Mourning Mum

Earlier today I was talking to Cousin Ruth (my dad’s cousin). She is self-admittedly not the most computer friendly of people, and even she has made it online to look at our poorly updated blog and I *promised* I would write an update...so here I am.

Well. A lot has happened since last I wrote on April 11th - 3 and a half months ago. This post is mostly just about my Mum so feel free to skip out at this point if you wish. More posts about nature and beaches really will follow. I promise that too!

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So yes, Mum died. She went into hospital just around the time I last wrote, which is in part why we haven’t written. It already felt a bit wrong to be saying “hey look at all this cool stuff” when everyone was on lockdown mostly having a pretty miserable time, but that was compounded by Mum being ill and not knowing what was going on. She went in with a kidney infection and was severely dehydrated, having been holed up at home in the north on her own (though supported by my brother who brought food etc) for five weeks. She went down to Toya’s on the Easter weekend and went into hospital the following week. She said she thought she was dying, but Toya thought not and the medical staff seemed to think she’d be home in a few days. Not So Mr Grassbinder - she was in for a couple of weeks. They put her on a Covid Query ward where she was shown not to have Covid. But guess what happens when you get put on a ward with a load of people who might have Covid? Yes, you get Covid. As it turned out Mum was asymptomatic and she was sent back to Toya’s negative a few weeks later just in time for her birthday on May 2nd. Despite having had a suitcase of clothes and smellies with her, it was never opened and she was discharged by wheelchair into the road wearing a hospital gown and nothing else. Toya and Greg did a sterling job and Charlotte was able to go down and look after her there for a week too.

Within another week or so Mum was back in hospital, increasingly confused and in pain to swallow. The GP said it was just for some tests and she’d be back and home soon. A few days later she eventually had a liver scan after Toya demanded it. She had kept being told Mum’s liver was fine because her bloods were fine, but when your dad died of cancer in the liver having been told his liver was fine you know the bloods and the ultrasound do not tell you about major liver problems - let this be a lesson friends! The doctors were surprised to find that Mum had late stage liver cirrhosis (apparently she might have already been given this diagnosis in the north - not-so-joined-up NHS). It was really difficult for everyone because Mum didn’t know where she was (she thought the Crucible, the hairdressers or on a plane!) and couldn’t understand why my siblings couldn’t go and visit. Fortunately though she was in a non-Covid hospital this time so everyone wasn’t so PPE’d up to the max. It *is* difficult to care for people with all that stuff on. A few days later she had a couple of seizures and never regained consciousness. It was about six weeks since she’d gone into hospital with an acute kidney infection when she died on June 1st UK time, and I’m so glad that my sibs were able to go and be with her in the last week and to be by her side. I do appreciate that lots of people are not getting that “luxury” right now. 

It was difficult not being able to judge how worried to be, and Mum not being fully compos mentis. There were very few flights, it was likely I’d have to quarantine when I got there and I wouldn’t be able to get back into Costa Rica (still). We know of other people in similar situations who’ve now been separated from their family in Costa Rica for months. As it seemed that Mum was going to be fine until she really wasn’t it also didn’t make much sense to come back because she wasn’t conscious. So we “attended” the funeral by video call. It was surreal indeed. Mum even died on a different day in my world! (It was still the 30th May here). Iris doesn't really understand, I'm glad she spent so much time with my mum - more than with anyone else in our family. I’ve also been very grateful for all the electronic ways to talk to each other. There is a tribute site for Mum at https://madelinesmalley.muchloved.com/ where I wrote these words just after she died and which the Humanist reader shared at the funeral. 

***

Today I am thinking about how lovely it was to be part of a tribe. How mum would count us in and out - of the house, the car, the garden centre. About how much of her time she spent mediating between us and soothing us all. How we'd all be together, anywhere, and how we wouldn't need anyone else. About how much my parents loved each other and how evident that was. How much they loved us. How much Mum put into the garden, the wonderful food, about those amazing boxes of books that would arrive through the post. 

I am thinking about making Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday evening as amazing food smells permeated through the house. About the fantastic holidays we went on, about horse-riding together, at home and along beaches and through woods all over the world. About her singing "Barmy Army" in a ridiculous soprano or "All Coppers are Handsome" to my toddler. About her teaching us "Green-Grow-the-Grasses-Oh" in a traffic jam in Spain. About her telling us how she sang "Happy Christmas to you" in Spanish to Dad on his birthday one year. How she invariably called my husband "poor" Tom (for being married to me) and how she delighted in colluding with her grandchildren.

