Right to Die

by Hazel McHaffie

  ‘And those nurses! Would I be right in thinking one of them was the little lady?’

  ‘The dark haired one. That’s Naomi.’

  ‘Well! Well! Well!’

  ‘But where were you?’

  ‘Me? D’you recall number twelve? The giant-size frog and the floating lily pad?’

  ‘You weren’t…?’

  ‘Indeed I was, honey. Ribbet! Ribbet!’

  ‘I wish I’d known.’

  ‘No, sir! I only said yes to my boys on the understanding nobody could see it was me.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘But, what I want to know, honestly now, is how did you cope with your bones being shaken out of your skin?’ She was looking at me intently now, her verbal disguise forgotten in the professional concern. ‘I’ve got a whole lot more padding than you and I know my teeth were rattling in my head!’

  ‘I was terrified out of my skull and in agony. It took me days to recover from the aching. But I wouldn’t have changed a thing!’

  She listened without interruption as I outlined some of the ways in which Joel and Naomi had made it a memorable Christmas.

  ‘You’re impressive yourself,’ she said quietly. ‘It takes real courage to face this in the way you’re doing.’

  ‘No. Without them I’d have been a wreck this Christmas.’

  She reached out to lay a warm hand over mine. There was a long pause and then she was briskly back into the safety of her craft. I needed every ounce of concentration to do the exercises she demanded of me.

  What a huge debt they both owed this fantastic woman, Naomi thought. Would it be a violation of Adam’s privacy to copy out some quotes from the diary to capture his admiration and affection? Could she herself bear to share anything of this personal legacy?

  She resolved to consult Joel. He should certainly know how much Adam had seen his hand at work and what it had meant to him.

  10 JANUARY—What a fiendish few days. What wouldn’t I give to have my old strength and mobility back – just until this is over.

  Mother has had a massive stroke. No warning. One minute she was there, driving me crazy with her obsessions; next minute she’s lying in a hospital bed unconscious. Unable to decide even her own fate, never mind mine.

  The worst thing about it is the loss of communication. We can talk to her, hold her hand, but even if she does feel or hear (as they say she might), she can’t send a message back. Not by any route. I’m doing my best to reach her but there’s a limit to how many hours you can natter on to someone who’s lying there drooling, breathing like a steam train, oblivious.

  Telling Joel over the phone made the actual happening real. Standing at her bedside, looking down at the wreckage, my brain is starting to take in the wider implications. But somehow my emotions aren’t engaging with the facts – yet. I don’t know if my personal illness and my own imminent departure have blunted my sensitivity, or whether it’s because I’ve had to focus on all the practical things, or whether it’s simply because even the simplest tasks take a huge effort of concentration. Joel has been more open in his reactions. He doesn’t see much of her normally, but he was up here by the end of that day. And it was obvious he was distressed by the mere sight of her.

  It has just struck me. It’s not just Mother’s present predicament that Joel’s grappling with; he’s facing the real prospect of losing his entire birth family in the near future.

  The ward she’s on is a designated Stroke Unit. If there’s a chance she could recover, this is the place that’ll get her through. Twelve beds. At one end, the ‘catastrophic cerebro-vascular insults’; recumbent figures being turned and sucked out and talked at. Drawn curtains, empty beds. At the other end, lurching one-sided recoverees being cajoled to achieve their full potential. The frustration, the irritation, the outright aggression; you can’t miss it. What would Mother be like if only half of her were to return to the land of the living? Or less. Or more.

  Joel and I whisper together.

  ‘If they ask us, what do we say? Don’t resuscitate her? Don’t feed her? Let her go?’

  ‘All her life she’s hammered it into us: life is not ours to take.’

  ‘But what about the Golden Rule: do unto others what you would have them do to you? If I were in her shoes I’d say pull the plug.’

  ‘Would you?’

  I’m doing my best to really listen to what Joel thinks. He’s back to being my kid brother again, looking for guidance. And I’m horribly aware that because of all the debate about my own life, I’m in a completely different place.

