Legacy (25 page)

Chapter Sixty Seven

On being given the home after years in the no-man's land Mum changed. Unlike in fairy tales where happy endings are guaranteed in real life this was not the case. If only it was. If I thought Mum was bad before, her behaviour in this home showed me what deteriorating really meant. She became angry and confused. Everything angered her, she would sit scowling at the TV, swearing at whoever's poor face happened to grace the screen.

Her tablets once again were increased, but this time even they didn't help. Every time I would wander up the stairs I would find her talking. What was more alarmingly was the fact that she often invited me in to join her and her acquaintance. Or worse, she would be talking to me and I hadn't even opened my mouth yet; there she would lie responding to my every non-existent comment.

Often she would talk as if she lived in the 1970's, as if she were my age and talk about her three little girls. Once she ran downstairs and asked me why the police were in the living room, who had died?

I would laugh and ask her what she was talking about, sometimes she would even laugh back, quickly realising her error, reacting to the concern in my eyes. One day I asked her to write it down and she did she wrote me two full pages of memories that I would later use to cobble together the story of her life. The strange behaviour continued and intensified.

Mum would talk to a little grey haired woman who appeared at the end of her bed. She loved her visits and the pair of them talked for hours. When I came in, the grey haired woman disappeared because she was ‘shy'. Mum even watched TV in her room and would tell me all about the great film she had seen. She didn't have a TV in her room.

Then the suicide attempts began, I had started another job and wasn't at home with her as often as I should have been. Every job I started, I had to give up; Mum's condition whatever it was, demanded that she had someone with her constantly. It was difficult as I needed to work to support us but I couldn't work if I wanted to support her.

In one suicide attempt Mum had slashed her wrists. This was followed by a succession of overdoses and yet more strange behaviour. Most worryingly of all were the falls. I couldn't leave her unattended; she was so unsteady on her feet. She would get up from her chair and fall, overnight she would try to go down the stairs and fall, or she would simply pass out. I was at my wits end and had no one to turn to.

In the end it was on yet another trip to A&E, where she had worked many years before, that seen the doctors eventually recognise that something was amiss. They kept her in overnight, concerned about her falls but they quickly released her. I began to worry so much so that I began to wonder if I too would become ill. I would take strange headaches and wake to find that hours had passed that I wasn't aware off. I wondered what would become of us both. I wasn't a born prayer but I prayed that day that God would bring my Mum back, but she got progressively worse.

Chapter Sixty Eight

One evening I had given Mum her tea and got her to bed, I was watching TV with my dogs when the smoke alarm erupted. The dogs went mad at the high pitched sound and I ran upstairs to investigate. Outside Mum's room a fire raged, it climbed up her door eating at the wood. I ran for a towel from the bathroom and frantically swotted it. When I checked if she was ok, I found her sitting in her bed waiting for the flames to take her.

She knew me that night and she cried sore, she wanted it to end; she had had enough of struggling, of being alone, of the poverty and she wanted Max. I didn't know what to do; at my wits end I called the doctor and went with Mum to the hospital.

That night Mum was taken to a secure mental health unit. Here she could no longer hurt herself or inadvertently hurt others. My mother had been driven insane and I couldn't help her.

The nurses interviewed me for a brief history and one question they asked saddened me,

“She claims to be a nurse where does that come from?”

I nodded sadly, “she is, or was” I said. My mother had been a nurse and whatever else they choose to believe about this new patient that fact remained. Mum had nursed until she could nurse no more; she had worked long and hard on the wards, so hard that just thinking of nursing sickened her. It was a career she had once loved, but fates intervention had made her a prisoner of the wards and turned this love into hate. Nevertheless her work had kept us sustained through childhood and beyond, it had kept a roof over our heads. It was one title that I would not let her lose.

Mum had always been a good storyteller; I had grown up fed on tales of her past, from voodoo curses delivered by a green woman all the way from Nigeria, to visitations from mysterious Christ like priests. Mum had loved nothing more than a good yarn and in me she found a captive audience. Now as she sat in this bleak hospital I wondered if I would ever hear her tales again.

I left the hospital that night with an image of my Mum that would stay with me forever. A once strong and courageous woman who had stood up against racism and the IRA had been broken. She had admitted defeat. She had fought her hardest against poverty, she had loved us and she had loved Max. As she sat on her bed in a mental health ward; all that remained was a frail, scared, shrunken woman. Her empty eyes and twisting hands had become despair itself.

On my way out of the ward, the nurse gave me a bag of Mum's effects. So many everyday things were viewed as hazardous and removed from the patients. Even her nightgown strap was viewed as a danger. That night I would put them away for her, she would have them for when she came home.

As I drove home I passed a famous cemetery in Belfast. I had visited there once and curiosity drove me to the republican section. This section was the hero's part of the cemetery, a section of the cemetery devoted to Ireland's greatest fighters, to the heroes of the republican struggle. It has its own dedicated marble pathway and each grave in the section is elaborately finished. All the graves lay in the shadow of a patriotic speech inscribed on the wall. People come from far and wide to pay their respects and it remains on the tourist trail to this very day. In this section of the graveyard lies the man who killed my Dad, forever glorified for his brave actions furthered Ireland's cause.

As I passed, I wondered who was paying their respects to these hero's right now and in the back of my mind I was reminded of another grave one hundred miles away. A grave which marks the life of an innocent man; a family man, guilty of nothing but boarding a train. This grave is unmarked and unattended, as I have been told that this grave lies empty, that nothing of this man was left. All that remains of him lives on in his family, his granddaughter, his daughters and his wife. A wife who incidentally now sits in a little mental health unit in Belfast. That night was one of the saddest of my life I felt so alone. I placed my feelings about the two very different graves and Mum's illness on a little shelf I had created in my mind.

