Author: Ellen Bell

I think about her and him as I walk. More him, now that she is gone. Her sisters stayed another night. He texted him to say that he thinks that they are worried about leaving him. Possibly, but perhaps it’s also that they don’t want to go, to leave the site of her passing, going, away. She is gone. I think about all that she invested in her life, a life that meant so much to her while living. What of it now? All those relationships, those loves. The instigators, the repositories of her love will continue, live on. Her grandchildren will grow and their memory of her will wane. It is inevitable. We need it to be the case to live well. Her memory will remain stronger in her children and in him and in her siblings. Of course it will. She was a mainstay, a force – of both joy and control. She had will. I think. I saw it. She held so many people. Now they must hold each other. Let him remain strong. Let him see a future. Let him thrive.

She died. She died at about 11.25 on Monday night. He texted him to tell him. She died peacefully, he wrote. Last night he texed him again to say that he and the sisters were on their third bottle of Cava and that now and again one of them would start crying. She would’ve been furious, he told him, that she wasn’t able to join in. I can still see her in my mind’s eye, as clear as day, laughing. We’d sat out in their garden. A lovely hot sunny day. Her hair had gone grey and the cancer was taking root but she was still able to walk and sit and entertain. She’d talked about taking her little sister to school on the bus as a child. She’d laughed about the then fay-ness of her sibling, and how she’d stop to look at every buttercup, “off with the fairies, most of the time”, she said. I liked hearing her stories, her voice and seeing those blue eyes shine with the reminiscence of it all. Rest in peace, dear girl.

They don’t leave her. There is always someone sitting with her. Though he texts him to tell him that she no longer responds. When we were there at her bedside her mouth moved and there were little moans coming from it. Not pain, but a wanting to communicate but she couldn’t, she was too deep under the morphine. As she is now. They talk around her, over her and to her. Her sisters and partners come, her children and her husband. They keep up a chatter, just as she would’ve liked them to do. She’d be weeping though, if it had been one of them not her, copiously. Does she want silence? I would. But then I am not her. She thrives on family, on love, on company. So open. So all-embracing. So vital. Even now. Look at the love that comes to her, that emanates from her. You did that, I want to say. You. You with the endlessly-blue eyes. Look what you made. Go well, my love. Find peace. Find light. Find sleep.

She is still alive. He texts him regular updates, though, there isn’t much to say. Her family is keeping vigil. It is such a loving act. She won’t go alone. He was there the last few nights. The hospice had given him a meal and he had a glass of red wine and Bruce Springsteen (her favourite) was playing in the iPad. He cracks jokes via text. He can still do this. All he wants, he writes, is for her to go peacefully. She sleeps most of the time. I don’t think she eats, drinks or talks or even opens her eyes. He holds her hand throughout. Her son and daughter take turns too. They took the hospital bed and the commode away from the house a couple of days ago. He said it looked empty without them. Every step is a final one now. There is no go back, just this long waiting. A long, long goodbye.

I’d bought a pair of Nordic style gloves, knitted and with several layers of insulation but they still won’t do, my hands (to be exact my fingers) still froze. Am I being a baby? They really hurt out there. The numbing comes quickly, even as I am leaving the door, and then the stinging. My circulation is sluggish. I am getting older and it tells in my hands. The skin on the tips of my fingers crack and cut, and my nails chip. My hands hurt in this cold. I don’t do well in it. Does anybody? Some do. Like the Yorkshireman who used to work in the Health Food Shop (now defunct, the shop that is not him) who always wore shorts and rarely a coat, swearing that he never felt the cold. As my mother would have said, “Bully for you”. What can I try next in the glove department? Fur? It hardly squares with my vegan sensibilities. But needs must. And I do need. Coming into the warmth almost hurts me, the stinging certainly increases. I think of the Bronte sisters at the school in Cowan Bridge and their childblained hands. Poor loves. So little comfort. And I think of her, her eyelids shut and her face with its new mantle of an old woman soon to leave us. Poor love. May it be gentle for you.

