quickly and I can’t seem to keep up, time is running away with itself while I am standing still. Life for me at the moment is like watching a movie, I can see what is going on but I’m not really in on the act, I’m sure the credits will roll at some point.

I have thrown myself into being busy, too busy to think, too busy to face anything I can’t face right now. I’m cleaning out mum’s flat with my sister, I’m sorting our mum’s stuff like it belongs to a stranger. There are moments when I pick up some clothes, a jacket or cardigan, and sniff at the collar like a dog looking for a scent. I want to breathe in her smell and feel safe within it again, I close my eyes and imagine she is there with me. But the moment passes and I continue sorting the junk from the jewels.

We stayed those final days in the hospital with mum, the doctor called for the family although we had been there every day. I sat on a chair at the end of her bed and watched her sleep. Those last few days she slept a lot, she was preparing herself for the journey ahead. The day before mum died, she said to the nurse she wanted to press a button and be dead. She had fought the cruel disease for eleven years until the day she wanted to die. Minutes before mum died I prayed for her, I prayed the suffering would end and she would pass over easily. I moved a bottle of spring water that was blocking my view of her lovely face, she told me off for disturbing her. I remember thinking to myself that she never told me off, we couldn’t really do anything wrong in our mum’s eyes.

We called for a nurse as mum needed her morphine injection. It didn’t help this time, she needed something much stronger to help. When the nurse went to get it mum started to pass over. It took minutes, but time stood still, minutes turned into something much longer as we watched our mum die. We tried to help her to go without us, we told her to go and that we would be okay. We told her we loved her and thanked her for being our mum. We were trying to tell her how much we loved her, we didn’t want her to go missing anything, we didn’t want her to forget. She knew we loved her, we didn’t have to say but we both needed to, we wanted to say it for the last time. I have worried since that I was on her deaf side and maybe she couldn’t hear me.

I don’t know the actual moment mum went and if some of those last drawn out breaths were just the body doing what it had done for so long. Were the lungs just responding as they always had while the blood slowed down on its final journey around her body. I don’t even know how she died, was it the lungs or her heart that finally gave up?

I’m not sure what happened right then, my body shook uncontrollably and I couldn’t stop my arms and legs from moving. My sister wanted to help me but also wanted to stay with mum. I didn’t want to be selfish, I just couldn’t help myself. My son said afterwards it sounded like a response to the shock. I’m not sure why I was shocked, I was expecting mum to die, I had prayed for her to be out of pain but I just couldn’t cope with the reality of it actually happening. Losing the one person who had loved me from the very moment I was born.

We stayed with mum for a while, she looked beautiful, she was always beautiful. The lines and the constant daily pain faded from her face and she looked at peace at last. We knew she wasn’t really there anymore, the body was just a vehicle but how we had loved that body, we had both lived in that body for a while. I told the nurses that my sister and I would clean and dress mum, but my sister told me I wouldn’t manage it, she told me to go. I sat in the family lounge while my sister got mum’s body ready for the morgue, she called my mobile to ask what mum should wear . I remember looking up the train times on my phone while I waited.

Three weeks later now and I haven’t cried properly yet, I’m frozen. I think I have put up a wall to protect myself, as I just can’t deal with the reality of mum dying, I can’t cope with it. I understand trauma a little and know this is just my body looking after my mind but I want my mind back. No, that’s not right, I’m in denial and what I really want is my mum back.

Looking out for Martha

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Martha makes a horrendous noise when she yawns. It is because she can’t get enough air into her lungs and this is the noise her body makes. It is terrifying to hear but what frightens Anne, her daughter, is that it has become an every day noise. When Martha made the noise today in the bathroom, Anne’s son ran from his room to check she was okay. Anne saw fear etched on his face, as he asked his Nan if he could help. She heard herself saying ‘Its okay love, Nan does that all the time’. She wondered when she became so immune to her mother’s illness, when did the pain she goes through on a daily basis become acceptable.

Martha was diagnosed with a lung disease 10 years ago. At that time they told her she had no time left, she was in such poor condition. Martha has defied the specialists and the disease in some way. Although she is in the later stages of the illness now, her amazing and powerful spirit is still fighting. As a family, they have had plenty of time to get used to the illness and know what Martha needs. The number one thing is love, but they also recognise and meet all her other needs.

