by Sue Margolis
As usual, I lay with him on the bed. It was a warm September evening. The windows were open. The scent of honeysuckle wafted in from the garden. Thanks to the morphine, he was sleeping most of the time. When he woke, it was for no more than a few minutes. He would sip some water—me holding the glass—but he had no interest in food. We didn’t chat anymore. He didn’t have the strength. When he tried to speak—mostly to ask for something—his sentences trailed off, leaving me to finish them. Instead of talking, we held hands.
I decided to put a Fawlty Towers episode on the player. As the signature tune started up, Brian smiled in his sleep. I’d chosen his favorite episode—the one in which Basil beats his ancient car with a branch because it refuses to start. After ten minutes or so, I was aware that Brian’s breathing had changed. The gap between one breath and the next was getting longer. This was how people died. I’d seen it dozens of times. He wouldn’t come round again. But he did. “I adore you,” he said, gazing at me, eyes wide-open. I leaned in and kissed his chapped lips. “I adore you, too, my darling.” I held his hand against my face and kissed it. His eyes closed. I found myself willing him to take one more breath and then another. He managed a few. Then he stopped.
Fawlty Towers was still playing in the background.
I called Abby straightaway. It was only when she arrived that the tears came—hers and mine. We stood by the bed and held each other, bodies heaving, sobbing for all the world to hear.
When there were no more tears left, I said I would make some tea. “You stay with your dad. I’ll bring it up.”
We sat on the bed, on either side of Brian’s body, sipping tea and dunking fingers of Kit Kats.
“Remember how Dad used to dip a Kit Kat finger in his tea and suck on it as if it was a straw?”
I felt myself smile. “And he made such a horrible noise. I hated it.”
“He was a great dad.” She took his limp hand and kissed it.
“He was. And he thought the world of you.”
“I know. It was mutual.”
Abby offered to sleep over.
“No, it’s OK. You go home. I’ll be fine.” I sensed that she didn’t really want to stay, that she wanted to be in her own bed with Tom’s arms around her. And if I was honest, I wanted to be on my own with Brian.
I lay down beside him for the last time. It didn’t feel macabre. It felt natural. I told him again how much I loved him. I stroked his face. It was covered in thick gray stubble. I hadn’t shaved him for over a week. I ran my fingers over his nose, stroked the familiar small bump just below the bridge. I felt the ridges on his nails, the lines on his palms. I kissed the dark freckles on his arms. I wanted to remember every bit of him. “You need a haircut,” I said. “But I don’t suppose anybody will mind.”
• • •
Brian had no time for funerals and especially not for eulogies. “The moment people die, they become bloody saints. If you want to say anything at my funeral, just get up there and tell them how I snored and farted.”
He chose to be cremated. Cremation was cheaper than burial and Brian could see no sense in his bones taking up valuable space. My mother didn’t approve. Cremation was against Jewish law. “Mum, what are you on about? Brian was a Catholic atheist—just like Dad. And when Dad died, you had no qualms about cremating him.”
She said she knew all that, but she’d lived to regret it. “I can’t help thinking there’s something so cold about cremation.”
I said I’d get the crematorium to turn up the heat. She asked how I could make jokes at a time like this.
Arseholes Academy was closed for the day so that the staff could attend the funeral. A selection of pupils from each year group came, too. Just looking at the kids, immaculate for once in their blazers and ties, made me cry.
I managed to say a few words during the service. I couldn’t bring myself to make wisecracks—and certainly not the ones Brian had suggested. Instead I quoted W. H. Auden: “He was my North, my South, my East and West …” Abby read the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”
People meant well when they told me that Brian had gone to a better place. What? I thought—better than here with me?
At the wake, the deputy head’s wife went all Facebook affirmation on me: “You’ll get through this. God never gives you more than you can handle.” Having spent the day struggling to hold myself together, I was lost for words. All I could do was stare at the woman. It turned out that my mother had overheard the remark. “Somebody should have mentioned that to the people on their way to being gassed in the concentration camps,” she said. “Particularly the children.” Then she got hold of my arm and pulled me away.
During those early weeks, the first thing I thought about on waking and the last thing I thought about at night was that Brian was dead.
For months I hated going to the supermarket. I couldn’t bear watching smug, loved-up couples doing their weekly shopping. I would watch as they cruised the aisles, clutching their TV chef recipes, searching for sumac and nigella seeds. I imagined them in their apartments, unpacking another kitchen gadget they’d just bought from Amazon. More than once I caught myself blubbing at the checkout and wondering why I wasn’t doing my food shopping online.
When I tell people that it’s the intimacy I miss, they think I mean sex. But it’s not that. It’s the emotional intimacy—being loved and known. They say you can never really know a person. But I think Brian and I came close.
Mum was helping me load the dishwasher after Brian’s wake when she suggested moving in with me. “These first few weeks are going to be hard. I know. I’ve been there. You shouldn’t be on your own.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My shocked expression clearly alarmed her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve upset you.”
“No, of course you haven’t. Quite the opposite.”
