I just cannot believe that my mother is not there anymore. She was so mentally alive and energetic, although her body was old and tired. Like my daughter said, on going to her flat, "although Mummy was mostly in bed, her presence filled it. Now the flat is so empty."
I had visited her on Monday evening as usual and we had talked alot. She told me then that her back pain was getting as bad as the last time she had it(around 2-3 months ago) and that Sudoko was the only thing that could take her mind off it. She had recently got the cassette player repaired and had been listening to book tapes--Dick Francis--which had been her sister's. But that evening she told me that not even the tapes could distract her as much as the Sudoko. She said that she was so glad she had got a Sudoko book for Christmas from my daughter. She told me that as she couldn't solve the harder ones, she had taken to erasing the easier ones she had done and then doing them again!
The next afternoon I don't know what made me call her at 1, after returning from work, to ask how she was. I usually just go over by 5.30/6.00 p.m. She told me that she was feeling quite unwell. She asked me to come over to check her blood sugar as she hadn't checked in a while and she told me that her BP had been taken that morning and it was ok. So I went over at 3p.m. for the 2-hr-after-a-meal test. Her sugar was slightly elevated, but nothing extraordinary. But she said her back pain was bad and that she wanted pills. I went off to the family doc--who is my brother-in-law--around 4 and got back home by about 4.30. I was just in our gate when her driver called me asking to hurry there. I ran in to the house to tell my husband and then went to her flat--which is bang next door. I took one look at her face and I knew it wasn't good. I asked my husband to come fast and we called an ambulance. But before the ambulance arrived, she had passed away. It's been 4 days now, but I feel old and tired. The magic place where I could go and slip away my years, has gone.
Sorry if I have hung it all out, but i's unbelievably cathartic.
