The urge to go home

 

Two weeks ago, Mum died, aged ninety. She had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  I was with her every day in hospital for the last sixteen days of her life. One of the few things Mum could remember was her address, and no wonder, for she had lived there nearly sixty-three years.

In the last couple of years, she had twice had respite periods in a care, and throughout those stays, her litany had been consistent:

‘Where am I? What do I do now? How do I get home? When can I go home?’

During her final stay in hospital, it remained much the same.

 

For me, as I faced her demise, I allowed home to change its meaning.

In Mum’s earlier absences from home, the thing she was missing was clearly being in her marital home with her husband. "Where's Martin?" was very much part of her round of questions.

 

However, this time it was different and she hardly mentioned Dad, but firmly still wished to go home.  Dad said she had recently been talking much more of her childhood in Wolverhampton. her family had left there for Cornwall when her parents divorced.

"I believe," he said, "That now, when she talks of home, she is talking of her childhood home

in the Midlands. She wants to go back there."

 

Myself, once it was clear that Mum was dying, I assigned home a third meaning. It is Heaven. 

 

There was some evidence that Mum was preparing to move on.

Several times, she asked, ‘Can I just go in peace?’

She asked me a couple of times as I sat at her bedside when I was ‘going back to Heaven?’

When my father and brother and I were all there round her bed, she counted us twice and each time included a couple of extra people who we couldn't see.

Above all, taking home as Heaven allowed me to answer her repeated question both comfortingly and honestly,

‘When can I go home?’

‘Soon.’

A Haven of Welcome

  
There is something very special about the house of friends – a haven where you know you are welcome.  Carolyn and David’s house in Gateshead has been that to us ever since we met when sharing the experience of new parenthood thirty years ago.

For twenty-four years however, we have been living in different regions, hundreds of miles apart.

Over that time, the generations have rolled over and the families have developed through different phases in their life cycle.

We have met the changes in our own family by moving from one house to another, whereas David and Carolyn have extended and adapted the same house in an inventive manner. This time when we visited, a room that I remember was a bathroom thirty years ago had become a bathroom once more, whereas the bathroom which long ago replaced it had morphed into the dining room.

I wished for a time lapse film that tracked the expansion of both family and house.

However, when we visited recently, the person who recalled most to us the first days of our friendship was somebody we had never met before - Lydia, one of their young grandchildren, busied herself with toys that once Hannah and Pascoe had played with and over her head we smiled at one another

How do we lure our children home ?

Perran and Carenza moved off to rent a house with friends Zac and Ella three months ago now. 

It was the same week that we buried Nigel’s father and we could almost hear the grinding sound of the generations rolling slowly over.

The twins are less than twenty miles from us, but it’s in London. 

We are unlikely to drive there because, as we discovered on moving day, the traffic wardens are super-alert.  Like polar bears who can smell a seal from half a mile away, even when it’s beneath a meter of ice. Not that the polar bears issue seals with tickets – their paws are too big to work the machine.  But I digress.

The public transport links are good.  But why would they want to come out to St Albans?  What for?  Their part of London is full of exciting things to do and favourite friends to do them with. 

Nigel and I have discovered that if we present ourselves in London after work with tickets for a play or exhibition and a table booked for dinner, the twins show up looking smart and make entertaining company. 

But I am after a more sustainable relationship.  

I am developing ways in which to lure them home to us.  We have nice garden to sit in, whereas the twins’ nearest open ground is a prison exercise yard (that’s how come they could afford to rent in that area).  We have a warm wood-burning  stove and decent home-cooking.  Surely that will be enough….

As long as they don’t expect us to be polite to them or make intelligent conversation all will be well.