A Last Goodbye

 

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re sitting on a plane flying home. Except it won’t be home I go to, I’m not even sure where that is anymore. No, although we will drive to what will always be my home town, it’s a nursing home that’s our destination. Mum is dying.

I’ve said my goodbyes; I do every time I leave, never knowing if I’ll see her again. But I desperately want to say them one more time. As the plane descends and the wet streets below reflect back the wintry sun, I can only hope for that chance.

On the ground everyone is in high spirits at the approach of Christmas. The staff at the car hire company teasingly joke with each other, backs are patted and hands shaken. It all takes precious time. 

 

The pendulum of Mum’s retirement clock swings from side to side although the fingers no longer give any indication of time’s reality. It chimes randomly. I doubt anyone will wind it once the woman on the bed can no longer take comfort from its familiarity. For now, though, maybe she does. 

I sit with her holding her hand or moistening the slack mouth taking its rapid, shallow breaths. The eyes flicker open slightly, a hand rises at my touch. In recognition? Maybe, a consoling maybe. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to convince myself of any real recognition. But I’m with her. We’ve made it.

 

Time ticks by. It’s good to see my brother again. He’s been the one who has been there for Mum so much more than I have. I don’t see him anywhere near enough either and there’s so much I want to say to him, so much I want to ask but the speechless woman on the bed who bore us both makes me hesitate. Is Mum there? This vile disease that has slowly extracted every memory from her brain, every consciously controlled function from her body, has it left anything of the person, the very soul, of who she once was?

Suddenly it’s more than I can cope with. I want to leave and hurriedly make my excuses. Dave is there now, Dave will sit with her. Selfish, unbelievably self-centred me, leaves. Guilt, guilt and more guilt on guilt. Guilt washed down and subdued with red wine. 

 

Christmas morning and I sit with Mum again. The nurses pop their heads round the door and come to turn her as needed but otherwise it’s just the two of us. The sense of hearing is the last thing to go, apparently, so I should talk to her but it’s a struggle. Surely there’s stuff that should be said. I tell her it’s Christmas and that I love her. Perhaps that’s all I need to say.

Instead I put Nat King Cole on the CD player. The soaring violins and beautiful voice seem to reach her. At least her eyes flicker open if only briefly. I let my mind wander, disjointed memories from happier times.

I remember ringing several times a week on the public telephone in the nurses home and Mum ringing me back so we could talk as much as we liked without it costing me a fortune. And, boy, could we talk. I remember a summer afternoon in the back garden drinking Belgian beer with her from bottles so small it seemed only natural to have another and another. And her strange laughing cry of oh, oh, oh! as the chair gently tipped backwards, both of us powerless to do anything about it. I remember going into her office at work, the smell of ink potent in my memory, as she turned the handle of the duplicator. I still marvel when I remember the way she would add a huge column of figures in her head, not trusting new fangled calculators.

Looking at the smiling young woman in the wedding photo above her bed, inevitably I remember the woman widowed far too young and wonder if Dad is somehow watching and waiting. I cry for the first time. 

 

 

Boxings Day and the family is gathered around Mum. The irony is not lost on us. It had always been accepted that Boxing Day was the big family celebration with Mum cooking turkey and all the trimmings, declining all help with the preparation. In retrospect we have come to realise that the first time it was all too much for her was, in fact, the first indication of something very wrong.

The change in her now is apparent. We’re all expecting this to be the last goodbye. Eventually just Dave and I remain at her side, half heartedly watching the TV as the hours pass, the clock on the wall sporadically chiming. He winds the mechanism as he always does when visiting.

It’s shortly after Neil rejoins us that her breathing changes. We hold her hands, subconsciously​ catching our own breath each time there’s a pause. When the moment comes, though, there’s no mistaking it. A startled look and, yes, perhaps the shadow of a smile. She is gone. Stop all the clocks. No, let the pendulum continue to swing for there is comfort in that. 

 

Into the freedom of wind and sunshine
We let you go
Into the dance of the stars and the planets
We let you go
Into the wind’s breath and the hands of the star maker
We let you go
We love you, we miss you, we want you to be happy
Go safely, go dancing, go running home.