The autoimmune disease Martha has affects so much of what the family does now. Winters are long and spent inside the home, as Martha cannot venture out in the cold. It’s not only the weather but also the fear of catching the winter viruses that imprisons Martha. She lives for the summer, warmth on her face and vitamin D for her bones. Anne feels her mother’s frustration during those winter months and wants to be able to make her happy in any way she can. Anne feels guilty that she can run around town and enjoy the fresh air but Martha always insists that she does.

It is not often Martha and Anne visit a café anymore, maybe only on hospital visits these days. But when they are in café and Martha has a coughing fit, Anne can see herself waving the waiting staff away when they attempt to help by bringing water. It is not that she is not grateful for their kindness but she knows it is not water her mother needs, coughing is what she does all day, every day. People and the germs all around are as dangerous to her autoimmune disease as anything else, so Anne attempts to keep them away and shield her mother. She has come to recognise the coughs and would know if her mum was in trouble, Anne hopes to god that’s the case anyway. Anne believes she must look like the daughter from hell to strangers, she doesn’t really care what she looks like to other people as long as what she does for her mum is right.

If Anne is honest, she has in fact always cared what she looks like to others. She has always wanted to be accepted and approved of, but she has also learnt to put these feelings aside for now. It is not about her at the moment, what is important is what she can do for her mum.

Martha is fiercely independent and when she goes to any of the many hospital appointments, she likes to go into her consultations on her own. Martha says there will come a time when she needs Anne with her, but until then she wants to be able to manage by herself. Anne understands this but it does not mean she doesn’t sit in the waiting room wanting the floor to swallow her up sometimes. She feels the looks and almost hears the thoughts of the people who witness her remaining seated while allowing her mother to struggle across the room trailing her oxygen cylinder. Anne wants to shout, ‘she won’t let me go with her’, but she wouldn’t dream of causing a scene. For now she needs to harness the same strength as her mother.

Walking Back To Happiness

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I’ve not got a bad pair of legs even if I do say so myself.  The thing is, I paid for them, my mother walked my legs into me and scared poor cellulite from ever coming near.  From an early age, her love of walking was ours, like it or not there was no choice in the matter.

At the age of six I was holding onto the side of my sister’s pushchair while walking with mum to visit my grandmother seven miles away.  We walked from Morden, where we lived in South London to Balham and back again.  This was a regular occurrence and at the best of times without detours it was fourteen miles with short legs.  Can you imagine how many steps a six year old needs to take to walk that distance.  We didn’t own a car, mum couldn’t drive but the long and the short of it was my mum loved to walk.

I have a scar on my knee now from a fall on one of those walks, I don’t look at it today without thinking back. I can see the blood and the small stones stuck into my knee and I can still feel the kiss that made it all better.  In fact many of my childhood memories could be played out on the A24 otherwise known as the London Road.

I remember having dreams as a child of trying to walk or run from a monster and as much as I moved my legs I couldn’t go anywhere.  I wonder now if this might have been on the nights of our long walks, my legs still stepping one in front of the other under the bedclothes.

It wasn’t all-bad, we chatted ten to the dozen there and back, I knew my mum then like I do today because we talked to each other, we never walked in silence. I always think it strange when I see families walking along not speaking to each other, what a waste of precious time.

We played guessing games, told stories and sang songs on those walks, my sister joining in from the pushchair.  The sweet game was my favorite, it was a special treat when it happened as mum didn’t like us to have too many sweets.   We had to suck a sweet and see who could make it last the longest, last one with the sweet won.  My sister always won that game, I couldn’t work out how she managed as she talked as much as us.  I tried and tried to win, stuck the sweet under my tongue, held it between my teeth and kept my mouth open without swallowing but she was always to be queen of that game.

Mum used to say one day she would walk the length of England, I always hoped when she did eventually do this, she would wait until I was old enough to stay at home.  I think I probably walked the length of England a few times in my childhood, but hey I’ve got good legs.  What’s more I have the best relationship with my family, wonderful memories and a driving license!

Oxygen

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They delivered the new oxygen today.  As well as the small cylinders you have got used to, they delivered a concentrator, a large box that takes oxygen from the air. You didn’t want it, but it was necessary as you have required more and more oxygen to do the simple things you used not to think about.  You hated it, you said you felt like you were a dog on a lead being attached to the box wherever you went.  I tried to make light of it, look for the silver lining we usually find at difficult times, but it wasn’t easy today.  I said it only meant getting used to something different, that it would make life easier when you didn’t have to wait around for your oxygen to be delivered.  I reminded you of how you would start to get a little stressed and anxious if you ran low and this wouldn’t be a problem anymore now that the oxygen was on tap.

