My mother died over ten years ago. I wish I knew then what I know now, about how dying humans exist for a while in both this world and the next, and how personal and exquisite it can be to die. All of what happened in the poem is true. I wanted to write something that balanced true events with the layers of complexity in our relationship. I have read lots of inspirational accounts of supporting the dying, and I wanted to write something that is determinedly not inspirational in that it is not resolved. A bit more like life, in other words.
Delirium is the most common form of psychosis. It augurs poorly for length of life. Both my parents were delirious near their deaths, but there are strange truths here. Now, I would take a different and more generous interpretation.
The rose is Dublin Bay. My mother named her roses after the people in her life. Dublin Bay was a favourite of hers.
Here is the poem:
DELIRIUM
My mother
During happy
hour at the hospice
Was reassuring
me.
She had been
kidnapped, and was held in a cabin in the woods.
Really,
A cabin.
In the
woods.
But it was
all OK. I was not to worry. There was a party.
The party
was for her.
She could
hear the clink of glasses and the laughter in the next room.
She could
choose to join them. It was her party after all.
But not right
now.
My mother
Ran away.
They rang me, and said the Police were looking for her.
By this time
she was so light, so insubstantial, she had skipped over the sensor mat and
almost floated away.
They found
her, some hours later,
Digging in
someone’s garden.
Going to
ground, digging in, seeking earth, I guess.
She told me,
when I arrived,
He was a
very nice policeman and he didn’t even molest her.
My mother
Tried to kill
herself.
She took two
Quetiapine and fell out of bed.
They rang
me, and said it was not urgent, just to come when I could.
When I
arrived, she said she had been very naughty,
But she had
seen Jesus, and she had seen her husband.
What was she
to do?
My mother
Sat on the
floor, still agile, light and hollow-boned,
Examining the
freckles on her leg.
She
explained how each freckle was a person, how each freckle was an idea
Related to
each other
A genogram
A map
A system
A galaxy of
freckles.
I found it
hard to cope with how my mother was rearranging her relationship with the
universe.
I laughed a
lot, nervously, not understanding.
My mother
thanked me for coming this time.
She noticed
the hard black diary I always carried, my time manager diary.
Oh, she said,
I’m so glad you’re the Time Manager. You must be so clever, to manage Time the
way you do.
So I’m Dr
Who now, full noise, gate crashing the past and the future, squeezing through
the tiny bit of present we still have, managing, it’s called, still managing.
My mother
was rattling in her bed, greying out, her lungs spored and splayed, monstrous,
bigger than she was, the disease bigger than she was.
They called
me and said come now.
I said I
have the day off tomorrow.
They said
come now.
With a heart
tenderised by the mallet of duty, I went.
The last reflexive
breaths tore themselves from her as I arrived.
The nurse
said, she must have heard you.
But she’d
seen Jesus, and she had seen her husband, and what was she to do?