I'm thinking about Mum reading me The Hobbit. About taking us out for haute cuisine, any cuisine. I'm thinking about going to see the Philharmonic Orchestra at eight years old, about the interest she took in our education, how she showed us how to get involved and take responsibility. How she never interfered. Ever. I'm thinking about her teaching me to garden, the hours we spent in my various gardens, in garden centres, at garden shows, going round gardens, how she knew what everything was, what its Latin name was, what it would do at different times of year, how big it would grow.

Mum taught me to be independent, and curious and bolshy. She taught me to not take "no" for an answer, to put myself in other people's shoes and not to judge a book by its cover. Her early memories of delivering political leaflets and later going on anti-nuclear marches directly informed my own activism and feminism. She sent me long letters when I was at university, she came and visited me almost every day in hospital for weeks when Iris was born. She stroked my head and brought soup and hot orange juice when I was ill, or later came round with flowers and magazines (and a bottle of wine), she always knew what was going on with me better than I even did. When I was growing up she seemed to me such a pioneer, someone to look up to, a fighter, an intellectual, a role model.

Such a jumble of 45ish years of memories. I'm sure there will be many thoughts to come...

I'm given great solace that my parents are reunited in death. Peace at last. Love to all.

***

The night before Mum died a tree fell in our garden, trees fell often but this one was big and near. This was at Lis and Warren’s place. We had been playing a game of cards (Star Realms for the co-geeks amongst you) and had just packed up. It was around 11pm so pitch black, and raining. Iris was asleep in the bedroom unit across the way. We could hear a repeated loud sound like a large animal or a person pushing through the forest. The house had a paddock on one side, a large field/extension of the paddock up a hill at the back to an old road, at the front there were gardens, the bedroom unit, and another cabin down to the main road and at the other side a bit of ornamental garden and a “rancho”* which backed onto a large patch of youngish rainforest - trees about 50-60 feet high. 

I thought that maybe one of the horses had got stuck in the forest because we couldn’t see any torch-light and people would have torches (also we were living in a place where we saw a lot more of animals than we did of people!) or (more hopefully) that there was a sloth or some monkeys or even a big animal like a tapir or big cat. On investigation (I made Tom go first because I was scared and he was more interested - I couldn’t believe he’d brought a brolly out - it seemed a very English response to a noise in the woods!) the cracking noise was loud and coming from several places. I couldn’t work out what animals would be making all that noise at night, and then Tom shouted “It’s the tree” and I ran back and we watched it fall, just grazing the house. 

*a rancho is usually a little covered patio/BBQ area where people eat their outside meals. They often contain super heavy stone furniture.

When the guy came and chopped it up and hauled it off a few days later it had taken off a corner of the rancho and flattened the garden next to the house and the bed next to the rancho. So in my grief I made a new garden. In the tropics you can apparently just take a cutting (“stick”) and plonk it in the ground and it will grow, so that’s what I did. And I painted a little rock with “Mum” on and stuck it in there. So in a little corner of Costa Rica there’s a little memorial garden to Mum. Which seemed fitting. And I wrote a poem. Which is here...

Madeline & The Tree

Outside in the forest frogs trill in the rain

I was on the phone with my sister and my mum cried out in pain

"She's vocal" she said. Is she always like this?

Leave her be, I heard, she brought it on herself.

Through the tropical dark come warning cracking sounds

Mum is quiet now. Her breathing has slowed down.

We investigate with torches but i can't really see

Tom goes first with an umbrella, he shouts back "it's the tree"

I was taken off guard because I was looking for a sloth

She was in and out of hospital, she'd simply had enough

They brought her to the pavement not even covered with a gown

A slow, gentle, silent fall and the tree comes down.

Branches brush the walls, a trunk of sixty feet

Ten dead dads, buried 6 foot deep

No planes are flying so there's no way to leave

Twenty hours later, Mum's announced deceased

My sister was there. She opened the window,

Said she felt so lonely with no-one to lean on.

I keep waiting for bad news, until i remember.

Covid rages, I open the paper

The German police think Madeleine is dead

Nanny is dead darling, Mum is dead

They come and chop up the tree, take it away

We do funeral-by-laptop, Madeline is dead.

June 2020