I felt helpless when I saw you were tearful.  It’s so easy for me, who can run around town in no time at all to tell you everything will be alright.  We know it won’t, you will need oxygen now for the rest of your life.

It’s spooky in a way that you had claustrophobia all your life, that the thought of not being able to breathe was your worst nightmare.  You have lived an exceptionally healthy life and end up with an incurable and hateful lung disease.   It’s like from childhood you subconsciously knew what was to come.  When I think of your illness I often think of the stories of you as a child, licking salt from the factory walls or wearing the old gas masks you told me about.

I took you for a drive today, I thought the sun being out would cheer you up and it did.  We drove down the coast a little to a town with some tearooms.  Finding a disability parking space wasn’t a problem now we have the badges.  I set up your cylinder on the trolley and off we went to attempt a walk.  We stopped for coffee and cake, it was lovely although a little on the generous side.  Walking back towards the car, you were very slow, you stopped, you had nothing left in you and had to sit on a bench for a while in the graveyard.  In setting up the oxygen, I had forgotten to turn the bloody thing on.  I felt awful, putting that stress on your poor body, another reminder of how healthy I am in comparison.

On the journey home, you said you realised now how awful it was for dogs to be on leads.  You’re nothing like a dog mum, however beautiful you think they are, there are no similarities.

You used the concentrator again tonight. I hope it gets easier to live with and you can feel a little happier in yourself.   I suggested you put the tubing over your shoulder so it would trail behind you and you wouldn’t trip.  There you go down the hall with the tube singing to yourself and me ‘over my shoulder goes one care, over my shoulder go two cares’ you’re amazing.

Watching You

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I am following you down the street, the cobbles make it harder for you to push the pram any faster, so it is quite easy for me to keep up with you.  As I draw closer I look down into the pram at your child, a beautiful bonny baby shrouded in yellow.  I’m guessing you had a girl, I know yellow could be used for either sex but she looks like a girl, there is a look of her mother.

You have two children now, I wonder is your family complete.  I suppose it is too early to tell, you are still so young yourself.  Your daughter with that lovely thick curly hair just like her father’s, holds tightly onto the pram beside you.  She is chattering away at the double as you walk towards the park, a happy family unit on a beautiful summers day.

You don’t know me although we have met a few times now.  We met in the children’s library when you helped me find the book I was looking for and we met again at the summer fete when I was helping out with the face paints.  I sat behind you on the bus last week and across from you in the café the week before.  It’s not strange that you see me often, it is a small village and you get to recognise most folk around here.

I’m going to the park too, the dog could do with a run and I will stop for a sandwich in the café by the children’s play area.  It would be nice if we were there at the same time, I know that is your ritual on a warm day like this.  I have some bread to feed the ducks should your little one like to do that, but we will have to see if you go to the lake today.

I like it here, it’s a nice place to live, lovely for the children to grow with the countryside all around them.  I hope you stay, it would be lovely for the children and wonderful for me.

It took me a long time to find this village but I’m happy now after a lifetime of sadness and regret.  I never felt complete before I came here, I’m not really complete now but I’m probably as close as I will ever get.

I watch you from the café, pushing your daughter on the swing.  You both laugh as she soars high in the air, high enough to give her a thrill but safe enough for you, how clever of you.  The pram is close by and your eyes constantly move from pram to swing, what a wonderful mother you are, how lucky the children.

I never had any more children after they took you away from me at 16.  It has been the most painful thing to me and although I did eventually meet a good man I felt that if I had another child it would be unfair to you.  It would be like replacing you and that would be impossible.  Frank and I divorced and he has a family of his own now, I’m happy for him.

I would never tell you who I really am, I know the people that brought you up are your parents.  They are good people and did a wonderful job, for that I will be eternally grateful.  I have observed the love between you when you wave them off from one of their visits.  I love them too in a way, like you they have been included in all my prayers.

I look up to see you entering the garden area of the café.  There is not a table, you stop to look around for a space to sit.  Lily, your daughter points over in my direction, yes there are spare seats at my table by the swings.   Today I have been blessed I think to myself as you sit.

After the Bullies

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I watch from the window as you walk down the quiet street.  I’m tucked away in case you look around, I don’t want you to see me up here.  You walk stiffly, shoulders bent and head down, your arms straight and tight by your side.  Those arms should be swinging, you should look comfortable in your body, your head should be high and you should be at your full and beautiful size my wonderful girl.

