Chapter Fourteen: Empathy Can't Be Taught
There’s a few piles of papers in my mother’s room. I sit down to tackle them, bin bag at the ready.
Decades of bank statements. Letters from Specsavers. Doctor notes, council tax, insurance documents, energy bills…why did they keep all this? Most of them haven’t been relevant for a good ten years.
I end up chucking all of them. I find yet more old butter containers inside the drawers and under the bed, holding buttons or needles or spools of thread.
Every time I look up form my task, a whole bunch of teddies look down at me. They are starting to creep me out.
There’s more soft toys on top of one of the wardrobes, absolutely coated in dust. Those ones I recognise from my childhood. I dare not touch them in case the asthma finally claims me.
The only picture on the wall in here is a drawing of some formula one drivers.
That’s weird, right? That’s weird.
Another stack of papers. I recognise mum’s handwriting.
“MAGIC 10. LEFT OF HOUSE. TWO AT BLACK.”
Some of it is highlighted.
What the f…
Pages and pages of code-like writing. Mentions of warlocks and witches and barbarians.
I realise it’s notes she made about some video game she was playing.
And they are in-depth. There’s a highlight colour legend, little symbols, arrows and indicators.
When I was little, she often scribbled notes about the games she was playing on paper scraps. But this was something else. The stack of notes is so thick, I can’t imagine the hours she put into it.
Sandwiched between the papers, I find a birthday card. It’s to mum, from The Man Who Is Not My Father.
On the front is some crude joke. Something like the one on the card my dad found under his marital bed thirty years ago.
Inside are birthday wishes from…the teddy bears.
It’s The Man Who Is Not My Father’s handwriting. Clearly from after his stroke; some of the letters are wobbly, upper and lower case jumble together.
This is a lot to unpack.
For a start, the fact that each of the bears has its own name.
Then, the fact The Man Who Is Not My Father went to the effort of memorising them.
And finally, the idea that she chose to treat soft bears as children when she already had actual children who would have loved to have even the slightest indication of love from her.
…And the fact that the card was one of those cheap sex jokes.
I glance over at a pile of the bears. At the ones that wore little jumpers. Jumpers she’d knitted for them, scarves she’d knitted for them.
It’s like she had love with nowhere to go.
But it did. It had three children and a sister to go to.
And she chose those fucking bears.
The heavy-handed carer, Eve, came by in the afternoon.
As she did before, Eve started throwing the feeble, near-paralysed woman around the bed while Zoe politely but firmly asked her to be gentler. Mum didn’t open her eyes, but looked distressed. She was slowly flailing her arms in the air like an upturned turtle.
‘That carer, Eve,’ I said to T in the kitchen, ‘She’s ridiculously rough.’
‘I know,’ T said, ‘She’s practically launched your mum into the wall a few times.’
‘It’s her job to…you know, not do that.’
T shrugged. I guessed she’d already brought it up herself a few times, and nothing had changed.
‘I know. But empathy is something that can’t be taught.’
Well sure, but…if it’s your job to look after someone, shoving a dying woman around so much that she has finger marks in her arm seems like grounds for dismissal?
After how hard T had fought for the local authority to send a live-in carer, I knew better than to scare away the company they’d contracted by calling and asking if they were operating from Mordor.
But it was so hard to bite my tongue.
I sat at the edge of the bed, watching my mother carefully.
Sometimes she opened her eyes and looked at me, and her mouth turned up at the edges.
Her mouth creaked open but made no words.
Even her earlobes were flat, deflated. The golden studs that pierced them were almost slipping from loose skin.
Sometimes she looked over to her right, lifted her hand to stroke or point at something invisible. Sometimes she looked at the ceiling, pupils darting from point to point.
I perched myself over her, so she could see me easily. Every time she did, her face broke into a smile.
‘It’s okay Mum,’ I said, choking back tears. ‘I’m here. I love you. We are a family again.’
She closed her eyes, smiling wide, sullen and pale cheeks dimpling.
For a moment, she looked absolutely stunningly beautiful.
It made me gasp. It was as if her soul was on her face. That Mum I knew when I was very young was right here, on the surface. All the layers she’d hidden behind for so long were gone.
Her right arm was stiff, settled with her hand just under her chin.
Zoe had shown me to massage Mum’s hands as they got stiffer. But no amount of massaging helped now, so I took Billy from the bedside table and pressed him between those purpling fingers.
‘Here’s Billy for you,’ I said. Her fingers responded, gripping him tightly.
That was a bit much for me. While she’d been The Man Who Is Not My Father’s carer, she’d made herself alone but for Billy.
