Sunday 28th Sept 2014
My mother is falling off her twig, as she likes to put it. I must stand and watch her slow descent to earth. This struggle for people to be born, which kills so many babies, then these death throes which few escape, the never ending battle with nature makes me doubt the existence of God.
Sunday, 28 September 2014
Saturday, 27 September 2014
The Last Of That Life There
In Codsall Village, Staffs, my mother is at the centre of a network of elderly women, connected by church, luncheon club, Theatre Group and Towns Women's Guild. They are always out and about, with enough pension money and mobility for continuous conviviality and constant excursions. Cheerful, friendly, resolute, the ladies who all remember the last war, are like a small army themselves, continually replenishing their numbers as another one falls.
When my mother dies she will be one of the last who can remember Codsall when it was a village, before its farm land was sold off, and it became just a suburb of Wolverhampton, with traffic lights, metal fences, heavy signs for every well known location, traffic calming, and all the rest.
Trapped in a concrete sea, I wonder if any newcomers will ever hear the ghostly voices of these old women, whispering in the wind about a greener place where people knew everyone around them?
When my mother dies she will be one of the last who can remember Codsall when it was a village, before its farm land was sold off, and it became just a suburb of Wolverhampton, with traffic lights, metal fences, heavy signs for every well known location, traffic calming, and all the rest.
Trapped in a concrete sea, I wonder if any newcomers will ever hear the ghostly voices of these old women, whispering in the wind about a greener place where people knew everyone around them?
He's Returned, but not for me
27th September 2014
First the coincidences, showers of them making me tingle. I was even looking in a mirror holding my nose when a voice from the radio started talking about Cyrano. There was a strong sense of time speeding up, and then as usual after these experiences, the news of change coming, loping towards me.
Last Tuesday, 23rd, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The same disease which hit me in 2010. A bit of a coincidence there too, as we are not related, I was adopted. Hers has spread further than mine, and I was a dreaded Stage Four. So there will be no straightforward operation as we hoped. Instead she is just having chemotherapy.
It is grim to picture that tiny woman aged 92, making her way to the hospital six times, and she has to visit between sessions, so that will be twelve visits at least. I picture her sitting there dwarfed in the high-backed chair, her thin arm laced and looped with bright plastic canulae, as the vile stuff goes in.
But it has to be done. There is no good, easy way to end this precious life, unless you are very late and very lucky.
At the same time I am planning, trying, despite the efforts of lazy solicitors and dodgy estate agents, to leave London after 35 years, to start a new kind of life in Oxford. In those small, exaggerated matters such as marriage and money my London adventure has been a flop. But in the greater sense, of allowing me to lead a free, creative life, it has been just right.
First the coincidences, showers of them making me tingle. I was even looking in a mirror holding my nose when a voice from the radio started talking about Cyrano. There was a strong sense of time speeding up, and then as usual after these experiences, the news of change coming, loping towards me.
Last Tuesday, 23rd, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The same disease which hit me in 2010. A bit of a coincidence there too, as we are not related, I was adopted. Hers has spread further than mine, and I was a dreaded Stage Four. So there will be no straightforward operation as we hoped. Instead she is just having chemotherapy.
It is grim to picture that tiny woman aged 92, making her way to the hospital six times, and she has to visit between sessions, so that will be twelve visits at least. I picture her sitting there dwarfed in the high-backed chair, her thin arm laced and looped with bright plastic canulae, as the vile stuff goes in.
But it has to be done. There is no good, easy way to end this precious life, unless you are very late and very lucky.
At the same time I am planning, trying, despite the efforts of lazy solicitors and dodgy estate agents, to leave London after 35 years, to start a new kind of life in Oxford. In those small, exaggerated matters such as marriage and money my London adventure has been a flop. But in the greater sense, of allowing me to lead a free, creative life, it has been just right.
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