I see you pause and I look beyond you, to see what has distracted you from your path.  I see the gang of teenage girls, younger than you are now, sitting upon the wall up ahead.  They wouldn’t appear threatening to many people, but to you I know they are a huge obstacle.  You stop for just a moment, I think you might turn around and return home but you cross the road to distance yourself from the group.  They don’t even notice you as you pass on the other side of the street, but I’m sure it doesn’t feel like that to you.  I’m sure just like me you’re holding your breath, waiting for a shout or something to be thrown.  There, my love its over, you made it and they are sure to be gone by your return in an hour, if not you can walk on the other side again, no one will notice.

I hate the bullies that did this to you, took away your teenage years when you should be laughing and maybe like the other girls sitting on the wall talking about boy bands and boyfriends.  I hate the fact that many of your hours are spent in your room with the curtains closed, listening to that awful music and writing in your diary.  I wish you didn’t wear black all the time, I really think you could do with some colour in your life.

Your diary shouts at me from across your room, spews out your hurt, it screams loudly your loss.  I would never open the cover and look but I can feel the pain inside those pages, feel your loneliness and hear your anger. 

I would take away your pain in a moment, carry it for you and more on top if I thought it would give you your youth back.  I know you will overcome this one day, know that you will have a wonderful life.  You are just too lovely not to and like attracts like in the end my darling I promise.

I’m still at the window just over an hour later as you return.  I duck behind the curtain as I see you turn the corner.  It has been a long hour for both of us but you won’t know that I have been watching for you as I sit down with my feet curled under me and open my book.    

Tomorrow

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Tomorrow you might not be here anymore.  Tomorrow might not be the day after today, but there will be a tomorrow when you are gone.  I can’t imagine a tomorrow without you, where you are not in my world.  But tomorrow can wait because you are here today.  Today I can talk with you and tell you all the things you need to hear, how very, very special you are.

Lets first start with yesterday, not the day before today but all our yesterdays.  How we have walked many paths of experience together, shared many smiles and laughed out loud together.  How on that first yesterday, the yesterday we met, you loved me from the moment you saw me.  I’m not sure I remember how I felt, but I’m sure it was the same because I don’t remember ever not loving you.  We have spent a lifetime together, my lifetime anyway.  I know you started yours before me and mine might go on a little longer but knowing you is as old as my bones.  You are my oldest memory, my first memory and my forever memory.  Yesterday you taught me kindness, I copied you and it was easy.  Yesterday you showed me love and empathy, and because I received it from you, it became easy for me to show it to others.  Yesterday you listened to me, you have always listened to me and I understand the importance of listening to others.  You taught me a lot and what did I give you in return.  Yesterday I taught you fear, from the moment we met I know you feared you might loose me.  You feared for my safety and feared I might be hurt, you feared that I would be sad.  I tested you a little along the way with that lesson.  You taught me a little of that fear too, I’m fearful now for you.

Today you are in my life, today I can touch you, hold you, smell you.  I can look into your lovely blue eyes, be warmed by your smile and hear your voice.  Today I can see an aura around you that glows golden with your beauty.  There are angels in your aura, they add to the shine, they bathe in the pureness of it.  Today I can care for you, be there and show you how very special you will always be.

I am going to put yesterday, today and tomorrow in a jar and shake them up.  Shake them so they mix together and become one.  Shake them until they melt into one place and time that we will always share.

Testing my Resilience

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I was saying the other day how I was resilient, how I felt resilience came from how you coped with past experiences.  An ability to put yourself outside of a situation and not feel the pain of it, recognise the trauma but protect yourself from it.  I wrote it down, it was going to be included in one of my stories.

‘What about resilience, do we develop it here on earth or is this something we bring with us, learnt from the many challenges of the paths we have walked before. What is natural resilience anyway, I’m resilient but I know I have achieved this through my own experiences. I am able to deal with some traumatic situations by removing myself from the pain of them. Or am I still kidding myself, will the pain slap me around the face one day’.

You didn’t come home last night after work.  That’s okay you’re young and probably having fun, out straight from work on a Saturday night and forgot yourself.  I would have done the same myself at 25.  I texted you in the evening to say that I was going on Skype, so be quiet if you came in, you didn’t disturb me.

I went to bed at midnight and left the light on in the hall for you.  If you had a few drinks I wanted to be sure you were safe and would not trip on the stairs.  I do this when you’re late, I get up in the morning and you have turned it off and your bedroom door is closed.