For once my endlessly needy mother was putting me first. She wanted to take care of me instead of it being the other way around.
Taken aback and grateful as I was, I turned her offer down. I was determined to manage on my own. Mum shrugged and said it was my life. It was up to me. “But pick up the phone if you need me. Promise?” I promised.
Two weeks after Brian died I went back to work. I reasoned that staying at home moping would only make me more miserable. Work would be the best therapy—just as it was for Brian in the days following his diagnosis.
I’d worked on the same surgical ward for two decades and I counted many members of staff as friends. Several had come to the funeral. That first day back, I was greeted with an outpouring of kindness and condolences. I was instructed to ease myself in, to pace myself. But surgical wards are hectic. The truth is that no allowances could be made for a struggling, newly bereaved widow. Overnight, I went from the quiet comfort blanket of home to setting up IVs, giving shots, handing out medication and taking blood. The ward was full of people recovering from serious surgeries. I couldn’t take my eye off the ball. Mistakes weren’t an option.
The pressure meant I had no time to think about myself.
While I was working, I felt lighter of spirit. Then I would return home to a dark, empty house. Even though I’d been rushing around all day, burning off calories, I was never hungry. I lived on cheese and pickle sandwiches. I would eat while I watched the TV news. Not that I was remotely interested in current affairs. I didn’t give a damn about anything other than my own grief. But I knew it would be unhealthy to retreat and lose touch with what was going on in the world. So I forced myself to pay attention to the latest interest rate rises and government spending cuts. Watching a TV drama or film was out of the question, though. I couldn’t concentrate.
After the news, I would potter about, doing chores. Around ten, I’d take a shower and fall into bed, done in. Back then I still kept one of Brian’s sweaters under my pillow. Every night since his death I’d fallen asleep holding it, breathing in his smell. But it was beginning to wear o
ff. It felt as if I was losing him all over again. That was when I stopped sleeping.
In the morning I would drag myself out of bed and go downstairs to make a mug of strong black coffee. On the table to greet me was my plate from the night before—still covered in bread crumbs. Sometimes I didn’t even bother to wash it. I’d just leave it on the drainer and reuse it when I got home. The plate of crumbs became the symbol of my grief and loneliness.
Friends—couples mainly—whom Brian and I had known for years invited me to dinner. I thanked them but declined. I couldn’t bear to be the only singleton at the table—to be around all that self-satisfied first-person plural. “Oh, we loved True Detective slash Better Call Saul slash Justified … No pasta for us. We’re cutting down on carbs.”
As well as inviting me to dinner, people popped in to see how I was doing. But I could tell that my low spirits brought them down. A few remained steadfast and carried on coming. The rest switched to texts or e-mails.
It didn’t help that my girlfriends had started retiring—and so had their husbands. Suddenly aware that the time they had left was finite, they started doing more together: traveling mainly. A few migrated for months on end to second homes. Portugal was very popular. Excellent golf. They invited me to stay, but I didn’t go. I wasn’t ready for jolly holidays. The upshot was that relationships I had once held so dear petered out. At the time, it didn’t bother me. I was too busy grieving. I wanted to be alone. But looking back, I should have made more of an effort.
• • •
Now that I wasn’t sleeping, I knew that workwise I wasn’t fit for it. I spent the whole time petrified that I was about to slip up. On top of that I was still drowning in sorrow. One night—in the early hours—I found myself sitting on the stairs in my nightdress, sobbing down the phone to my mother. “It’s happened. I can’t cope. I’m so lonely. Can you come?”
Without murmur or complaint, she got in a cab. That night as we sat on the sofa, me with my head in her lap, she gave me some advice, which I have never forgotten. “You will get better and you will find your way back into the world. It has a way of claiming you. But don’t expect to get over a loss like this. What you have to do is learn to walk alongside it.”
“Is that what you do? Walk alongside the grief of losing Dad?”
“Even now. After all these years. There’s no other way.”
“Dad was a good man. Like Brian.”
“He was. Your father was a mensch.”
My goyishe father loved Mum’s Yiddishisms. Like his great-grandchildren, he struggled to pronounce the words. It took him years to get the hang of words like “chutzpah.” He insisted on pronouncing it as you would: “chutney.” That back-of-the-throat, phlegm-clearing sound didn’t come easily to him. Then there was his confusion with schlemiel (a clumsy person) and shlimazel (somebody who always has bad luck).
“Jack—all you have to remember is that if a schlemiel spills his soup, it’s likely to be into the lap of the shlimazel.” But he always got mixed up. And the more he got it wrong, the more Mum laughed and teased him.
My mother’s laughter was a rare thing. But it taught me she was capable—however briefly—of casting out her demons. Watching Mum lost in herself as she ribbed my dad, I caught a glimpse of who she really was—or might have been.
“Tell me to mind my own business,” Mum said that night as we sat together on the sofa, “but I think you went back to work way too soon. Look at you. You’ve lost weight. You’re white with exhaustion.”
I didn’t attempt to argue.
“You nursed Brian all those months. You need a break. Now you need looking after.”