  Sitting beside Mother the cogs of time grind oh so slowly. My attention wanders to irrelevancies, tiny details, and I make all sorts of value judgments. I assess from a walk or a look which staff are approachable and friendly. I can tell which ones really do care. I shrink from those still half-caught up in last night’s party or tomorrow’s date.

  If she has to be in here, Mother is best to be unconscious. With her ridiculous standards she’d only rail against the stubborn dirt under the bed, the sloppy hand hygiene, the decaying flowers left to die of thirst, the cruelty of officiousness.

  So do I wish her dead? I don’t know. Do I wish her to recover even if it means the rest of her life lived with disability and frustration? I don’t know. But one thing I do know: I do not want this incarceration for myself. Full stop.

  I do not want to see staff rushing by my bed with eyes averted lest they see a cry for help. I do not want to overhear someone say of me: ‘Oh let him wait. The world doesn’t revolve around him.’ I do not want to be relegated to the rank of a dumb animal because I can no longer plead my cause. I do not want to be pitied by the gentle ones, resented by the hard ones, tolerated by the indifferent ones.

  A cauldron of anger seethes inside me for all the battles that should be fought for these people who lie alongside my mother. But I fear to raise my own head above the parapet lest she becomes the surrogate target when I am no longer sitting there as bodyguard. There are so many forms of ammunition, so many angles it might come from, some of them undetectable after the event.

  I harbour an overwhelming urge to bundle her up in a blanket and convey her out of this impersonal place and surround her with love and tenderness until nature decides whether or not her time has come. Instead I hold my tongue and accept the second-rate shifts alongside the first-class oases, and try to convince myself that I serve her best by my silence, that these people really are better qualified than I to care for her, that none of them would actually do her harm. And maybe the weak links are not in this case deciding the strength of the chain.

  It had been a strange time for her too, Naomi thought, re-reading this entry for the third time. Suddenly Adam was looking to Joel, not her, to share this experience. The common bond, the special relationship – it was theirs, not hers.

  She’d wanted to cry. But if Mavis’s sons were stoical, what right had she, a step removed, to weep?

  12 JANUARY—Today the doctors laid their cards on my mother’s table. The consultant surrounded by all the little Indians.

  The scans show a massive infarct… the brain matter is like porridge… no possibility of recovery.

  We’ll continue with the IV fluids, but nothing more. It’s just a matter of time. We’ll move her into a side ward. You should feel free to come in any time, stay as long as you want to.

  The entourage moves on.

  They didn’t ask us difficult questions. No need for agonising. Nature is to decide. Mother has got her way. For her, death was unexpected but instantaneous. The best way to go. For us, the questions remain. Why not a quick, dignified exit?

  Despite the pathos of that moment, I found myself smiling. Behind the hunched backs of the medical fraternity a little biddy on the far side of the ward slithers down her bed, using the cot-sides as handrails until she reaches the foot, where she slips unevenly to the floor, then limps off down the ward and vanishes into the corridor, her shrivelled buttocks, her bruised IV sites,
her yellow toenails, bare to the world. Two minutes later a care assistant steers her back to her bay.

  ‘Where are you off to, Kitty?’

  ‘I’ll miss my train. Are you going to take me?’

  ‘Take you where, sweetheart?’

  ‘To the station. To Morecambe.’

  ‘Morecambe? But it’s January, Kitty. Too cold for the beach.’

  ‘We always go to Morecambe on our holidays.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go and find the train to Morecambe. There we are. Just in time. Up you go. Mind the gap. Now just you stay on the train until we come to get you at Morecambe, there’s a good girl.’

  Hoisted up onto the high bed, Kitty settles back against her pillows, scanning the countryside of her journey for familiar landmarks. The cot-side clangs into place again. Three minutes later she begins the shuffle south all over again.

  I dare not let my mind grapple with what this does to busy staff with timetables and outcomes and fluid balances and drugs and mealtimes and observations and bed occupancy and discharges and admissions and doctors and patients and relatives demanding their attention. Perhaps I’d be doing them a service if I took Kitty to Morecambe.

