the boneyard
bereavement
flying
The celebrant asked for anecdotes
family memories to put in her notes
for the eulogy
But honestly?
it’s hard
like sorting through fading photographs
But I vividly remember when I was six
sitting on the black metal child’s seat, fixed
to the back of her bike
holding a plastic plane that I liked
off to one side as we flew
like the plane was airborne and me & mum, too
but I dropped it
so mum hauled on the bike’s brakes and stopped it
slowly wheeled the bike back to get it
a silly thing, maybe, but I won’t forget it
I suppose some things are for keeping, some for showing;
I end up sending the celebrant the following:
My mate Gordon is the first of my crowd
to get a motorbike so he brings it round
Mum comes out, asked him how it works
Gordon swinging his helmet smirks
‘Jump on Mrs Clayton – if you’ve got the bottle!’
She drops the clutch, wraps the throttle,
Pops a wheelie and before he knows it
Flies head first into a bed of roses
dog heaven
So… mum dies and goes to dog heaven
gets met at the gates by a St Bernard called Kevin
who takes her coat, asks how she is
(grimaces… says AWKS!…apologises)
then with a strum of his bone-shaped harp
the safety gates tremble and part
Kevin slips a harness on Mum
and leads her into the Canine Kingdom
and all the clouds are fluffy white baskets
and all the water bowls silver caskets
and all the waiters Bichon Frise pups
and the maitre D’s a Dobermann in a tux
and the angels are Pointers, Lurchers and Spaniels
with clip-on wings and golden sandals
and Paul O’Grady says hi how are ya
surrounded by crowds of adoring chihuahuas
‘This way,’ says Kevin, ‘No tour’s complete
without you getting a chance to meet
the owner of this awesome squad…’
and he leads her into the sight of DOG
it certainly does
Mum’s choice for music
as the curtains close round her coffin?
‘You’ll never go to heaven’
by It Bites
It’s Shite
more like
some prog rawk group from the 1880s
muzak for the Tesco club crowd in Hades
scratchier and catchier than scabies
I mean – please
it’s about a million and eight minutes long
by the time it’s finished we’ll ALL have moved on
maybe I should call the celebrant and persuade her
to keep one hand handy on the PA fader
especially if she’s minded to swerve
the terrible guitar solos that occur
without number
three quarters of the way in
by which point you won’t be the only one praying
for an end to the torment and escape to heaven – just saying
but it’s her decision
and if that’s the soundtrack she wants for her transition
fair enough
we’ll be busy dealing with bigger stuff
like what happens to the family or whatever
now there aren’t any parents to hold us together
Musee des Beaux légumes
beached
one day
away
on holiday
when we were small
we accidentally kicked our football
into the sea
and watched the waves take it out gradually
mum swam after it
and after a bit
she was so far out
we couldn’t figure out
what was the ball or what was her cap
so we hurried back
to the promenade
and tried really hard
on tippy toes
to use one of those
cast iron penny telescopes
but gradually the jokes
died away
as we watched her swim further off into the bay
and wondered if she’d ever come back
or mum was gone and that was that
fifty years later she’s really dead
and – what’s left to say?
except I remember her swimming far out
out, and out – impossibly out – far out into the bay
a tough gig
Turns out, Miriam’s down to Assist the Co-ordinator this morning. She waves me over as I pass through the office, scattering good mornings as methodically and benignly as an Amish farmer sowing corn.
‘They’ve put me down to do an early care call as well,’ she says, looking flushed. ‘I mean – I’m good, but I’m not that good. I can’t be in two places at once! Everyone else is full, so it looks like only me or you that can do it. I’m more than happy to go if you want to hold the fort here a couple of hours… just as happy if you want to take the job… totally up to you. What do you think?’
The truth? I don’t need to think, but I make a polite show of it. Assisting the Co-ordinator sounds easy enough but it’s actually a pretty tough gig. It doesn’t matter how resolved you are at the start to be organised and Zen Master about the whole thing, barely half an hour later you’ll find yourself with a mobile clamped to one ear, a landline playing loud psycho-electro on-hold music in the other, three people hovering close by, checking their watches, stress-paddling foot to foot, someone else waving a piece of paper over in the Hub…. and then you’ll sigh, and hang up the landline, take a swig of coffee instead, and find it’s grown a skin.