This time when Mum offered to move in, I said yes. I also wrote to the hospital requesting compassionate leave. I was told to take as long as I needed. They couldn’t pay me beyond a certain point, but they would keep my job open for as long as possible.
Moneywise, I was fortunate. Brian and I had some savings and I’d received a decent lump sum from his life insurance. I could manage without my salary.
My Jewish mother set about putting some flesh on my bones. I still didn’t have much appetite, but it didn’t stop her producing vats of barley soup and trays of schnitzel and fried fish. When I couldn’t get it down, she didn’t complain. The next day she would tempt me with something else. When I was having a particularly bad day, she would produce something sweet—cheesecake or strudel. And always coffee. Mum ground the beans with the ancient hand grinder she’d brought in her suitcase. Then she would make coffee the old-fashioned European way, in a saucepan.
Over cake and coffee, she would reminisce about the past—hers, not mine. I’d been listening to these stories since childhood. Heartbreaking as they were, I found comfort in their familiarity. Meanwhile I was trying and failing to discover the trick of walking alongside my grief.
• • •
Mum has been living with me for over a year. She keeps telling me that I don’t need to be polite and that I only have to say the word and she’ll pack her bags and be off. “I won’t be offended. I have a perfectly nice flat that’s sitting collecting cobwebs. And you have your life to lead.” Then she rubs her knees or her back and lets out a soft “Oy.”
She doesn’t want to leave. She enjoys having company—somebody to listen to her moaning about her acid reflux or how she’s in agony from this joint or that muscle.
For my part, I’ve got used to having her around. We hardly argue and when we do, it’s only because she keeps on at me to “get out of the house and see people.” I think I’ve got much better lately at accepting dinner invitations. But she’s not talking about dinner invitations. She wants me to start dating. I keep telling her I’m not ready.
“But you’re still young.”
“I’m fifty-bloody-seven.”
“These days that’s not old. And you look after yourself. You’re well preserved. You’re a good catch for somebody.” She makes me feel like a rather spry herring.
The worst part is that she’s been threatening to set me up on dates. She comes home from the day center and tells me how she got talking to so-and-so, who has a son or a nephew who’s a “top” lawyer/doctor/entrepreneur—who’s just got divorced.
“Huh, so what line of business is the entrepreneur in?” I’ll say just for fun.
“I don’t know. I think he sells men’s slacks.”
“Awesome.”
I tell her that she can set me up on dates all she likes, but there’s no way I’m showing up.
Mum sighs—as if her interfering is my fault. But mostly we rub along.
CHAPTER
three
“I can’t work out,” Abby is saying, “if my children are supremely well adjusted or if I gave birth to Vulcans.”
“Vulcans, definitely,” I tell her. “You only have to look at their ears.”
Sam and Rosie agreed to Abby going to Nicaragua with their father. But it was unfair of us to joke about them being Klingons. Of course they’d had feelings and qualms about their mother leaving them to go halfway around the world for six weeks. Abby said that Rosie had cried and clung to her and said she wasn’t sure how she was going to manage without “mummy cuddles.” Sam probably felt the same, but at nine he was far too grown-up to admit it. Instead he said he was worried about the plane crashing. But none of their fears turned out to be a deal breaker. Young as they are, both children have a well-developed sense of altruism. Some—me included—might say it’s too well developed. But with their being raised by Abby and Tom, it was bound to happen. They were used to their father disappearing to disaster zones. Now the earthquake people needed their mum, too. She had to go and they were proud of her and they were going to tell everybody at school. They did, however, demand a trip to Disneyland Paris in the summer holidays by way of compensation. Sam drew up a formal printed agreement, which his parents signed. At Rosie’s insistence they did this in purple glitter pen.
“I don’t get you,” Tom says to Abby. “You’
d be miserable if the kids had refused to let you go. Now you’re fretting because they said you can.”
“I know. But they might have had the decency to protest a bit more—just to make me feel wanted.”
“Stop it. They did protest. But they love your mum and feel safe with her. She’s like a third parent. You should be grateful for that.”
“I am grateful.” Abby looks at me. “You do know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. But you mustn’t think the kids aren’t going to miss you. Right now they’re on a high. You two are like a couple of superheroes jetting off to save lives. They want to show off to their friends. Give it a couple of days and they’ll come down.”
“You think so? But I don’t want them to be miserable.”
Tom tells her to make up her bloody mind.
“Sorry. It’s just nerves.” She announces that she’s going to go upstairs and check on the kids one last time.
It’s past midnight. The three of us are standing in the hallway in my house, waiting for the taxi, which is going to take them to the Royal Air Force Base in Northolt, a dozen or so miles away. Sam and Rosie are asleep upstairs—having fought for an hour or more over who was going to have which bedroom. They both wanted the one with the double bed. I thought I could settle the argument by telling them they could swap rooms at the end of each week. But no. Cue major rumpus about who should be first to get the double bed. In the end I made them draw straws. Sam lost and sulked. He’s since decided that he prefers the smaller room because it’s cozier and he is happy to remain there.
