“Warm”

A bittersweet memory

Eight years ago…..and here I still am, living in the same town in the same house with the same people.

Sometimes, nothing seems to change except the ticks of the clock that tally your borrowed time with their hissing, taunting tsks.

Yet on other days, something does happen, doesn’t it? Something that changes everything.

I’d spoken to my mum on the phone this particular day, as I did every Sunday. She’d sounded exhausted and despondent. I had a young toddler so could relate….. I was wiped myself.

My grandmother, whom she lived with, had been bedridden for two weeks with a sickness bug. Her GP - a woman she had absolutely worshipped - had refused to do a house call in case she caught it. Poor mum had been beside herself; washing sheets because my 91 year old grandma couldn’t always make the bathroom, trying to build her strength with soup and Complan, hydrate her with endless glasses of water. As often in these situations, my dark humour surfaced like a loud fart in a quiet corridor. I formed a comic image of ‘Madame Fanny La Fan’ the old lady in ‘Allo ‘Allo, banging on the floor for assistance and my mum, some beleaguered ‘Edith’.

Finally - thankfully (?) - my grandma was now in hospital. What to do now…… I didn’t want to leave my son to go and show support, he was only three and had never spent a night without me, yet taking him there would only add to the stress….

It was one of those rare occasions when both gut and logic sang loud as crimson from the same crisp hymn sheet. The song? “Grandma doesn’t have long left”.

I pictured my future self brooding like a bitch on a haystack of “If only…..”

No. I had to go, now. The urgency was that of a pregnant lady needing to pee, wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t spend some time with her. Apart from my mother, she’d been the only constant adult in my life, a life raft……and she would soon be gone. I was in my forties for heaven’s sake. Who in their forties even *had* a grandma? Let’s face it I’d been lucky…

“I’m coming up”

My son would have to spend his first night ever without me, to suck it and see. It would pain me, but not saying goodbye to my beloved grandma would destroy me more.

“You don’t have to…”

came back the reply.

“I know I don’t.”

We push-pulled on words for a moment, the way you play with magnets…..cling, resist, cling, resist. Phrases were metallic nothings, actions were forceful everythings.

I put down the receiver, explained to a three year old, best I could, that Mummy would be away for a night, then proceeded to brief his dad on all possible eventualities and several impossible ones.

Three trains later, in the black grape skin of a mid December evening, I arrived at the suburban bungalow they shared, alone. We flapped uncomfortably as stringless aprons. For all our differences, mum and I were carers - she for my grandma, me for my son, and it felt awkward having arms without purpose.

The little fibre optic Christmas tree was perched in the window, its branches crawled their twinkle from pink, to blue to green… Green….damn, that was her favourite colour.  The cushions were green. The rug was green. Her eyes were green, like mine. I’d always felt more like my grandma than my mum. Our physical build was similar, same shoe size…..We were both chatty, liked many of the same things - make up, baking….

Mum and I rattled around the tank of a living room as two marbles in a jar, settling in silence before knocking against each other with clumsy sentences that clacked on hollow walls.

“That doctor of ‘ers……didn’t want to know….”

offered my mum.

“Couldn’t care less. I kept saying she’s losing fluid, she needs a home-visit but they’re not bloody interested……was happy enough to see her to give her the flu jab, get her money for THAT….Mi mam thought the world of ‘er yer know….”

“Yes, I know…”

I went to bed. After half a day on busy pre Christmas trains, I was knackered. In theory, should have been a good night’s sleep, without the demands of a toddler. That’s the thing with theories though, isn’t it? They don’t account for variables like minds that chunter, raking old ground like an obsessive farmer. And that night, so it was. How I ploughed that land for answers, seeds of hope, signs of shoots. I’m afraid to say, I saw only trenches and a deep, deep ditch.

The hospital was in Scarborough.

My mum drove us over next day.

I entered the building, some mouse maze of white and sterile, starch sheet and metal.

It reminded me of the bit in ET when they take him away - the scary looking adults in their gloves and layers, looming and faceless. There she lay, exhibit ‘A’, reduced to a life under lens, her bed a bubble of clinical protocol, a calculation of risk versus benefit.

But this was a person.

My person.

My grandma.

My Aunt and Uncle were sat at the back of the room. Mum took a chair and joined them.

“She knows we’re here but isn’t saying much. I think she’s drifting in and out because of the medication…”

My Aunt said as though commentating on a show we’d missed the beginning of.

I too, started to watch the ‘show’, for a moment. a passive spectator but then…….woah, no, no….NO!

What the fuck was I doing?

I began to walk towards her.

Mum spoke.

“You can’t go over to her bed. The nurses have said we can’t. In case we catch whatever it is and spread it. They said we have to sit here at the back.”

My Aunt offered me a seat.

What would be next, a bloody Polo mint?

I remembered a story Grandma had told me, about how when she’d been a little girl, she’d caught scarlet fever, been placed alone in a far away hospital with nothing but her favourite doll for weeks. How isolated she’d felt, no-one apart from doctors and nurses permitted to touch her. When she’d finally left, the doll - her only companion - had been burnt “to stop infection spreading” and she’d been devastated.

There are some moments when your instinct doesn’t ‘kick’ in, it charges like a bull. I stared at my grandma, grey and weak and my heart burst like a dam. I could understand why my Uncle wanted to keep his distance, he was in remission from cancer, but the others? What were they thinking?

My grandma needed TOUCH. Reassurance. NOW! She was once again that scared little girl with scarlet fever and this time, there was no doll.

I considered her body, always so loving and giving. Always children on her knee, babies in her arms….her hands so busy attending to life, people.

I walked over to the bed, a clunky white domino embellished with crude red dots of machine beep.

Her green eyes were barely open, through the slightest slit they swirled, veils of moss in a storm.

“It’s me, Julie”

I said. Her thin lips lifted as faded rose ribbons on a Maypole.

I reached for her hand in the bed, how icy it felt.

“Cold hands make the best pastry” she’d once said to me, and boy, could she make amazing pastry!

“Could”? Yes, she’d baked her last pie.

I squeezed her fingers gently.

And then…..

“Warm”

She said weakly, acknowledging the heat of my body.

Just one tiny word, but oh, how it purred like a persian cat against the slats of my gaping soul.

And that was all she said.

In fact, that would be the last word I ever heard from her.

I travelled back to see my partner and our son (he was fine, of course) with that one word “Warm” hanging like a lavender scented, padded coat hanger in a wardrobe of wire.

She would die a couple of days later, on Christmas Eve. 

But I knew, we would always have “Warm”.

.