‘It’s okay. I’ll do it,’ I tell her.
‘Are you sure?’ Miriam says, a desperate look in her eye.
‘Don’t worry. Happy to help.’
I take the details.
It sounds straightforward. Charles is an elderly patient who’s going into respite for a few weeks to give his wife June a break. He needs a care call first thing to help him get ready for collection by ambulance. As soon as I’ve picked up my other jobs for the morning, I ring their number. It goes to voicemail. I leave a message to apologise for the early call, and to say not to worry because I’m on my way and I’ll be there by half past eight at the latest.
It’s a bright, zesty drive out to their address, a neat red-bricked block on the outskirts of town. There’s a truck parked outside. Three workmen are busy putting scaffolding up, making a stunning amount of noise – pneumatic drills, banging, shouting, laughing, a radio on full volume in the cab. The workman at the top of the scaffolding, hanging on by one hand, actually throws back his head and howls. It’s all so loud and violent, even though I press my ear to the intercom I can’t hear what June says. The door clicks regardless. I go in.
The thickly carpeted hallway is so quiet by comparison with the racket outside my ears actually whine. I walk up three flights of stairs, then knock. After a long pause, June opens it. She’s tiny, frail as an old sparrow in a housecoat and slippers, blinking at me with her head slightly to one side whilst still holding on to the door.
‘Can I help you?’ she says.
‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Good morning. I hope I’ve got the right address. I’m Jim, from the Rapid Response team. I’ve come to see Charles.’
‘Charles?’
She stiffens even more, glances down at my ID badge.
‘To get him ready,’ I say.
‘What do you mean? Get him ready? What for? Who are you again?’
‘Jim. I’m a nursing assistant. From the Rapid Response.’
‘I’m sorry but I think there’s been some mistake.’
‘They asked me to come and help Charles get dressed. Before the ambulance arrives.’
‘I don’t think the ambulance will be coming,’ she says.
‘No?’
‘No. I wouldn’t think so. I’m sorry, but I think you’ve had a wasted journey. Did the nurses not tell you?’
‘What nurses?’
‘The nurses who were with us all last night. When Charles died.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
She stares at me, blinking rapidly.
‘Yes. Well,’ she says.
‘And – how are you – bearing up?’ I say, pathetically.
‘It’s early yet,’ she says. ‘But I’ll be fine. I’m sorry you came all this way.’
‘No, no! I’m sorry to turn up like this. That’s awful. I’ll make sure everyone else knows.’
‘Could you?’ she says. ‘That would be kind. Well – goodbye, then.’
And she quietly closes the door.
Outside the workmen are as furious as before. The one who was howling at the top on my way in is now leaning right out, shouting for a particular clamp.
‘Not the three four, you wingnut! The five n’alf! Ye-es! That one, Rodney! That one! Jesus Christ!’
It gets chucked up to him, and he catches it just as it slows, ready to fall back to earth.
‘Halle-fucken-lujah!’ he says, then swinging round again, gets back to his hammering.
about a squirrel
‘Tell me about the squirrel.’
‘It would never have happened if Sheila were still alive.’
‘Was she good with squirrels?’
‘She was good with everything. I’m lost without her. Lost and lonely.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘So go on, then. What’s all this about a squirrel?’
‘I’d just got back from the shops. I opened the front door and came into the hallway, put the bag down, leant the stick in the corner, turned round to close the door when I heard this little skittery noise from the bedroom. Hello I said. Who’s there? Because I thought it might be a burglar. Which, in a way, it was. So I nudged forward a little bit, and there was the skittery noise again, and something falling over, like a glass. So I said Right! I’m calling the police – although the phone was in the kitchen, and anyway, to be honest with you, I had a feeling it was too small to be a burglar. More likely a cat or something. But you say stupid things when you’re on your own, don’t you? Sheila wouldn’t have had none of that. She’d have marched right in there and sorted it out, burglar or otherwise. She was always the same, right from when we met. She weren’t afraid of nothing, except maybe at the end, and that was different. That was more than anyone could’ve coped with. Anyway, there I was, standing in the hallway, wondering what to do, picking my stick up again and holding it out in front of me, when suddenly – wham! Out flies this squirrel. And I know I’ve probably remembered it all wrong, because it happened so quick, but I swear, this squirrel, he ran up the wall, across the ceiling, back down the other side, through my legs and out the front door. And I spun round on the spot to whack him one, and fell over, and I must’ve caught my head on the hall table, because next thing I know I’m sitting on the carpet covered in blood, and my daughter Carol’s standing over me, and shes’s saying Oh my God, Dad. What happened to you? And I told her about the squirrel, and she told the paramedics, and now everyone thinks I’m this crazy old fool who got mugged by a squirrel. But I tell you what, they’re not like they used to be. I remember when a squirrel would tiptoe up to you and maybe take a nut or two out your hand. Now they’re just as likely to steal your car and burn your house down. But things change, I suppose. Life goes on. I just wish I was coping better.’