‘I would have been there for you,’ I cried, holding on to her free hand, which was also starting to stiffen. ‘You made the wrong decision when I was little. But I’m here. I would always have been there if you had asked, if you had let me.’
Her fingers tightened around mine. They were cold.
‘Do not cry,’ Eve demanded from the armchair.
A little surprised, I ignored her.
‘I’m so sorry about the men that hurt you,’ I sobbed into Mum’s hand.
‘Do not cry,’ Eve repeated, forcefully now. ‘There is no difference.’
‘Shh,’ I said, glancing over my shoulder.
Once Mum settled into a sleep, I left the room to keep myself from piling Eve into the flatscreen TV.
I commented this to T, who was cleaning up in the kitchen. As a woman who had already seen me have two severe mental breakdowns, she was careful to be soothing.
‘It’s like I said, empathy can’t be taught.’
She looked at me sagely for a moment, then added:
‘But when this is all over, that company will be getting quite the complaint.’
Dying is something we only do once.
It is also, arguably, the most terrifying and painful thing we will ever do.
To have professionals around us who make it as comfortable as possible is the least any decent person expects for their fellow human.
There are many people dying right now in absolute agony, abandoned by their family, rolling with bedsores and trapped in their bodies in underfunded care homes, tended to by mimimum-wage and overworked people who won’t care enough until it’s their own time on the dying slab.
And then they will cry, then they will scream in agony and beg for their mother, and nobody will come for them.
That is, aside from the nurse who enters three times a day, moves them about on their bed, and leaves them to their thoughts and fears.
My mother very nearly had that death.
And Mum knew that at the end – she knew how lucky she was to have us there at all, to hold her hand.
And that magical blessing was somewhat dampened by some idiot moving her around her bed like carrion.
I worry it made her terrified that we didn’t love her at all. I can’t imagine anything scarier, at the end, than to think you are unloved.
As the evening grew closer, my heart sank.
I sat cross-legged amongst the photographs I’d spread over the floor. It was becoming apparent that my wish to look at them with my mother was never going to be fulfilled.
She’d not spoken all day, aside from grunts and moans. A few times, she made some awful noise that made T, Zoe and I jump, only to sleep on in silence.
In the late afternoon, her chin started to move up and down as if she were slowly chewing. Her right hand remained frozen up by her chin, grasping Billy. Her other hand was curled in a tight fist but for the index finger, which pointed adamantly at the bottom of the bed.
I flicked through the photos mournfully. I’d pooled together a bunch to show her: shots of me and my two brothers when we were children, the frankly impressive jumpers she used to knit for us. In most of the pictures of me and D, we wore some outfit Mum had lovingly crafted for us.
She was so vibrant, back then. Always knitting, crafting. She used to take flowers from outside the local brothel and press them under glass.
There was something among the photos. I recognised the writing as mine, when I was still a child.
A poem.
A shit poem, but one written from the heart. D and I wrote it together to give to her on a mother’s day.
‘Do you think this can be…put with her when they…you know…’ I asked T.
‘What is it?’
‘A poem D and I wrote for her. Think I was about twelve.’ I paused. ‘It’s not very good.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Put it somewhere we can find it.’
Zoe got up.
‘I’m going to put something soft under her feet,’ she said. ‘A pillow or something.’
T helped, pulling up the duvet at the base of the bed. I glanced up and saw my mother’s feet were pale, the color of boiled chicken.
Suddenly she spoke for the first time in a day.
‘My husband’s mum died yesterday,’ she said surprisingly loudly. I jumped out of my skin, to be honest. I think T did too.
‘Did she?’ T managed.
Mum made an affirmative grunt. She did not move, and she did not open her eyes.
The Man Who Is Not My Father’s mother died when he was five. She probably meant his stepmother, the wife of his adorable father, also long passed.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry Kay.’
Mum was silent. She’d fallen back into unconsciousness.
Those were my my mother’s last words.
‘I wonder what brought that up?’ T said, while Zoe plumped the pillow.
Who knows. If I were to guess, I’d say The Man Who Is Not My Father was still, even at that point, the main person on her jumbled mind.
That woman gave her life to men, desperate for validation.
And she found it in him.
Blind love. Blind love.
As the evening drew near, her mouth drooped. The space between her top lip and nose fell. Though she was breathing calmly and wheezing only a little, she did not smile again.
But her eyes were open. They saw me. They watched me crying. They darted to look at something on the ceiling. They looked to her right where she’d said her mother was sitting.
