Photo — Frances Rivetti
"Go sit upon the lofty hill, and turn your eyes around, where waving woods and waters wild do hymn an Autumn sound. The summer sun is faint on them, the summer flowers depart — sit still, as all transformed to stone, except your musing heart."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Autumn.
Libra season is in our midst. A time for beauty, harmony and balance. I'm fortunate that there are several super-Librans within the inner circle of my life, including my youngest son and my husband. I was raised by my Libran mother, Elaine. My heart aches as we approach her birthday, later this week. I'm still processing the finality of her death this past Spring, just as an early summer was about to drench her long-time home in the English countryside with endless days of blue skies and sunshine, red poppies along the roadside and roses in the garden that Dad meticulously maintains.
The beauty and comfort of the circle of life is that my third-born and youngest son, Dom, was born on my Mum's birthday — remarkably to me, marking a quarter of a century, this week.
As I watched the hands of the wall clock in the recently shuttered maternity unit at Petaluma Valley Hospital slowly turn past midnight, it was almost as if Mum was with me in my labor, despite the vast transatlantic-distance between us. I'd delivered two older sons in my twenties without her close by, but she was first on the plane to Northern California, soon after each new baby arrived. We not only had generational differences in mothering-styles to negotiate, cultural aspects of parenting provided plentiful fodder for family-lore! Nonetheless, Mum was hands-on, energetic, willing and enthusiastic and on the younger side of grandmothering, which was a gift I took somewhat for granted at the time.
She loved her work as a general practice nurse in the small market town where I was born and raised. It was immensely helpful having a no-nonsense, career nurse-mother on the other end of the phone as I was raising my own three sons through their childhood years and teens. My sisters and brother and myself still move to call her with any small ailment or twinge — hard to believe she's not here to pick up and put us right as she always did. Mum's strict nurses-corners attitude to life, her attention to detail with practicalities and domestic standards didn't stop her from her travels, her zest for life and fun.
It was soon after she retired at aged 70 that we noticed her slowing down in her physical capacity to walk on any degree of incline. The persistent cough. She resisted any diagnosis for quite a while until we, as a family, pretty much figured out it was COPD.
And for such a prevalent disease, it would prove frustrating and in time, maddening in the decade that followed as to how little emphasis is placed on support care in the UK for advanced COPD in comparison to other forms of incurable lung disease. Throw in a respiratory pandemic and it was incredible that she made it through those perilous years with very little medical intervention aside from oxygen. It was sadly ironic to her loved ones that she had dutifully supported various UK hospice non-profits for years, yet there was no such caring entity to support her, or my Dad as her carer, when end-stage COPD became more challenging to cope with. How we tried. "Sorry," the response at every turn — COPD apparently doesn't fit tidily, or untidily into a box. Especially in an over-stretched National Health Service. One of the first phone calls after she passed was from her favorite hospice non-profit, asking why her credit card had been declined for her monthly donation. "She died," I replied. "Oh. Sorry to hear that," said the woman on the other end of the phone. Click.
Still, Mum made the absolute best of her situation and Dad took such extraordinary care of her at home that I am sure she lived several years longer at end-stage than most people with the same diagnosis.
And she made it seven months past her 80th birthday, which was a gift for us all. She was too frail to have us make much of a fuss and so we settled on three small gatherings for her in the comfort of her home, this time last year. Buck's Fizz (Mimosas), sandwiches, sausage rolls and all the fixings and I'd pre-baked a big, traditional English fruit cake from the recipe she'd given me many years before. I covered it in marzipan and royal icing, wrapped it in parchment paper and foil and carefully packed it in my checked luggage from California, along with various 80th birthday decor and paraphernalia from the party store in Petaluma. One of Mum's best friends, Judy, a fellow retired nurse, drove winding country roads in the dark and late September drizzle to be there for Mum's friend and neighbor party. It was a joy. And especially poignant as Judy passed away unexpectedly, months before Mum. "I hope I see Judy," she would later share, in her own final days.
"I'll be back in the Spring," I'd promised, last September. And I was. And she held on for my visit, of that I am sure. My aunt picked me up from the train, an hour north from King's Cross. She drove me directly to the hospital where Mum had been admitted a week prior. Dad was waiting there for me.
"You look very nice," Mum said, despite my 24-hour journey. It must've been my navy-blue collared-shirt. She had a thing for navy-blue. It was the color of her practice nurse uniform for 25 years. And my sisters and my high school uniform. I like navy blue, too.
We held hands and she apologized profusely for the grim surrounds. "It's entertaining for me, but not much of a holiday for you," she said, her sense of humor intact on a character-filled, shared ward. Fortunately, Mum had traveled extensively up until her late 60s. Never mind that she was dying, she wanted me to have a nice visit. "Take her to the farm shop for lunch this week," she instructed Dad. He was exhausted by this time. The daily trips into the city and traversing a large hospital complex had taken their toll on top of his deep concern for his wife of almost 60 years. (They would have celebrated their Diamond Anniversary earlier this month).
Each afternoon for the following few days we visited Mum. This time, instead of a celebratory fruit cake, I'd baked a Cup of Tea Cake, a moist, fruity loaf that I knew held up well for over a week. Dad and I enjoyed a slice with a cup of tea the first evening back at the house. The rest I sliced up and wrapped for each day's visit with Mum. Her appetite was dwindling fast but she managed a few bites of each slice, in intervals. Fruit cake was her favorite treat, though she didn't eat a lot of sugary items until the last couple of years of her life when she no longer needed to watch her weight due to her tiny intake of food.
I looked back through the thread of our final few texts. "Oh delicious cake," she wrote on the Wednesday with two thumbs up emojis. The doctors said she had congested lungs, but that's all they could find after the procedure she'd been admitted had completed. "Everyone around me seems to have a cough," she wrote. Not good. She knew it.
By Friday afternoon pneumonia had set in and she was in tremendous pain. I'd jumped on the double decker bus from the city that afternoon and sat up top, taking in the tree-lined avenue out to the second iteration of the district hospital and past its first and second sites, in which she had trained as a National Health Service nurse aged 18 to 21. The poignancy of this was not lost on me and I made sure to drop it into conversation with nurses and doctors on her ward. "You know," I told them, "she's a nurse."
Mum knew precisely what was happening. There was nothing wrong with her mind. We held hands and focused on pain relief. The next morning, Saturday, Dad, my brother, my two sisters and me surrounded Mum in person, all together as a nuclear family without partners and offspring for the first time in many years. We've been far-flung, nationally and internationally, my siblings and me and it was the best possible scenario in that we were gathered beside Mum on her final journey.
The coronation of a new King took place the following week. Bank holidays disrupted bureaucracy and paperwork was delayed. I spent a month in England with Dad, my siblings and extended family. I've spent the summer back in California in part disbelief that such a dynamic force in my life has departed and equal part gratitude for having been by her side. The rest of it is a muddle. Except for the small things we hold on to. Dad has planted a memorial garden, visible from her bedroom window. He's amazed us all with how well he is managing.
I'm making a Cup of Tea Cake today in remembrance of my Libra Mum. And I'm sharing the recipe so that if you like the idea of a little something fruity alongside your cup of tea one afternoon, you'll think of her and raise a tea-time toast. Happy Birthday, Mum. Happy Birthday Dom. Happy Birthday Librans amongst us.
