Paper Kisses
Today I came home and my mum wasn't there. She was still with my grandad, because the hospital had just told him that granny had contracted the MRSA bug.
We had gone to the hosptial to visit her, last Saturday, on the way home from a day in Dun Laoghaire. I hadn't seen her since just before she went in for the operation to remove the cancer. She had thrown a huge family dinner on her lawn, with eight courses that she had cooked from scratch and bottles of champagne. She's seventy-nine.
I know everyone says this, but she looked so small. She was sitting up, with her ankles lying on the bed in front of her, and I found myself looking at her feet. They were child's feet, tiny and white-socked.
And she was angry. It took me a while to realise this, but through the Morphine and the exhaustion of several sleepless nights my granny was furious. Furious that this was happening to her, furious that she had to be waited upon, furious that she was being seen as An Old Person and not her.
And my mum had no idea what to do. Usually, she's a whirlwind of capability, small and energised. She's the sort of mother that can wipe noses while bottling homemade jam, sewing on a spare button and making three lunches, all while on her way out to the Zoo with the lot of us. The sort of mother who stops off to get some bread and ends up listening to the shop assistant's life story for half an hour. The sort of mother who retrained herself for a whole new career at a time when most mothers are enjoying the peace of having finally seen their children off safe and sound to school life, who battled her way through winters on foot to take the train every day and came home to cook dinner for three children and never once complained. She is, in short, a five-foot miracle. Much like my granny.
But we were getting up to leave the ward and my angry granny, my mum looked very lost. Like someone's daughter and not someone's mother. So I bent over granny and gave her a kiss on the forehead, which I've never done before, and my mum did the same.
It felt like kissing very delicate paper.
We had gone to the hosptial to visit her, last Saturday, on the way home from a day in Dun Laoghaire. I hadn't seen her since just before she went in for the operation to remove the cancer. She had thrown a huge family dinner on her lawn, with eight courses that she had cooked from scratch and bottles of champagne. She's seventy-nine.
I know everyone says this, but she looked so small. She was sitting up, with her ankles lying on the bed in front of her, and I found myself looking at her feet. They were child's feet, tiny and white-socked.
And she was angry. It took me a while to realise this, but through the Morphine and the exhaustion of several sleepless nights my granny was furious. Furious that this was happening to her, furious that she had to be waited upon, furious that she was being seen as An Old Person and not her.
And my mum had no idea what to do. Usually, she's a whirlwind of capability, small and energised. She's the sort of mother that can wipe noses while bottling homemade jam, sewing on a spare button and making three lunches, all while on her way out to the Zoo with the lot of us. The sort of mother who stops off to get some bread and ends up listening to the shop assistant's life story for half an hour. The sort of mother who retrained herself for a whole new career at a time when most mothers are enjoying the peace of having finally seen their children off safe and sound to school life, who battled her way through winters on foot to take the train every day and came home to cook dinner for three children and never once complained. She is, in short, a five-foot miracle. Much like my granny.
But we were getting up to leave the ward and my angry granny, my mum looked very lost. Like someone's daughter and not someone's mother. So I bent over granny and gave her a kiss on the forehead, which I've never done before, and my mum did the same.
It felt like kissing very delicate paper.
posted by Riona at
4:38 AM
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