‘J is coming to see you tomorrow,’ I said. Her eyes responded at his name, glancing back from the ceiling. ‘But I’m here now. I’m with you. Go with your mum when you’re ready to take her hand.’
She stared a moment or two, looked over to her right, then back up at the things on the ceiling. Her breathing was soft, but deep.
I wasn’t telling mum I loved her – because I didn’t. But I loved Mum.
The manipulative, dismissive and sometimes cruel woman she became after the molestation of her daughter was already dead.
All that was left was Mum – the woman with a laugh like ice cubes in a glass, the woman who wore stiletto heels and lit her cigarette as far away from her hair sprayed head as possible so she wouldn’t set it on fire.
Now only a tiny flame flickered inside that shell, and I cupped my hands around its warmth like a match girl.
It wasn’t fair to only get Mum back this way. But at least I had her.
That would have to be enough.
At about 10pm she looked at me. Her eyes scanned my face. Then they closed for the last time.
T went home, promising to come back in the morning. I’d planned to drive home myself, but all the signs – the top lip dropping, the winged tailbone bed sore, her yellowing feet and soft throat rattle – pointed towards her dying in the next twenty-four hours.
So once again, I made myself a little nest on the dining room sofa.
Despite T’s specific request that the care company never send a male carer, one did indeed show up around 11pm.
He was a sombre, tall and quiet man who proceeded to ‘help’ me move Mum to ease pressure points while she twitched.
I was horribly shocked when he suddenly pulled the duvet entirely off Mum’s body, revealing her naked legs, sagged belly and incontinence pants to all and sundry.
She wasn’t able to talk or open her eyes, but she was twitching and upset.
She was fucking raped by males, you moron, I almost spat.
But I didn’t. The words pressed hard against my teeth, then faded away.
‘It’s okay Mum,’ I said, since this bloke hadn’t even introduced himself or told her what he was about to do. ‘I’m still here, this is the overnight carer. We are just going to rearrange you to get the pressure off your sores.’
He got me to shove a slip sheet under her so he could move her across the thin mattress.
Being quite rough, he moved her too far across and her head dangled close to the wall. I pointed this out, still pissed off that he’d thrown the covers back like a customer at a brothel.
Eventually, instead of helping him yet again harshly shove a slip cover under her naked legs, I just pulled Mum’s body into my arms and gently moved her up on the pillow.
‘Don’t do that,’ He snapped when I bent down to pull her to my chest.
Fuck off, I thought.
I didn’t say it, but I hope he felt me thinking it.
He loomed at the end of the bed, clearly annoyed, watching in the low light. A man with incredibly dark complexion and wearing exclusively black clothes, he looked…he looked like that man Mum described weeks ago. The one she saw at the end of her bed.
‘I’ve got it now, thanks,’ I said, cosying the duvet up under Mum’s chin.
The man sat on the sofa, picking up his phone, ready to keep an eye on her for the night.
I had an idea. I bundled off to grab my phone.
‘Mum,’ I said as I plonked back down on the footstool. ‘I know you used to pray. And I know your dad was catholic. Do you think you’d like to hear some catholic prayers?’
I heard a rustle. The night-sitter had put away his phone, and was leaning forward, forehead bent into his hands in prayer.
You just treated a dying woman in a way that would make Jesus blush, and you’re joining me for a prayer? I thought.
Being religious doesn’t teach you empathy either, then.
In any case, I was mildly touched that he would lend me, an agnostic, his prayer at this time.
I started to read in a firm voice.
I commend you, my dear mother, to almighty God, and entrust you to your
Creator.
May you return to him who formed you from the dust of the earth.
Mum’s eyelids flickered. The slip of white between them appeared.
May Holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints come to meet you as you go forth
from this life.
May Christ who was crucified for you bring you freedom and peace.
May Christ who died for you admit you into his garden of paradise.
May Christ, the true Shepherd, acknowledge you as one of his flock.
May He forgive all your sins, and set you among those he has chosen.
May you see your Redeemer face to face, and enjoy the vision of God forever.
That line, may He forgive all your sins. I read it slowly, clearly. A tear fell from her left eye, down over her pale cheek and onto the pillow. It was quite cinematic.
I read out all the prayers that some PDF I’d found on Google deemed correct for the situation.
The Lord Is My Shepheard, I am the Way the Truth the Light, Hail Mary – all the hits.
Not once did the gentleman sitting on the sofa stop silently praying with me.
When I finished, he got up and went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea.
Exhausted now, I tucked Mum in and kissed her forehead. It was like kissing cold leather.
‘I’m going for a sleep. I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?’
She had less than twenty-four hours left to live.
Thank you for reading x