More Than Just Coincidence by Julie Wassmer

Author:Julie Wassmer [Julie Wassmer ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A Clock Stops Ticking

On the eve of one hot August Bank Holiday weekend, I headed for Gullane House straight from a meeting about the BBC’s Children in Need appeal, having volunteered to man the phones during the forthcoming telethon. My own child, Sarah Louise, was now fourteen years old and, I sincerely hoped, in need of nothing. In four years’ time she would have the right to acquire her original birth certificate. Would she try to find me?

I was baffled to find my mother’s maisonette empty. As I put the kettle on, wondering where she could have got to, the telephone rang. An aunt in Kent with whom we were rarely in contact was on the other end of the line, telling me that my mum had been taken ill.

At St Thomas’ Hospital in Westminster, I found her perched on the edge of a bed, wearing a strange nightgown. When she turned to look at me I saw fear in her eyes.

A doctor explained that she’d had some kind of fit at work the day before. The only telephone number in her bag was my aunt’s, which was why the hospital hadn’t been able to notify me. My mother was confused and disorientated. Unsure of what to do, I called her older sister Bett, who arrived from Becontree with my cousin Danny. We hadn’t seen one another for years but I was grateful to have family to lean on in this crisis.

The doctors gave my mum an MRI scan and eventually decided that the fit might have been an isolated incident. She was discharged into my care and sent home with drugs usually prescribed for epilepsy to prevent further fits.

My mother never recovered. Within three months she had developed a kind of dementia. Her body became weak on one side and she took terrifying tumbles down the stairs but she refused point blank to go back to the hospital. She wouldn’t even see the doctor.

One night I dissolved into tears of frustration. ‘It’s just one of those things,’ she said. Then she shuffled into the kitchen and returned with a cup of tea for me. I knew how much effort it had taken her to do this and I watched her set down the cup with a trembling hand. We had never talked properly to each other, but this simple gesture expressed more than words ever could.

Night after night I watched her staring up at the clock on the wall. Whatever time it showed, she would make the same remark. ‘Is that all it is?’

Finally, the clock stopped ticking.

I managed to get my mother admitted to hospital, where doctors belatedly diagnosed an aggressive lesion to the brain. My bosses at work were sympathetic and I was given compassionate leave, which meant I was able to visit her every day. Due to the dementia, she became childlike in the last months of her life. I would feed her from a spoon and try to interest her in the magazines she had always loved to read.

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