Determin’d are the days that flie
Successive o’er the head
The numbered hour is on the wing
That lays thee with the dead.
(1792).

Beneath the aluminium foil I had stretched over the pot the goulash had fermented, looking and smelling like the disgorged contents of a sour stomach. What I had assumed was foam turned out to be a web of mould, greyish over the paprika red, reminding me of an article about feminists demanding to keep their placentas, putting them in the deep freeze and frying a small portion every day to ward off post-natal depression. Better for the new mother to benefit from her own hormones than for cosmetics producers to process them for anti-wrinkle creams.

In the rehabilitation ward, my Mother had been surrounded by much older women, a couple of whom never received family visitors. The window sill was crowded with vases of wilting flowers, but even their despairing release of perfumes could not conceal the stench of the blocked toilet. She could watch the traffic on the F. Bridge as she lay propped up against the bed frame. The temperature never varied, except perhaps when the sun blazed through the panes, the heat overpowering. Since her legs were so badly swollen she had been put on restricted fluids. I gently scratched them for her with my chewed fingers, afraid to break the taut, fiery skin. The two glasses of water a day were clearly insufficient to slake her thirst, a cause of distress and justified complaint.

Her table was piled with tissues and paperbacks (although she had left my Christmas present, The Crimson Petal and the White at home to finish on returning). Every day I brought her more and more magazines and when I noticed that she had not opened them, I understood how much effort her cheerfulness exacted. Her appetite for family sagas was insatiable, her typical pose at home was to lean on the work surface beside the kitchen sink (when her elbows stained purple with bruises she simply folded a tea towel to rest them on), the radio quiz in the background, poring over a crossword (hidden behind the jar for the tea bags we came across an ancient dictionary, front and back covers long since torn off). I tried to sound normal, to make my voice completely calm, to concentrate on reassuring banalities, knowing that all the questions I had put off asking had been left too late. G. methodically worked his way through word searches and logic puzzles, consulting her when he was stumped. Occasionally she would doze as she found it impossible to sleep right through the night. Whenever we thought that she had sunk into a deep slumber she would suddenly mutter the answer to his query: „Recording angel”. The hair above her upper lip revolted her, my duty for the evening to pull the curtains round, protecting her from prying eyes as she gave it the once over with her Ladyshave. When the allotted hours had crept by, she would slip a fifty pence piece into G.’s hand so that he could purchase three sticks of fudge from the vending machine in the corridor.

Having spent so many years in that hospital, inspecting its every nook and cranny she was determined not to die there, that she would not be wheeled out on a trolley. The day of her release was postponed again and again until I finally put my foot down. Both my Father and my Aunt were trained nurses, both were willing to ensure her comfort. In her quietly self-effacing way, she worried about being a burden. Her virtual immobility grieved her.

The study had been converted into a bedroom for her as the stairs would be too much for her. The rising damp had recently been treated and new wallpaper put up. A framed peacock in lace from one of her trips across to see me had been moved there, although her collection of spoons from all the exotic destinations I had been grudgingly sent to remained in the living room. The shower had been fitted with a grab rail, the toilet with a frame, a commode borrowed from the medical stores. My ribboned box of Cornet du Port Royal on her cabinet, the computer a few steps away, television and video waiting patiently in the corner. She did not spend a single night beneath her new coverlet.

I found it extremely difficult to fall asleep, tormented by the knowledge that I might awake to find she had already departed. Nausea mixed with adrenalin each time I picked my way downstairs, putting my weight on the inside of the steps to avoid making them creak. She would be standing to relieve the sores, my Father and the Zimmer supporting her, the small lamp with the floral shade providing less harsh illumination than the main bulb.
“It’s all right,” he would reassure me “You can go back to bed”.

