Sunday 1st October 2017

All things must pass.

I have been putting off the moment when I load the car up with my stuff and head north. Nothing bad is going to happen to me when I get where I’m going, it is somewhere else not home. And when I get there I meet the reality of the situation, Mum in hospital, battling for every breath, and next week she will be opened up and her heart replumbed. And she might not survive.

I mean every medical procedure has risk, but this is serious shit.

I am awake before dawn, there is a holy blowing outside, and there is a power cut. I mean you think its dark as night, but when the electricity is cut, it gets really, really dark. There is the occasional flash as power is restored and cut again.

Before the power was cut, it was half five, so it must be nearly six by now. Maybe. So I get up, go down to feed the cats whilst Jools is still sleeping. All three cats are waiting for me to get my act together, open food packets and kibbles tin.

There is time to make coffee. I hear Jools upstairs, so I microwave the milk for her coffee, and put the pot on the cooker. There is soon the smell of roasted grounds.

There is yesterday’s football to watch, then pack, have breakfast. And then, how long to wait before leaving, when you don’t really want to leave. I am packing the car at half nine, loading the boot with my stuff, and then time to say goodbye to Jools and make my way north.

Up the M20 to Dartford and into Essex. I have been traveling this way for years. I know the route, the landmarks, so I have the radio on to keep my awake. All the time, my mind is going through the different situations that the week will bring, from a long time in recovery to death. Death is a real possibility, a friend lost her Mother in such an operation. This shit is real.

Up through Cambridge, then to Bury St Edmunds, and into the rolling fields of Suffolk. Landscape had changed since leaving the M25 and going up the M11. It is Essex, the suburbs of London, but then the towns thing out, we pass Stanstead and carry on north.

Traffic thins out beyond Cambridge, and again when the A11 turns off towards Norwich. I has been raining, but now has stopped, but isn’t pleasant really, and yet it is a good drive The landscape is littered with flint towers of Norman churches. I would like to have stopped at every one, but if I do, I will have to stop at every one, and I won’t reach Mum before the end of visiting hours.

I am in no hurry, so happy to drive at 50, passing familiar towns and villages. My old friend Andrew lives in Bungay, but we have fallen out, all based on a misunderstanding when I got rid of my old mobile, it really wasn’t all about him. But, he didn’t see it.

I carry on passing Bungay and into Norfolk. Across the marshes and the New Cut at Haddiscoe, taking the right turn through Herringfleet, passing the green banks of rhododendrons, with one summer flowering one, all a riot of pink. I am now back in the back yard of my youth, if not my childhood. I cycled here to Somerleyton a few times in the long hot summers of 75 and 76, now I cruise past in the car, past the school, the hovercraft statue and the church. Nearly home now.

My choice is to go to her house, the old family home first, unload the car, have lunch and then go to the hospital. The key is in a safe outside the back door, I have the code and let myself in. And a surge of stale cigarette smoke hits me.

She was taken away from here by ambulance a week back, so this is what she lives like. The place is a mess, not from the event, this is just how she lives. So I try to clear some space in the kitchen. In a cupboard, I find jars and cans of food years out of date. I decide to start there. I have three plastic bags full of food that unsafe to eat. And there is more in the fridge, and another cupboard yet more out of date stuff.

The fridge is nearly empty, so I put in the little food I brought with me. And I take the crap food to the bins. Elsewhere there is so much junk I don’t really know where to start. I make a brew with the tea bags I brought, have a short cake or two then I am ready to go to the hospital.

It is a short drive, maybe 8 miles to get there. A drive I have done hundreds of times. I am not in a hurry, cruise there and turn into the car park, find a space, and take a deep breath.

Into the hospital, up the stairs and to the Cardiac Emergency Unit, or whatever it is called, and in the last bay there is mum. She is reduced. Withered almost. A lesser person than I remember. Her left hand is totally black, where nurses have tried to find veins.

She is scared, and yet tries to sound normal. But I have my stuff to say, that she is gambling with her health with the out of date food, and with the way she is she can’t afford to do that. And that she has the choice to make, to change or not to change. She has been told there will not be another chance. Probably.

Will she be able to live in the family home? We don’t know. I say something important and she changes the subject, as she always does. Am I getting through? Does she understand? I don’t know, but then I have said my piece, she has her date with a knife next week, and only fate knows what will happen.

I try to tell her about our time in Yellowstone, she seemed interested, and yet after just two minutes of talking, ad she is asking about something else. She is talking about food; that the freezer is full of food. But Mum, there was a jar of Branston in the fridge, use by date was 2006. I cannot eat anything in the house, Mum.

Does she understand? I don’t know. I tell her of the 8 jars of Apricot Jam I found, the similar number of jars of mayonnaise and other sauces. All with the same use by date. She had gone out many times and bough up to ten jars of the same food and all have sat in the larder since. She really does not comprehend.

After 50 minutes we are all talked out. She is not interested in entering into conversation, and I have run out of saying the same thing with her actually understanding. She tells me to take a bundle of papers relating to her time in Papworth. There is a place to stay, but I will travel up each day, ends up being cheaper. She accepts this.

And then I leave. I will return tomorrow. But before then I go back to the old family home, now packed with junk bought by people with the best of intentions, and that she does not have the strength to just get rid of. It is home, and yet isn’t.

And it stinks of stale fags.

Once back I open as many windows as possible, and empty out more cupboards, put the trash in the bin which now is half full of wasted food, costing hundreds of pounds and now fit for nothing but trash. This is her life, buying stuff for no real reason other than the compulsion to buy things.

Such a waste.

I have another tea. Put on the radio to listen to the footy: Newcastle v Liverpool. Sounded exciting, but ends up 1-1. Then it is dinner time, alone in the house, just with the TV echoing around, whilst I warm u the leftover chorizo hash. I can find four containers of utensils for cooking, but not one bottle opener. At least ten wooden spoons though. It must make sense to someone.

The evening is spent with the TV, flicking from a documentary about Russia to Wheeler Dealers, then waiting until MOTD comes on at half ten. I shared the evening with a bottle of wine and some pringles. I had better make sure this doesn’t come a habit. But it helps my mood as I look round the living room, still covered in stuff. I plan to clear the dining table in the morning. It has video tapes, medicines, pot plants and other nondescript stuff that people have brought round.