announced my four-nights/three-nights plan I returned to London and collapsed into bed feeling horribly ill, with a temperature so low that I thought the thermometer must be broken; but once that involuntary protest was over I hit my stride, becoming quite good at suspending my life, which is what has to be done when living with an old person. You buy and cook the food that suits her, eat it at her set mealtimes, work in the garden according to her instructions, put your own work aside, donât listen to music because her hearing aid distorts it, and talk almost exclusively about her interests. She is no longer able to adapt to other peopleâs needs and tastes, and you are there to enable her to indulge her own. Luckily gardening, my motherâs great passion, is genuinely an interest of mine, and so is making things. All she could make by then, because of limited eyesight and rheumatic hands, was knitted garments, but her knitting was adventurous and I truly enjoyed discussing whether purple should be introduced, or a new pattern embarked on for the yoke. While my mother was well there was real pleasure in seeing her contented, and knowing she was more fully so because of my presence.
But she was not always well. Sometimes she went grey in the face and quietly slipped one of her âheart pillsâ under her tongue; more often she had a less dangerous but more distressing attack of vertigo. She was clever at keeping her medicaments for this in strategic places, so that whether a âdizzyâ came on in the drawing room, the kitchen, her bedroom or the bathroom she could get herself without too much trouble into a chair with the necessary equipment. But gradually the length and intensity of the attacks increased, and the occasions on which I was thankful that I had been there to help her became more frequent. This did not lessen my anxiety at the prospect of such crises â indeed, it increased. If I woke during the night worry would start to nag, and I could rarely go to sleep again. I knew her usual movements very well: how she almost always shuffled along to the lavatory at about four in the morning (only the most acute emergency could make her use the commode I persuaded her to keep in her bedroom); how she began the slow process of washing and dressing at about six-thirty. If I didnât hear these sounds ⦠was it because I had missed them, or was something wrong? I would have to get up and check. If I heard her cough, was it just an ordinary cough or was it the first retching of a vertigo? I had to listen tensely until its nature became clear. The anxiety seemed nearer to some kind of animal panic than anything rational. After all, I knew that I could help her through a vertigo, and even supposing it were a heart attack and she died of it, I knew that this sooner-rather-than-later inevitable event would be the timely conclusion of a long and good life, not a tragedy. But still, the way she was a little older, a little more helpless, a little morebattered by that wretched vertigo with every week that passed â the fact that death was, so to speak, up in the attic of her house, waiting to come down and do something cruelly and fatally painful to her â frightened me.
I had been observing the four-night/three-night plan for about a year before I realized quite how much it frightened me. Of course it was tiring, even without the worry. I was working hard on my London days, so I never had time to be on my own and do my own things in my own home. I began to feel heavily weary. I drove to work every day, leaving my car in a garage about fifteen minutes walk away from the office â a pleasant walk, taking me through Russell Square, which I had always enjoyed. Now it began to seem exhausting; my feet seemed less manageable than they ought to be so I had to be careful not to stumble; I even began to dread it. And one weekend with my mother I felt so bad-tempered, so dreary, so near to
But she was not always well. Sometimes she went grey in the face and quietly slipped one of her âheart pillsâ under her tongue; more often she had a less dangerous but more distressing attack of vertigo. She was clever at keeping her medicaments for this in strategic places, so that whether a âdizzyâ came on in the drawing room, the kitchen, her bedroom or the bathroom she could get herself without too much trouble into a chair with the necessary equipment. But gradually the length and intensity of the attacks increased, and the occasions on which I was thankful that I had been there to help her became more frequent. This did not lessen my anxiety at the prospect of such crises â indeed, it increased. If I woke during the night worry would start to nag, and I could rarely go to sleep again. I knew her usual movements very well: how she almost always shuffled along to the lavatory at about four in the morning (only the most acute emergency could make her use the commode I persuaded her to keep in her bedroom); how she began the slow process of washing and dressing at about six-thirty. If I didnât hear these sounds ⦠was it because I had missed them, or was something wrong? I would have to get up and check. If I heard her cough, was it just an ordinary cough or was it the first retching of a vertigo? I had to listen tensely until its nature became clear. The anxiety seemed nearer to some kind of animal panic than anything rational. After all, I knew that I could help her through a vertigo, and even supposing it were a heart attack and she died of it, I knew that this sooner-rather-than-later inevitable event would be the timely conclusion of a long and good life, not a tragedy. But still, the way she was a little older, a little more helpless, a little morebattered by that wretched vertigo with every week that passed â the fact that death was, so to speak, up in the attic of her house, waiting to come down and do something cruelly and fatally painful to her â frightened me.
I had been observing the four-night/three-night plan for about a year before I realized quite how much it frightened me. Of course it was tiring, even without the worry. I was working hard on my London days, so I never had time to be on my own and do my own things in my own home. I began to feel heavily weary. I drove to work every day, leaving my car in a garage about fifteen minutes walk away from the office â a pleasant walk, taking me through Russell Square, which I had always enjoyed. Now it began to seem exhausting; my feet seemed less manageable than they ought to be so I had to be careful not to stumble; I even began to dread it. And one weekend with my mother I felt so bad-tempered, so dreary, so near to
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