As her discomfort increased, I would massage her lower back. Her skin was smooth, softer than that of my own breast, hot and unnaturally dry. When the inflatable mattress arrived, the district nurses lifted her from the armchair, adjusting the pillows behind her neck. She was anxious to have them check the contents of her catheter bag in case it needed emptying. I stated my conviction that it was slightly fuller than before, a white lie intended to preserve hope, much like the story we concocted about missing our connection in London to account for our reappearance a mere day after having left.

She asked for her nebulizer more and more frequently. As my Father sat holding her hand, the vapour escaping from the side of the mask her watery eyes betrayed a hint of suffering and fear. My Mother, my strong Mother, whose brass neck had so embarrassed me in my youth, who had marched up to the door of the former schoolhouse to ask the girl if I could help exercise her ponies. My Mother, whose temper was slow to flare, but when it did we scattered like sparrows.

The dose of morphine had proven insufficient, my Father requesting a dispenser. He had warned us early that morning that she would not see the day out, the family had assembled. My son nestled in close, clutching her arm, never leaving her side. I tolerated the presence of the pastor from the fellowship, knowing that his whispered prayers were to comfort my Father. My Aunt, her youngest sister, stroked her hand: “Look at those nails. She always had perfect nails and I have always been jealous of them”.
Dr. K. knelt before her, asking how she felt.
“Fine,” came the reply in a hoarse voice that sounded like my Grandmother’s.
“If you are fine, Mary, what does that say about the rest of us?”
Having exchanged a few words with my Father, he signed the authorization for a final injection to ease the breakthrough pain, promising to return once the surgery closed.

Her breathing, although shallow, was easier and more relaxed than it had been in years. The cough that had racked her, interrupting countless telephone conversations, forcing her to bring up blood and clots of phlegm, which she spat into her crumpled handkerchief, no longer irritated her lungs.
“Let go,” my Father pleaded, “You’re just hurting yourself by fighting. There’s nothing to worry about, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. The cottage is ready, the bairns are shouting for you. Let go”.
When the formalities had been completed, the undertakers departed and an exhaustion so profound that it kept sleep at bay had set in, G. wept “Mummle [his nickname for me], you know when Granddad told Granny to let go, that he didn’t want her to go on hurting herself? I wanted to say that too”.

I was standing in the kitchen, listening to tales of my cousin Matty’s escapades in Beijing, notably an incident involving being chased around a food stand by a furious cook whose ire had been provoked by a lack of cross-cultural communication. Matty did not realize that if you point at a dish and enquire as to its qualities this was tantamount to ordering it. Whereas he had merely sought confirmation that the objects on display really were goat’s testicles, his curiosity had been misread. I had only stepped out for a moment, the sound of my laughter carrying through. Feeling an inexplicable tug, I excused myself. The silence had deepened. I took up my position beside the chair, slipping my hand into hers, studying the veins, the irregular rise and fall of her chest.
G. looked up at me: “She’s stopped breathing”.

Even now a guilt oppresses me. She had not wanted to die and by approving the morphine we had murdered her. The feeling persists, in spite of my friend L.’s protestations to the contrary. As a nurse herself, she shared a frame of reference with my Father, the product of years of experience. What he had done for her constituted an act of love. He had made her comfortable, removed the sting. During L.’s first week, she had tended a patient whose nerves were being slowly consumed by cancer. No amount of painkillers offered the slightest relief from the agony he endured. She held him tight and he died in her arms. She was not yet nineteen when it happened and the memory haunts her still.

Having long since lost my faith, I resent the beckoning, taunting void. It is punishment enough for all the anxieties and struggles to have been in vain, all the triumphs and defeats to be swept away like rotting leaves in the autumn, for the spark of consciousness to be extinguished, the ripple on the surface of the pond to vanish. Yet I know now that I will see her again, standing in the cottage doorway, the smell of stovies mingling with the hay as I run towards her, a little girl in my turquoise bikini with the daisy pattern a bumble bee once landed on. I will hear her speak my name again for an instant before the darkness engulfs me.