It was a strange day. We got to the funeral too early. My fault. So we sat in the waiting room – also the room holding the toilets – and watched the comings and goings of the party attached to the funeral before us, including the undertakers managing it all. Formal, rather stiff men in black coats and jackets and striped trousers. One wore a bowler hat. We heard one fart as he peeed.

He told me that his father had died soon after sicking up some dark, viscous matter. He wondered if it had been the five bars of chocolate he’d left in his care home drawer. He mentioned this to the paramedic. No, it was it cancer. He checked anyway and yes, the drawer was empty. He didn’t push the point. Yesterday he placed a bar of Cadburys on his coffin. Will it go in fire with him?

She was under when we arrived. Her beautiful blue eyes hidden, closed-up. She appeared to be trying to pull herself out of the sleep that the two syringe drivers had put her in. Morphia, keeping her under, giving her hallucinations and anxiety. She has to have it, else the pain would be unbearable. Neither of us recognised her. She is an old woman now. Though she is not and never will be. He sits by her bed, keeping vigil. He wears white. An angel, seeing another angel on her way (and not wanting to). Poor love. Poor loves. The son too, so polite, so warm, so uncomplicatedly good. All of them. I am awe of their love. I weep for them. And shouldn’t have done.

He heard via his sister that she’d eaten something, and that she seemed to be rallying. She’s holding on. She’s not ready to go yet. How does that make him feel? Is he grateful for every moment, every second or does this seesawing take the guts out of him. He’d told himself, hammering it home, no doubt, that she was ‘slipping away’. And now she wasn’t. At least not just yet. We shall see her tomorrow. I want to see her one more time, though the journey to be present in that state of grace is not one that I relish. Winter is a hard time to wrench oneself from home and its warmth and safety. I think of those people who drowned yesterday trying to cross the channel. They must have been beyond cold. So desperate. Poor, poor loves.

He texted him and said that she was slipping away. She is still present, still engaging with her visitors but she’s not eaten or drunk anything for over a week and is slow to contribute. Will she let go? He says she is sleeping most of the time. A part of me in jealous. To slip away, to sleep, to let go. I suspect she doesn’t want to. She has much to hold on to life for – her children, her grandchildren, her sisters and her husband. But her body thinks differently. It is killing itself. And she must yield. As we all must when our time arrives. I would like to see her. There is a grace to this process. It is a hallowed space. I hope she finds the peace to slip willing. And then I wish him all the succour he needs for his life that she has left behind.

We went to see her yesterday. I went to draw the Home as well. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable the way that my need to draw orchestrates these visits. I hope she doesn’t see it as so. I hope she knows what I feel about her. It struck me how static she is. Is it being virtually chair-bound that makes her so? Her head moves, the way an owl’s does, swivelling slowly to see what is happening outside the door, or to answer a question I bat over to her from my position on the floor. She holds herself still, that is except for her hands that are forever rubbing, kneading and caressing each other. Do they hurt? Ache, perhaps. She holds them up high as she does this massaging. She smelt good. Her skin is cool and unexpectedly soft. She smelt of spring flowers and talcum powder. What is it about the smell of perfumed talcum powder that calms me? I feel it in my gut, my stomach. It’s a dry smell, it lays on the skin, it is not absorbed in the way that a scented cream would be. The calming effect is probably association. I have known women who have given me safety that have smelt the same way. I want to draw her room. It tells stories. All that stuff in boxes and bags. She is trying to shape a life from that chair. It is admirable. Admirable.

It was bitterly chilly this morning. I do my best to dress up warm and yet I still dread going out. I don’t have to. But I do. It’s both a pain and pleasure. Pain as in my fingers and toes sting with the cold of it and pleasure because I am mostly alone and the world is so quiet and still at that time in the morning. I do love it. It’s just my corporeal self that suffers. I tried to make a drawing but it was hopeless with mittens on and the wind nearly blew my sketchbook into the sea. He was quiet this morning. He slept with a cardigan on. Bless him. This flat doesn’t do well in the cold. It doesn’t heat. Heigh ho. The rain and warmer weather will return, soon enough.