– Karl MacDermott
Mother is in hospital. She isn’t very well. She is eighty-two years old. She has recently been diagnosed with vascular dementia. The medical term is vascular. They leave out the next word. Dementia. They are discreet like that. Understated. Play things down. Like being diagnosed with lung cancer and told you are suffering from lung.
She was sitting up in bed yesterday. The shell-shocked look of the old. A vacant vessel in a cotton nightie. Conversation. Minimal.
“What are you doing?”
“Having a think.”
“About what?”
”Nothing.”
She is sleeping now. Already looks blue dead. Sunken cheeks. Thin lips. I feel terrorized. I shouldn’t be. I should be rational. And remember when I was a child. And watched an old black & white movie. And an elderly character died. What did I think? I thought old things die. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Or recall when I was nine. Granny died. What did I think? Old things die. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Or Trouble. My beloved Jack Russell. Must have been one-hundred-and-ten in dog years when he collapsed that night in the kitchen. Old things die. It’s the most natural thing in the world. But now it’s mother. And what do I think? I think please God – and to paraphrase Nick Cave, I don’t even believe in an interventionist you – please make her better. Don’t take her now. Some other time.
When will that consultant Dr. Masood turn up? Consultants seem to operate in a sort of Bermuda triangle in hospitals. And yet they get paid so much. Imagine getting all that money for being a glorified disappearing act. I find an overworked nurse. Says she’ll be there in a minute.
I return to the room. It’s Mother’s Day. Irony overload. I finger the card I’ve brought. Don’t think she’ll be reading that today. Not a particularly good card anyway. Magenta flowers. Kitsch silver writing. I wonder how many mothers pass away on Mother’s Day.
Lost in memory. Two snapshots. Waiting for mother to go to bed. Part one. April 1973. Around nine- thirty in the evening. I am spooked by things. Scared of the dark. Father is away. I want to stay up a little longer. Mother is reading the newspaper on the kitchen table, tells me to go to bed now but that she’ll be up soon to kiss me goodnight. I go upstairs. Wash my teeth. Put on my pyjamas. Say my prayers. Interventionist God – still big in my life back then. Hit the sack. Lie awake. She forgets to come up. I wait and wait. Am possessed by a self-pitying frenzy. I can’t sleep. I’m very upset. What is she doing? She said she’d be up in a minute. How long does it take to read a newspaper? How could she forget to kiss her son goodnight? She doesn’t really love me. That’s it. I’m the middle child. Always ignored. The oldest is special. It’s the first child. The youngest is special. It’s the baby of the house. The middle? The middle is the middle. Two hours go by. I finally hear her on the upstairs landing.
‘You said you’d come up and say goodnight to me.’ I whisper loudly trying not to wake my young brother. She comes in. I repeat my sentence, deflated and injured. ‘Sorry dear, I forgot.’ She kisses me on the forehead. Goodnight.
Waiting for mother to go to bed. Part two. February 2012. Back home on a visit. It is ten past eleven at night. I lie awake in bed. She is still downstairs. Pottering about. She said she’d be up in a minute. A quarter of an hour ago. What is she doing? Turning off the lights? Getting a glass of water? Falling over the toilet? I fret.
I can’t sleep. I finally get up. I open my bedroom door. She is making her way up the stairs. In slow motion. All Gollum wizened. I admonish her. ‘You said you’d come up ages ago.’ ‘Sorry dear, I forgot.’ I kiss her on the forehead. Goodnight.
The nurse has just looked in. Assures me mother’s breathing is normal and not the dreaded ‘death rattle.’ She closes the curtain to keep out the afternoon sun. She points at mother.
“She’s a right Lee Marvin, that one.”
“What do you mean?”
“A wandering star.”
I nod.
“Found her up on the second floor last night.”
***
Oliver and Kieran have rung from Australia. I stare at mother again. She looks just like one of her brothers, Uncle Jimmy, when he was dying. Or had died. She is a corpse-in-waiting. The past keeps coming up behind me and kicking me in the pants. Everything comes full circle. They collect you after your first day at school. You collect them after their first day in the day care centre.
“What was it like?”
“Awful. Full of old people. “
What goes around comes around. She berates you when you are a teenager. Sitting in a darkened room. Hiding from life.
“Will you get out from under my feet. You’ve me driven daft. Look at your friend Fintan Hourican down the road, off working in that summer job every morning. Or your cousins Joe and Mick working on the trains, and what are doing with yourself? Sitting and staring!”
Years later. Same story. Roles reversed. I enter the same darkened room. Thirty summers may have come and gone but those venetian blinds and that carpet – design: psychedelic vomit – remain the same. I become exasperated at her resigned benign lethargy.
“Look at Fintan Hourican’s parents, down the road, still walking every day, fit as fiddles, Theo still swims and Maureen still plays the odd round of golf. Look at your older brother Raymond. 88 in July. On a treadmill each morning. A treadmill! And look at you. Just sitting and staring.”
***
She’s been dead two hours. Thanks for nothing, interventionist God. They opened the window to let her soul out. Still no sign of Dr. Mahood. I dump the card in the bin. And kiss her on the forehead. Goodnight.
Karl MacDermott
Karl MacDermott is an Irish writer. He has written extensively for radio and has had comedy series’ on both RTE Radio 1 ‘Gone But Forgotten’ , ‘Here’s Johnny’ and BBC Radio 4 ‘The Mahaffys’ . He has also written a television comedy drama ‘Straight To Video’ for RTE Two and over the years has contributed many satirical articles to the Irish Times and has had stories published in online magazines including Every Day Fiction, Pure Slush, Literary Orphans, Menacing Hedge and The Big Jewel. His debut novel ‘The Creative Lower Being’ was published in 2007. A new novel ‘Ireland’s Favourite Failure’ is available on Amazon Kindle. He is currently writer-in-residence at his home in Dublin.