It would have been my mum’s 96th birthday, today. However, given a lifetime of nicotine addiction, there was never the slightest possibility that she might make it. The surprise for me was that she made it to 75, but her latter years were no bundle of laughs.
Neeltje Drury previously Johansen nee Verburg finished work for good in the late 1970s, moving to a bungalow overlooking the Bristol Channel with her seafaring husband, George, whose birthday, by a strange coincidence, would also be today. He would be in his hundreds by now. At first, retirement was good. Elly – she was never referred to by her real name, Neeltje – and George had the lot. They had a group of friends all on the same street. The men played snooker twice a week, the women socialised. Elly and George even had the odd holiday in Cornwall but more often than not happiness was home. As Elly was even more antisocial than me, this suited her down to the ground. But as the years went by, the friends start to fall ill and die. What you wanted to last forever was over sooner than you might expect. In the 1990s, Elly racked with pain due to the effects of cigarettes on her circulation and George the victim of Parkinson’s, they both went into residential care.
Old age comes with many unwanted friends and these friends visited themselves upon Elly and George. Gradually, things got worse. I visited them in their care home every week and whilst I did so out of choice, my spirits sank as time passed by. Elly, once so attractive and elegant, has become skeletal. George’s Parkinson’s morphed agonisingly into dementia. I began to have thoughts and they weren’t all that cheerful. There might come a time when death for both might be a blesssing.
Elly died suddenly from a heart attack in the autumn of 1999. The doctor told us she would have not noticed or felt a thing. Instantly, her pain was over. George’s got worse, as dementia gradually overwhelmed him. It was definitely a blessing when he died some years later. I was with him as he drew his final breath. I definitely remember thinking. “No more pain.”
I cried once Elly died and never again. It was when I called her brother in Rotterdam and he was completely apathetic and disinterested. That day, I lost my mum and I lost my uncle, to whom I never spoke or contacted again. When George slipped quietly away, I was relieved. How such a lovely and gentle person could be stolen away by two evil diseases was beyond me. I hated to see his suffering. By the end, he had no idea he was suffering or indeed alive.
Seeing my mum’s pain for the best part of two decades perhaps influenced my feelings about her once she died. The fact that I don’t have a clue what date she died probably says quite a lot. On social networks, I frequently read comments from Facebook friends about how they miss their parents every day they wish they were still here, even after decades. I don’t feel that way because Elly and George’s final years were not pleasant. I can say that I miss them when they were healthy and strong, but the physically and mentally ravaged versions of themselves I don’t miss at all. Those whose parents died of old age or died tragically young, I can understand their constant sense of loss, particularly if they did not have horrible long term, long-lasting health conditions. Perhaps, I am being hard-hearted but when I think of my mum, I think of the last times I saw her. They were not good times.
Had they died in less upsetting circumstances, I might feel differently. I might have missed them every day and have never gotten over it. But the way I feel is different. I am grateful to both of them for the parts they played in my life and of course I loved them dearly. And that’s probably why when they passed it was in some ways a deliverance.
I suppose I could wish them both happy birthday, too, but that would mean I would have to believe they survived their own deaths and were living in an afterlife where they might be able to carry out surveillance on the lives they left behind. And I’m as sure as sure can be that we won’t meet again some sunny day. As I said, I missed them as they were and not what they became. The idea that they have died, gone to heaven, been cured after death of their incurable diseases and are now living happily ever after in that great tobacco factory in the sky, with a glass of Scotch in hand, is not one that makes a great deal of sense. Memories and old photos are all I need.