  The care assistant appears at Kitty’s side again. Same patience. Same gentleness. Same futile persuasion.

  Suddenly I find I can forgive the lax standards of hygiene, the occasional sharp asides. In the face of dedication like this, the weaknesses fade. I can only pray that, in extremis, I too, and now my mother, will be cared for with such kindness. There it is again. It’s kindness that makes the difference.

  13 JANUARY—In the side ward, I feel freer to talk to my mother. Joel and I take turns, sharing our memories and plans, giving her jewels to bury with her, ready for the journey into the next life. Occasionally we converse together, always about superficial things, nothing unsuitable for her ears.

  Joel brings us foul coffee in plastic cups. We whisper as we change shifts.

  Concentration has gone. I abandon the book I brought with me today, and scribble onto my laptop. I’m acutely aware of each stertorous breath from the bed, rasping above the monotonous hum of the bed itself, rippling beneath her vulnerable pressure areas. Occasionally even the basic exchange of gases in her lungs is suspended, and I hold my own breath. But every time so far she has restarted her engines from force of habit. How long before her tired brain fails to send a message and silence fills this little room? It will all be over for her then. She will not have to stand at my grave and weep after all.

  What had the staff made of this disabled man furiously typing beside his unconscious mother?

  Did they respect his coping strategy?

  Or did they perceive him as a hard-nosed business man just going through the motions of being a son?

  Were they fearful of what he might record? Did they even know who he was professionally?

  Probably not. It was never his way to flaunt his celebrity.

  And in the hospital he was just a relative. Keeping vigil. Vulnerable. Afraid.

  Later Naomi popped in for an hour. There’s a whisper of her perfume lingering still but the smell of hospital soon overrides the impertinence. Bending closer to my mother, I detect the mustiness of a charity shop. Second-hand. Alien. Unbelonging. Bequeathed.

  I have a sudden feeling of being smothered – by illness, by the imminence of death. Before my very eyes a light is being slowly extinguished in a malodorous, shrinking space. I want more than anything to escape from this place.

  But I don’t. I can’t.

  This is my mother.

  After Naomi had returned home, a staff nurse came in to do my mother’s ‘observations’. Futile monitoring, but I don’t voice my objection. She spoke in hushed tones and stroked my mother’s hair back from her forehead. She’s one of the ones I instinctively like.

  ‘Don’t these cases get to you after a while?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s sad,’ she nodded, ‘but I like to think we make a difference.’

  ‘And I’m sure you do. But why prolong it?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. We’ll keep her comfortable. It’ll be peaceful.’

  I haven’t the heart to challenge her inconsistency. She believes in what she does, why disturb her assurance? She’s wired into curing and caring; she hasn’t downloaded a programme for killing yet. Maybe she never will. Sitting here, I’m not sure that even I would want my mother’s life to end ahead of schedule. There’s something fitting in keeping vigil, waiting for her, or her Maker, to decide.

  And the realisation dawns. I have known her all my life. I can understand the level of this catastrophe. I can feel it, not just see it. But I still couldn’t bring myself to take the next logical step. I couldn’t hold the pillow over her face. I couldn’t inject the drug.

  So what gives me the right to expect strangers to do it for me?

  ‘Ooohhhhh. Thank you, Adam. Thank you. Thank you.’ At last. He is seeing the impossibility.

  14 JANUARY—Seven days, six nights. It feels like a lifetime. Every muscle in my body aches.

  Joel and Naomi are both putting pressure on me to get some rest. ‘She won’t know.’ ‘It won’t help anyone if you’re ill too.’ ‘We’ll call you if anything happens.’ The infinitesimal space between that last breath and eternity is too short for any call. Instead I shall continue my vigil but immerse myself in editing the novel.