Ruth Burgess

Bars, Bell Towers and Blisters

A week at home to draw breath and we were off again. The next part of our “Autumn of Doing Something Different” was all about exploring more of Spain as we headed to our home-from-home and usual winter stopover in Jávea – another road trip but in our own car. This took a fair bit of planning, too, juggling potential weather concerns and expectations of out of tourist season towns with places to stay, things to do and distance to travel. Spain is a big country. We finally settled on four places we had never been to before, some proving more successful than others.

A city soaked in history and a World Heritage Site, Salamanca (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamanca) was a big hit and unsurprisingly the star of the show. Being the furthest north of our pick we had expected it to be cold in December, and we were right, but we were lucky to get two beautiful days of misty, early mornings brightening to perfect blue skies.

The two full days we had were never going to be enough to see everything but we gave it a good try. The blisters on the soles of my feet after the first day were testament to that. Cobbled, hilly streets combined with lots and lots of steps to see the views from old towers are best walked in sensible footwear. I learnt the hard way.

As glorious by night as by day, inevitably I took literally hundreds of pictures. Never fear, though, I’ve whittled them down a bit!  

There are not one but two cathedrals which can be visited on a combined ticket that also includes the bell tower with views of the interior of the church from a narrow ledge (gulp!) as well as over the rooftops of the city. 

Neil stands casually on another narrow ledge which got the better of any reassurance to me that it was quite safe. 

 

Probably the highlight of the city for me was the Casa Lis, a beautiful Modernist house which is now home to the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Déco. You’re not allowed to take pictures inside so I’ve had to pinch one off the internet to demonstrate just how exquisite the exhibits​ are.

You can buy a combined ticket with the Museum of Automotive History which was more Neil’s thing. At least it was warm on a chilly morning.

Our visit to Jerez (de la Frontera), purely through luck, happened to coincide with the start of Christmas in the Spanish calendar. This being a public holiday meant the zambombas were in full swing. Think Christmas carols flamenco style. Basically anyone can go into town to party – drink, eat, dance and sing Christmas carols, accompanied by the friction drums called zambombas. We did the eating and drinking bit but could only vaguely clap along to the carols.

Of course Jerez is famous for a) sherry and b) dancing horses. There wasn’t a show at the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art while we were there and we weren’t sure if it would be our sort of thing anyway, while tours of the sherry producers are stupidly expensive. We contented ourselves with trying different sherries in the the various bars. Well, I did – Neil stuck to beer. No surprises​ there, then, to anybody​ who knows us!

The tourist highlight for us was the Palacio del Virrey Laserna with the Count himself as our personal guide. I was terrified of knocking over one of the priceless artifacts and too awed to ask to take pictures so here’s a link. https://www.palaciodelvirreylaserna.com/presentation/

Church of San Miguel lit by the morning sun.

This being Andalusia there were many beautiful courtyards including this one which was the view from our bedroom window. 

We gave Cadiz a miss as we had already been there on our journey from Plymouth to Greece (here) but did visit a couple of pretty seaside towns which were very much out of season. A castle with more steps was inevitably included this time following in the footsteps of Queen Isabella of Castile who managed while heavily pregnant so I didn’t really have an excuse.

She saw the sea for the first time from this window, apparently. I wonder if she was impressed.

We probably didn’t fully appreciate Ronda. This was largely due to the truly spectacular scenery we’d driven through on the way there.

We had taken a detour through Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park to see the White Villages or Pueblos Blancos of Andalusia. Pretty as they were, we hadn’t expected that the highlight of our tour would be driving to the heights of the Sierras themselves, each turn of the road revealing vistas of increasing grandeur. Wild deer strolled to the roadside, eyeing us up as we gawped, too surprised to take a picture. Pausing at a viewpoint we looked up to see a flock of vultures flew overhead. Amazing, extraordinary, wonderful.

So arriving in Ronda came as something of an anticlimax. The three bridges over the gorge, the newest dating back to 1751,

the gorge itself and the houses seeming to totter at its edge

– all failed to impress. We were tired and somewhat jaded. Lorca the next day was decidedly disappointing. It was time to call it a day and head for “home”.