The light was still on, the door is open, you’re not home.

I’m telling myself that you’re fine, you probably stayed at Ruby’s and as it was late didn’t want to wake me.  I have three hours until you’re due in work and then you will call.  Why didn’t you text, I could have found it when I woke.  What about email, you know I check them on my phone.

I probably seem over protective but I’m not, I want you to have fun.  It’s just that you have never done this before, you always think of other people, well me anyway.  You are considerate, you think of my feelings.  Your boss tells me every time I see him how well brought up you are, what manners you have.  Well, that is all down to you my lovely, you’re a natural.  That’s why I’m starting to panic, just a little bit.

I know you’re fine really and I’m letting my imagination run away with me.  If you were not, someone would have let me know.  I think of how they can check your wallet, they find out where you live from your bankcards.  What if you lost your wallet, what if you’re unconscious?  It’s okay, I just realised Ruby would be able to tell anyone if you were hurt.  But what if you’re not with her, maybe I just assumed it was her you were with, you might have been alone.

I texted you again half an hour ago, I didn’t phone in case you’re still sleeping.  Hurry up and wake up darling, put my mind at ease.

I know life is full of challenges, but you hope they lessen a bit as you learn form them.  I couldn’t cope if you were hurt, you’re my Achilles Heel darling.  I would go mad without you in my life.  What am I saying you’re probably just hung over, thoughtless, selfish, but I know you’re not.  I think about that some more, you can be selfish when you let me pick up after you, which is good today, and it’s how I want it to be.  I want to think you are just uncaring, no I don’t, I just want to know you are all right.

It is quiet in town today, apart from the gulls screeching over the roofs.  I’m aware my ears are tuned to the street, listening for footsteps in case you pop home to change.

I can’t do anything, I’m sitting here in my dressing gown waiting for you to make the next move.  If I get in the shower you might call, the police might knock on the door, the hospital might call.  Time is trickling by today, hurry up and help the hands of the clock get back to normal.

I’m not really as resilient as I thought, nowhere near it.  I’m a mother who wants to know if her boy is okay.

On Being Held in Mind

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I’m talking to you on the phone as I walk up the hill from the station and towards home.  There are plenty of people about even though its past midnight, but I know you won’t rest until you have seen me home.  That’s the thing with you mum, you are able to keep me safe by holding me in mind, being present in spirit and keeping anything bad away.  I remember the first time I flew on a plane when I was 12 and went to Romania on a school trip.  You sat down that morning at the kitchen table and willed that plane to stay in the air, you didn’t move until you were sure it had touched down, I knew you were holding it up.  It was years ago and before we all had mobiles so you never got the message I had landed, you just knew.

I recognise the importance of an attentive parent responding to a child’s needs in infancy as being crucial to the child’s development and that being held in mind is connected to a child’s ability to know that a parent is there for them even when they are not physically present but mum I’m 50!

I’m not complaining really, being held in mind by you has always been wonderful.  It has kept me safe and also given me extra strength along the way.  Any doubts I have experienced in my ability to do something have often been blown away when I remembered you believed I could do it.  Its been this way all my life, from the moment I was born you have believed in me, worried for me and beyond anything else loved me no matter what.  I can’t think of a time in life you haven’t been with me, you have seen me through the best and worst of experiences.  My life lessons have all involved you.  When I have taken the longer path you have walked it with me, however hard you knew I would find the right way in the end.  But on occasion if I’m honest mum, this preoccupation with my safety has driven me a little mad.

I remember when I had my son and you were interviewed for Woman’s Hour on becoming a grandparent.  You told the presenter that by having a baby it made me vulnerable as from that day forward I could be hurt like I had never been hurt before if anything happened to my child.  It makes perfect sense to me, your right our worries about our children are our biggest and most frightening but we also have to let them live.

You often worry about things that are never going to happen, its very unlikely that terrorists will get on the plane I am flying on, a bomb will go off on the tube I’m travelling in or my car will break down and be buried in a blizzard.  That’s not to say I don’t take your advice and carry a blanket in the boot mum, rest assured.

I know you touch my picture every night before you go to sleep and I know you think of me on waking and all through the day.  I know you like to share my worries so that I don’t suffer the stress of them on my own, but doesn’t that just add to your worries.  Now I’m worrying about you worrying about me and it worries me!

I put my key in the door and tell you I’m home safe, I want you to relax now.  I’m a big girl and your the vulnerable one now, let me worry about you, take responsibility and hold you in my thoughts now.