  Evening At 9.15 this evening the pauses between breaths became elongated. It was as if Mother was trying death out for size. I asked the nurse to ring Joel and both he and Naomi came in, so we were all standing alongside her when she finally made up her mind to go.

  What did I feel? Profound relief. This peace is so much better than that fearful noisy tenacity.

  I was absolutely calm as I collected her belongings and staggered out of that ward for the last time, leaning on Joel’s shoulder as if comforting my kid brother.

  No other emotion. Only relief.

  It’s over.

  For Naomi, the anxiety felt as acute today as it had on that freezing cold January evening, watching him staring down at the lifeless shell that had housed his mother. Was it natural to be that calm? When would the veneer shatter? Would she be able to hold him together?

  It had been a struggle for her too, to force thoughts of his death from her mind, although for different reasons. Her own tears were for him and his loss, for all the pain he had locked away from her sight, much more than for Mavis’s passing.

  A vivid picture flashed into Naomi’s mind. The cold windy churchyard. The stark simplicity of Mavis’s stone. Dying chrysanthemums on the adjacent plot. How different from the glory of the trees surrounding Adam, the profusion of summer colours. Tended by her hands, watered by her tears…

  The wheels on his chair squeaked under the ferocity of her sudden move away from his desk. Every time it was the same. The need to be close; the wrench of leaving; the anguish of picturing him there alone, cold, bereft.

  She dragged herself upstairs and lay on the bed, dry-eyed, clutching the black jumper, until sleep claimed her.

  15 JANUARY—I am so grateful for Joel’s company. There is so much to do, so many decisions to make. He has divided up the phone calls to relatives and friends. He has driven me everywhere, been my physical as well as my emotional prop, all through the trips to the undertaker, the minister, the church, the hotel where we shall sip sherry and, thanks to our combined forces, go through the motions of eating hot and tasty food rather than lukewarm pastries and dessicated sandwiches.

  He has even brought humour to the experience. There are only three levels in the plot where our father is buried. She will lie above him, leaving one remaining space. Joel gave a ridiculous whispered performance, caricaturing the raging arguments they’d have about the manner of his leaving her, exaggerating his own reluctance to join them and be subjected to the eternal wrangling. We were still smiling as we left the cemetery.

  Neither of us mentioned the imminence of my own death, but from the saf
e distance of his excellent health, Joel could shudder and say that we might have been thrown together in life, but surely we should have a choice about whom to lie with in death!

  16 JANUARY—The Rev. Castlemaine is a sensible man with a comfortingly honest assessment of his recently deceased parishioner. He was matter-of-fact with us, no false sentimentality or absurd platitudes.

  It crossed my mind to wonder if my mother had shared her disappointment about her sons’ lack of commitment to the church with him. If so, he gave nothing away. He steered us through the service arrangements and by the time he left, the programme, the music, the flowers, were all taken care of.

  It was reassuring to know that this funeral will be nothing like my own. I do not want a dress rehearsal. I want to preserve the element of surprise.

  He had done that all right! As if his send-off could be anything like that subdued, polite event. The sheer size of the congregation, the presence of so many young people, ensured that. The tributes to a brilliant man cut down in his prime. The keenness of his loss to society was palpable.

  Naomi clutched her arms around herself. It was too cruel.

  17 JANUARY—Naomi is keeping on working now that Joel is here for me, but I was completely unaware of her leaving this morning. Joel too slept late. The exhaustion of that long vigil probably. Or maybe it’s the body delaying the moment we have both dreaded: visiting the house Mother left suddenly without putting it in order.

  I was unprepared for the huge sense of emptiness. It was all too quiet, too familiar, too suspended. Her presence was everywhere, yet nowhere. And where do we start? We wandered from room to room, gave the accumulated mail a cursory sort, checked the security, and left without touching anything personal. After the funeral. It can wait.

  20 JANUARY—For some inexplicable reason I felt a real need to go to my mother’s church before the funeral. The regular morning service today seemed like the right occasion. Normally I love the sound of the bells, especially in the echoing barrenness of the winter months. But today? Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me!