whatever you do, don’t
sixty years married
and now look
she died in hospital
wha’d’ya have to go and do that for
she said
then rolled over
closed her eyes
and was gone
could you draw the blinds
only it’s getting dark
put on that side lamp
and get me some tea
could you refill my hot water bottle
and one last thing
sorry to be a pain
but, please, when you go,
whatever you do,
don’t close the door
out out
When I was little we used to play a game called Jack Straws. You had a box of plastic tools – ladders, shovels, brooms, rakes and so on – you dumped them in a pile in the middle of the table, and then you took it in turns to try to hook as many away as you could. If the rest of the pile moved, you were out, and you passed the hook on.
Talking to Paula is a lot like playing Jack Straws, but instead of tools it’s walking sticks, letters, appointment cards, blister packs, items of food and then – the biggest category by far – people, dozens of them, in all shapes and sizes, some of them old, some of them young, some of them in uniform. And it’s difficult to resist the idea that the box got emptied on the table about the time her partner Eric died.
I’d been given the background story by someone else. Twenty years ago Paula and Eric had left their respective partners and children to start a new life together in a different part of the country. Paula had always been an anxious person, something that deteriorated in later years to the point where Eric had been acting as her carer. His recent, unexpected death cut Paula adrift, and everyone around her was struggling to cope. She’d been calling the ambulance a great deal. The police, too. Carers had been arranged but quickly dismissed, accused of laziness, rudeness, or the latest, making faces and going through her things. Everyone was trying to help. No-one was getting anywhere.
I’ve been sitting on the sofa struggling to think of a new angle to come at all this. It doesn’t help my situation that Paula’s friend Nigel is so aggressive. No doubt he’s stressed, too, but I don’t get the impression he’s normally easy. He has that way some men have of walking slightly back on his heels, arms out to the side, like it’s an effort to accommodate so much masculinity in such a short frame.
Right at the beginning of the meeting I’d checked Paula was okay with him being there.
‘Nige? He’s taking me shopping,’ she said. ‘Of course I want him here.’
‘That’s fine. I just needed to make sure.’
‘What’s up?’ said Nige, wobbling back into the room.
‘He says he wants you to go.’
‘Does he?’ he said, poking his glasses back into position with a finger as hard as a nail gun. ‘Why’s that, then?’
‘Don’t worry, Nigel,’ I said to him. ‘It’s fine. It’s just standard procedure when I’m talking to a patient about private stuff.’
‘Private stuff, yeah?’ he said, then thrust a doctor’s letter out for me to read. ‘Well go on, then. What are you going to do about this private stuff?’
*
It’s the end of the meeting. Physically Paula seems fine. The only positive contribution I can think of to make is a referral to social services, although I’m pretty sure they’ll already be well aware of the situation.
‘I just want to go back up north,’ she says. ‘Can’t you find me nowhere?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘A house or a flat. Back up near my daughter.’
‘Well – that’s a little beyond what we normally do. But there’s nothing to stop you or your daughter looking for properties yourself.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. Online. There are loads of good websites.’
‘I haven’t got a computer.’
‘Your daughter, then.’
‘She doesn’t want me near her.’
‘She doesn’t?’
‘No!’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘So what are you saying, then? You’re not going to help me?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘But I can’t go on living here, can I? I can’t cook. I can’t look after myself. I can’t go out.’
‘I thought you said you were going shopping with Nigel?’
‘No,’ she says, taking out a cigarette, her hands trembling. ‘I mean out out.’
jim clayton 