‘I don’t know where people will sit,’ I’d told my mother on the phone.
‘We’ll all pitch in,’ she’d said.
We are wildly loyal, my family. Loyal, enthusiastic, determined to make a joke out of everything.
And, apart from my mother, nosy. Nosiest of all is Granny Bridget.
Despite being a fragile wisp of a thing in her late eighties with osteoporosis, a walker and hair like candyfloss fluff in palest yellow, Granny Bridget toppled three rungs off a ladder a mere two years ago while trying to see into the garden behind ours when she was ‘just cutting some roses’.
‘I always see her at bingo and she never talks to me. I just wanted to see what the house was like because she’d taken the net curtains down to wash them,’ Granny sobbed as we got her into the car to take her to the hospital to see if her ankle was broken or just badly sprained.
‘So it’s entirely someone else’s fault,’ agreed my mother, not a word of reproach. ‘Could happen to a bishop.’
‘Bishops have their roses cut for them,’ Granny said tearfully, a stickler for the truth.
‘We need one of those bishops’ housekeepers,’ Mum went on, stroking her own elderly mother as if touch could cure every pain.
My mother is one of life’s Golden People – these are people who emit a golden glow of kindness and decency and they wear themselves out looking after others. In my mother’s case, it is three people she cares for.
Before she became a Carer – big C in there because Carers should be up there with presidents, prime ministers and people who win Nobel Prizes – my mother ran a department in the office of Social Welfare, and yes, this concept is riddled with irony.
Once, she tried to fairly distribute money and analyse the needs of people who needed help from the government.
Now, she is a carer who had to angle for voluntary redundancy from her beloved job in order to become one and as a carer, she earns less than afast-food worker on three shifts a week. Meanwhile, she has to do the work of at least four very energetic people. All at the age ofsixty-three.
I’ve seen her energy and life force slipping away from her over this past year but – and this is the hardest thing to bear – there seems to be so little I can do.
First up in her triad of charges is her mother, Granny Bridget Ryan, who lives in the back bedroom in the house in Summer Street along with a very old cat named Delilah who is tricky about food and clearly thinks she is in the kitchens of a Michelintwo-starred restaurant. She is the kind of cat who gives decent cats a bad name and likes to sick up her dinner on inappropriate surfaces, like the clean washing in the basket or the kitchen table when a guest is just arriving for tea and cake, which is neatly laid out on said table.
Granny Bridget herself is sweet and no trouble at all, except when she is climbing ladders. Granny Bridget is Mum’s mother and insists newcomers call her Granny Ryan lest anyone think she was ever married to the house’s other elderly inhabitant, Granddad Eddie Abalone, my father’s father. The reason for this is that Granny Bridget is a sweetheart and Granddad Eddie is a rogue of the highest order, who frightens postmen, carers and people coming to read the electricity meter. Granddad Eddie is ninety and says what he thinks. Or is wildly rude, whichever way you want to look at it.
He had been staying with my parents following a hip replacement operation, had never quite got around to going back to his own house and then, when my father had his stroke, had stayed on to ‘help’.
What this help means and when it is going to materialise is often discussed, because his presence in the house means more meals to be cooked and frequent interruptions to talk about ‘the most dangerous snake on earth’, courtesy of one of the Most Fascinating Facts books which he gets from the library once every two weeks. But my mother insists he’s vital to her household.
‘Eddie sits and talks to your father for hours,’ Mum says, and, as always when she talks about my father, her eyes get wet and we both agree that if making my father happy is the price for Granddad Eddie insulting all and sundry, and complaining that he likes lamb chops on Mondays and has no truck with vegetarian recipes, then it is a price that has to be paid.
Eddie is entirely compos mentis but has developed rudeness into an art form by making vulgar hand signals at other drivers when they are on outings in the car. He is rude to the expensive carers who come to the house seven mornings a week to wash and dress Dad, and on certain days, help him and Granny Ryan too.
Comparing one sweet lady to ‘a hippo – look at the size of the backside on her’ has just lost Mum another carer.
‘The agency rang and said they were running out of people who’d come,’ my mother says, somehow imbuing this with a hint of humour, even though it is not funny at all.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ Maura says, ‘look after him, that is,’ every time Granddad does some other Wildly Rude Thing.
‘Does that mean you won’t take care of me when I’m old?’ says Pip, her husband, onlyhalf-teasing.
‘I’m hoping you’re going to look after me,’ Maura says grimly.
The presence of irascible Eddie makes us all think about this. That and the presence of our father, who is my mother’s age.
We try not to talk about this, me, Maura, Scarlett and Con. It hurts too much. Instead, weco-ordinate times to be there to help out and pool extra resources to pay for the precious carers.
Mum is coming today, as are Maura and Pip, who is known in the family annals as the worst shopper in the world but would love to cherish Maura if only he knew what perfume to bring, or what she means when she says, ‘... Oh, get me a surprise.’
When they turn up, they have brought along a pile of Sunday newspapers, a giant tin of shortbread, their vacuum cleaner and enough black plastic bags to coat the entire property.
I ask Maura if we’re disposing of dead bodies, what with all the black bags.
