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Vigil

I'm tired.
Sitting downstairs, a few soft lamps on, most of house in darkness. Ocean like sound coming through baby monitor... and mum's snoring.
My eyes are swollen and puffy.
Nose is red and raw.
This is really hard... but then I'm not the one who's dying so we all just get on with each day as it rolls into the next.
Everything is kind of a blur and yet vivid.

Friday mum was fairly lucid, weary but able to hold small bits of conversation.
Yesterday, waking up, she had deteriorated...

Her breathing changed in the afternoon, and so a bedside vigil began.  Either one of us, or all four of us, camped out in armchairs or sitting on the floor next to the bed base.  In silence.  The room dark but for a small lamp and a candle burning. Waiting.

Waiting.

My mum is lying there.  Curled up and vulnerable.  Her arms have wasted away to the thinness of a broomstick handle. Her legs are no thicker than a hockey stick.  Facial muscles had faded away to reveal the shape of her skull; eyes are sunken, her face is distorted and barely recognisable as the woman who only three weeks ago, was pottering around the house, still able to walk up and downstairs, and who was making a good effort at eating.

Three weeks and this is what has happened to her.

My sister and I both felt she was going to pass over last night.  I went next door and asked Pete, Rosie and Rachel if they wanted to come round, one at a time and say goodbye, saying goodbye without using words.

There was a surreal moment when my sister, NK, Jo and I were all sitting there, close to the bed, holding vigil, and bloody fireworks started screaming and popping and booming, and we could hear the whoops of joy and celebration.

We're all tired. My sister managed to stay up most of the night. NK fell asleep on the floor outside the bedroom door. I passed out around 3 A.M. on an armchair downstairs, listening to the baby monitor.

Mum woke up every hour or so, confused and sleepy... but every time she opened her eyes and looked around, whoever was there would say brightly, "hello!"  And she would smile weakly and drop her tiny head back into the big soft pillows.

I can hear mum breathing right now...through the baby monitor.

The kind of shallow panting you and I might do when we're a little sick and sleeping through it.

And part of me forgets, or ignores the fact that mum's not a little sick... she won't come through this, she won't get better.  At some point, soon, she'll just be gone. And that makes me really sad to think about.  

But she's comfortable. She's warm.  She has people around her who she wanted to be with her when she died.  She's getting what she wanted.

Yesterday I was alone with her; she was sitting in her salmon-coloured armchair... slipping in and out of dozing, with small moments of being lucid.  She looked at my abruptly...alert and with an expression that said she'd made her mind up.  "I'm ready," she said.  

Yesterday one of her friends was helping her get into bed.  "Am I dying?" she asked me, gently.

I didn't know what to say.

There are moments I'll never be able to forget.  Like when my sister or I stoop in front of her, to let her put her small arms around our neck so we can help her stand up, and then help her shuffle across to or from the bed... often she just stops, and holds on tight, trembling, weak and whispers "I love you," in a really sweet voice.

Today I was sitting opposite her, where she was in her chair.  She was holding my hand really tightly... she kept nodding off, then waking up, and every time she did, she saw me and gave this slow and beautiful smile, showing how pleased she was to see me there. I started crying, again, but this time she saw me and she looked at me for a long moment, registering what she was seeing, and she whispered, "Don't be upset.  We'll see each other again."

I know she's scared but she holds herself together with such dignity. She's amazing. And I'm this blubbering wreck. Go figure.


EDIT: later
Everyone told me to get some sleep.  I went into dad's old room and crashed out.
NK came and woke me at 2 A.M... I had been dreaming just then, of being in a weird run along the edge of a harbour, big bounding strides that took me high into the air, slightly slow motion as if I was caught in some kind of reverse force trying to hold me back.  Then I was in a room with Lekne, my mum's mother who died a number of years ago... she had come to get me -
- and then NK was waking me up.


Mum spent a lot of time awake, sitting upright in bed, quite lucid at moments.
"I love you all," she said out lout in a shaky voice.
"We love you," we said together, and she smiled languidly and drifted back to sleep.


NK had made ice lollies out of fizzy grape juice and cocktail sticks.  Mum was burning up so we gave her one and both her hands came up and grabbed the thing, and kept it in her mouth, and she sucked and crooned with delight as if it was the best thing she had ever tasted.

I've not seen her eat anything solid since I arrived.

How long can a person live on like this?



EDIT: later
I managed to get some more sleep.

Went for a walk in the Dene, sunlight streaming through trees and turning morning dew into steam.

Heavy rains had turned the small river into a raging torrent of brown water.

The rocks around the waterfall by the mill were flooded.  I stood on the bridge and stared... oblivious to the occasional stranger who wandered past with a dog.