Goodbye to a stranger
Friday, 23rd
The office where my mother works has moved, after some thirty years, from one location to another spot in town. When I took that Friday off, last month, after the dinner with bookshop friends, I went to see how things were going, since they were moving all the stuff and trying to arrange the (badly planned) space for everyone.
I arrived on a hot morning, after walking all the way from home to the post office and from the post office to mum’s new head quarter. There were lots of people busy emptying boxes, moving tables and chairs, calling from room to room, there were electricians in the way, and a van outside the side doors with some guys downloading more chairs and putting them right where people were passing, or in the corridor.
In the shadowy rooms (no lights on yet) there was a short fat woman with a headscarf who looked at me in a sort of suspicious, or just curios, way: I imagine she was trying to figure out who I was, since I bear no resemblance whatsoever with my mother (I’m my father’s portrait, apparently).
I knew at once who the woman was, since she was the daily subject at home: first because of a diet she had been forced to go through, which would see her begin the week with half an apple for breakfast and gradually increase the quantity of food to a whole dish of pasta for lunch on Sunday, so that her metabolism would rise and she would lose some weight.
Then I heard of her because she would come to work for a week and take a month off on sick leave. Then because she would go back to work but was too tired to do anything and the colleagues would be bitchy about it.
Then because she spent the day crying in her office.
Then about her coming to work wearing a wig, only to see if she could pretend she still had her hair and things were going all right.
Then about her being too tired to work and the bosses deciding to put her on part-time but keeping her wage as a full-time worker.
Finally, about her saying that she had asked her doctor about any hopes, and the doctor replying that she couldn’t tell whether she would live or die.
Last week she called sick at work and went back to the hospital, where the doctor told her husband that she was now at the final stage: the cancer had spread everywhere, everywhere. I had this image of black stuff, airy-like, but flowing and filling her body like water, and unstoppable, silent, deadly just like uncontrollable water.
My mum went to see her but they couldn’t talk much because she would doze off every two words. The colleagues were organising to go visit her, but her husband said she was too weak and couldn’t receive any visitor; the doctor said it was a matter of days now.
Last night she died. Today it would have been her 49th birthday.
I didn’t know her. But God, am I sorry.
Although after all, I believe it’s better that she passed away now, and not after months and months of expensive and useless pain killers administered in an expensive private clinic too far from home, where her friends and family couldn’t go see her every day, and unbearable pain that she alone would have to feel.
May she rest in peace now.
The office where my mother works has moved, after some thirty years, from one location to another spot in town. When I took that Friday off, last month, after the dinner with bookshop friends, I went to see how things were going, since they were moving all the stuff and trying to arrange the (badly planned) space for everyone.
I arrived on a hot morning, after walking all the way from home to the post office and from the post office to mum’s new head quarter. There were lots of people busy emptying boxes, moving tables and chairs, calling from room to room, there were electricians in the way, and a van outside the side doors with some guys downloading more chairs and putting them right where people were passing, or in the corridor.
In the shadowy rooms (no lights on yet) there was a short fat woman with a headscarf who looked at me in a sort of suspicious, or just curios, way: I imagine she was trying to figure out who I was, since I bear no resemblance whatsoever with my mother (I’m my father’s portrait, apparently).
I knew at once who the woman was, since she was the daily subject at home: first because of a diet she had been forced to go through, which would see her begin the week with half an apple for breakfast and gradually increase the quantity of food to a whole dish of pasta for lunch on Sunday, so that her metabolism would rise and she would lose some weight.
Then I heard of her because she would come to work for a week and take a month off on sick leave. Then because she would go back to work but was too tired to do anything and the colleagues would be bitchy about it.
Then because she spent the day crying in her office.
Then about her coming to work wearing a wig, only to see if she could pretend she still had her hair and things were going all right.
Then about her being too tired to work and the bosses deciding to put her on part-time but keeping her wage as a full-time worker.
Finally, about her saying that she had asked her doctor about any hopes, and the doctor replying that she couldn’t tell whether she would live or die.
Last week she called sick at work and went back to the hospital, where the doctor told her husband that she was now at the final stage: the cancer had spread everywhere, everywhere. I had this image of black stuff, airy-like, but flowing and filling her body like water, and unstoppable, silent, deadly just like uncontrollable water.
My mum went to see her but they couldn’t talk much because she would doze off every two words. The colleagues were organising to go visit her, but her husband said she was too weak and couldn’t receive any visitor; the doctor said it was a matter of days now.
Last night she died. Today it would have been her 49th birthday.
I didn’t know her. But God, am I sorry.
Although after all, I believe it’s better that she passed away now, and not after months and months of expensive and useless pain killers administered in an expensive private clinic too far from home, where her friends and family couldn’t go see her every day, and unbearable pain that she alone would have to feel.
May she rest in peace now.
posted by Peggy @ 9:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home