Kitchen Comforts

Resistance hugs the small kitchen hiding secrets amongst gloomy cupboard space, post-war austerity brooding on strained shelves.

Empty jars wheedle their glass weight into the wood, its protest stifled only by the hum of a fridge –a magic fridge procreating eggs by the dozen their longevity evidenced only by an absence of feathers.

Plastic bags like artificial flower heads scrunch in hidden corners anticipating usefulness –receptacles for ashes and potato skins, swarf from box hedges, odd bits of wool waiting for the charity shop.

An Easter cactus prospers on a sill heedless of the pills that leave their tell-tale tips above the parched soil where she drove them in.

This is the place she planned her day, where through a kitchen window the dulled reminders of her life still resonated in the ordinary –a rose she’d slipped, blushing the oil tank in summer, the remnants of a forgotten meal, animal fodder on the lawn.

Nothing went to waste not even the birdsong wakening her at dawn that somehow hummed upon her lips for the remainder of the day.

Sunday: Took mum and Lily for a drive but it was very cold out. O – I’ve left £100 cash in the tin for miscellaneous items for mum. Please use when you need it. Hope to see you on Wednesday, all being well. Love, Lynda x Wednesday: George/O – I have turned mum’s blanket on at the main switch and all she has to do is press the control beside the bed. Maybe you need to go over this again?

Sunday: Lynda came at lunchtime. Big confusion over Lily’s spare key which I can’t find.

Wednesday: Thanks, O, for all your help. George, I’ve talked to Siamak about mum and Christmas. I’ll come down on Christmas morning, make lunch for mum and Lily and stay a while before going back home for a family meal with the kids later. Next day (Boxing Day) and weather permitting, Siamak and I will come down again and organise the food etc. But I’ll ring you anyway, soon.

Friday: Jean over visiting from Wales. Mum has got her £400 winter fuel allowance – it should automatically go into her bank account.

Wednesday: O called in to check on mum. Gave mum her ADCAL -D3 tablets and REMINYL. Checked that doors were locked.

Monday: Mum not well. Doctor calling at the house today. Mum given antibiotic for UTI?

Tuesday: Need to bring mum’s bed downstairs.

Wednesday: Contact with Social Services

Thursday: Medication that mum is on now: Reminyl tablets / Clarithromycin tablets / Adcal tablets / paracetamol / lactulose / co-codomol.

Mummy fell and broke her hip shortly after this last jotter entry. She spent some time in hospital and moved directly into a nursing home. She was never able to return to her own home again.

Done

Death bleaches into bone the smell of oldness secreting in the folds of laundered sheets.

Old Old Old

Your face reflected in the greying wood of trees and origami limbs a plicature of skeleton and skin.

You ask, ‘Is someone dying here?’ and to the silence add, ‘You’re good. I’ll keep you,’ the words your parting giftthe love you left.

Day Room Days

This morning the shell of you waits in the day room, a shrinking form more tortoise-like than yesterday. Nipped between finger and thumb, a biscuit, the warm chocolate already sculpting patterns into your grooved palm.

Hibernating eyes shift. ‘What’s this for’ you say, not even a question, and there are no words except perhaps the ones I should have said before they wouldn’t matter. Now they rain as shadows, puddling the space between us.

In this day room I must peel away the scaly layers of your casing to unearth some remnants of your life, the blessing of little things gifting themselves to memory, carving their shapes in my mouth like a river’s erosion.

And this I know –everything you gave to me, remains. For even as the particles of sand sift through their hourglass no grain is ever lost, and I will see you as you were, your tortoise shell shouldering me and shouldering me still.

Gone

Even now your warmth tortures me though you decided for yourself to leave without us being there.

And me, wishing you back, able only to stare at the hollow of your throat to a pulse extinguished suddenly to stillness.

For in the end, we are simply left with sadnesses, their shadows shocking as they cross the sun while in between remains the light that says life carries on, only because it does.

Moving Day

I moved my mother into our dining room her presence boxed and waiting for the final shift to a shed outside the pain of her absence stuttered my will to let her go black bags remaining empty of the detritus I could not throw awayshopping lists on paper scraps repeated phone numbers written in her tiny disappearing hand all about the house

‘Just in case’