Epilogue

I deliberately finished our story in 2010 as this was when Mum was hospitalised. 2010 was when I finally broke, I couldn't cope with the situation any longer.

I am often asked how I felt during the times I describe? I honestly don't know. What I do know is that Mum's description of a mental shelf applied to me too. In writing Legacy my shelf was shaken, it shook so much but it didn't collapse. When times are hard the oldest human instinct that of fight or flight takes over. My life has been a case of both but I am proud to say that most of it involved fighting and not fleeing.

I will not deny that I had frightening times where my self-worth was non-existent. Did I contemplate ending it all? Yes. I contemplated vanishing, I contemplated a quick escape, letting the fear which blighted my entire being swallow me up. I suppose this is why I feel such empathy with Mum. For me contemplation was as far as it went, the only way to tackle fear is to face fear and in writing Legacy I did that.

Throughout everything I believed that I could make the best out of a bad situation as we had always endeavoured to do. I could either be depressed or I could do something constructive. I chose the latter and put pen to paper.

Now in 2014 Mum is doing better, she is still being treated by drugs but at last it has been discovered that there is a definite link between victims of the troubles and post- traumatic stress disorder. Many of those who worked in the emergency services during those years were severely affected.

Mum's nursing combined with Dad's death dealt her a double blow. Now Mum has good days and I think for the most part they outweigh the bad. Throughout it all Mum had her friend Misery, who I now recognise as the main face of the condition. Alarmingly in 2011 a university of Ulster psychologists report stated that Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) effects more people in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the world. This is not a surprise, the people of Northern Ireland have suffered, and many of them like my family were caught up in events they had no
involvement in
.
It is a sad reality of our times.

Varying degrees of PTSD exist from the minor right through to the decapitating. In severe cases it manifests itself by plaguing the victim with flashbacks that force them to mentally relive the traumatic event or events over and over. The victim is assailed by feelings of isolation and anxiety. The symptoms are matched with physical symptoms such as dizziness, stomach aches and an inability to sleep. Often those effected abuse drugs as these temporarily alleviate the nightmares.

I would guess that many people suffer silently without even realising themselves that they are affected. In a sense Mum was fortunate to get a diagnosis because with that came more effective treatment. Almost five years since her stay in the psychiatric unit, Mum has improved. Granted it took a lot of lobbying and condemnation of our victim services, something I should never have had to do.

Yes we still have our bad days but they are becoming lesser. Mum will never be fully recovered and she has the wherewithal to accept that, but now that she is receiving the appropriate treatment I feel I have her back, albeit intermittently.

What continues to haunt me is the fact that even now there still isn't an official channel or in fact any public body in Northern Ireland that I can turn to for help or perhaps more accurately that can help. I wonder how many more families are like mine. How many more have nowhere to turn to.

Our victims are still suffering in various ways, our story is just one example, and unfortunately the struggle of this unfortunate group of people is Northern Irelands Legacy.

Today Northern Ireland is a partially changed place, regretfully we still see the occasional terrorist killing and more grieving families, but not on the scale of many years ago. Yet Northern Ireland's future is a very delicate balance, now and again tensions simmering beneath the surface boil up and threaten to overflow. Luckily enough they are quickly cooled, before any additional bloodshed occurs. This little country although beautiful has an ugly side, a side that always runs parallel with progression.

As for Northern Ireland's victims I still see no evidence of any tangible help. No-one is out there to treat post-traumatic stress, no-one is there to prevent families falling into the abyss that mine fell into. Above all no one is there to help the children of the struggle. Certainly some groups do exist, the legacy of the troubles meant that a myriad of victims groups were set up. Each group, third sector or government has paid members of staff; each being paid and benefiting from others misfortune, hurt and loss. The millions of pounds set up for victims doesn't reach them all, instead it reaches only the very few, the rest is pumped into the pockets of too many people. To some extent Northern Ireland has benefited from its victims but who are the real winners? Those who need it? Or those who prey on innocents? To me countless victims are being exploited for the gain of a few.

Money allocated to victims would be better spent on training doctors, medical staff, government institutions and private institutions. These people would have been instrumental in preventing my Mum's suffering and countless others. Northern Ireland should ensure its institutions recognise its victims and provide them with some sort of dispensation for what they have suffered at the hands of their country, the place they call home. No-one should have suffered like my Mum and mechanisms should be put in place to ensure such suffering like the troubles is a thing of the past.

The new Northern Ireland is becoming renowned for new hatreds. As the country becomes more cosmopolitan it seems that instead of one hatred being replaced by another we have an additional hatred. Many of those who are prone to unrest, who thrive on disharmony have simply added a new people to their hate list, people of colour or people from an ethnic minority background. For my ‘unique' family and I it is a dual attack. Victims of colour in Northern Ireland are few and far between. The implication for us is that we have seen hatred that no one else should see, hatred based on race and hatred based on a historic struggle.

I sincerely hope that Northern Ireland can change, that it can become somewhere that recognises all its citizens regardless of their colour, culture or creed. Sometimes I hate my home, but for the most part I love it. It is a country filled with good people and potential. I hope with all my heart that good will out.

If we could move forward as a country that in itself will be a tribute to all those who suffered. It would prove that we have learned from the lessons of our past and most of all it would mean the past will never be repeated.

I will never see my Dad, I will never meet him yet paradoxically I will always miss him. I will always feel incomplete. Yet when all is said and done I can live with the sadness, I am strong. I have been through a lot and I have survived. In a sense I am a ‘victim' but most of all I am survivor. As a survivor I have many hopes for my home, yet the one hope I cling to is that we can have a real peace.

Mum still plays a song from her youth and often I listen to it and think how true it's lyrics are and I feel they sum up my Mum's life and how some things can never be changed. We can only move forward.