Please Let It Stop (17 page)

Vanessa and I decided to take it in turns to go to the house and be with her. We would arrive around nine in the morning, just after John had left for golf, and stay until late afternoon, just before he returned. She needed constant care but John was unhelpful and uncooperative. He resisted having a carer in the house. He was even reluctant to let us put a gate at the top of the stairs to stop her falling. In fact, it was always a battle every time we suggested something that might make her life more comfortable. He would frequently ring Vanessa, ranting and shouting that she was our mother and we weren’t doing enough, to which Vanessa replied, ‘Yes, she is, but she’s also your wife and you’re doing nothing.’ John’s attitude was incredible, considering we had our work commitments and he had recently taken early retirement. He moaned because she was incontinent. He would ring us and say, ‘She’s starting to smell.’ Vanessa and I were beside ourselves trying to work out what to do. We would try to bathe our mum but it was very hard since as she was unable to help herself and she was heavy, like a dead weight. We both had to get in the bath to lift her. John just didn’t seem to care about her at all. While he was in the house there were times she would get confused, and managed to wander off down the road on her own, wearing just her nightie, and knock on people’s doors. She had no idea
where she was and she would say things like, ‘Help, I’m being attacked by strange men.’ It was terrible hearing all this. One day when Vanessa was at the house she found a bottle of chloroform in the pantry! Not surprisingly, she was worried and rang me immediately. We were both beside ourselves with worry about why this was there, so I rang Mum’s sister, Auntie Heather. She told me that when John caught mice he would take them alive from the mousetrap and then snuff them out with chloroform. There was no end to his cruelty. He had to inflict it everywhere.

Despite our persistence, the doctors would not give Vanessa and me the time of day. They only wanted to talk to John, who clearly did not give a damn about Mum. I remember ringing the doctor, feeling anxious and wanting to talk to him. The nurse said he was too busy. ‘Can you tell me when he’s not busy? I want to talk about Beryl Gold.’ I persisted but they didn’t want to know. The nurse refused to listen to anything Vanessa and I said about Mum’s lack of care at home and actually lectured me, saying, ‘You should all pull together in times like this.’ I recall the nurse asking me one day, ‘Are you talking about your stepfather, John?’ I said, no, I was talking about my mum’s husband. She kept asking if he was my stepfather. That was how she saw the relationship, but he was not and never will be related to me. I cannot use that word to describe him and I never will.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We were only a few months into 2003 and already it was shaping up to be the year from hell. This is the part that they don’t prepare you for when they tell you about IVF – the fallout. The emotional roller coaster of IVF treatment can be a traumatic experience for any couple. With Dan, the IVF appeared to have had a devastating effect on him, even though we’d only been through one attempt. I felt he was becoming detached from me, which also meant that he was unable to see the extent of my feelings. With my mother’s illness on top of the IVF result, my anxiety was now constant and it was starting to affect my ability to function. At times the sheer effort of getting up each morning was too much. I could not even be bothered feeding the cats. Getting dressed and brushing my hair seemed to require all the energy I had for the day. I didn’t know what was wrong with me but I realised that I had to protect my business, so it was then that I took the step of promoting Julie Harris to
Managing Director. Julie had been with me for nineteen years and she is absolutely brilliant. Naturally, she grasped the opportunity with both hands.

In the meantime I had been looking for ways to allay my anxiety and had spent some time doing yoga to calm me down, but the truth was that I was too far gone for that. I didn’t realise it then but I’d already crossed over into a place from where, often, the only way is down. I suppose my natural philosophy in life is to just get on with things no matter what, but the downside is that you ignore what your body is telling you. I saw my doctor and told her that the anxiety and panic had become overwhelming and all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn’t tell her the full story about John and my abuse so I don’t think she really understood what was happening. After a couple of visits she recommended I go and see a woman called Helen, who was a therapist.

After an initial discussion, Helen felt that I was struggling to express anger at the time; both at Dan and also at my abuser, whom I managed to tell her a little about. She decided the best thing was to regress me and, being totally desperate for anything that might help, I agreed. But it was definitely the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. Suddenly it was like being back in the house with John all over again. She took me back to one of the nights my mum went to my grandmother’s and my abuser climbed into bed with me. I have since described it to friends as like watching a horror film with me
in it. While I was lying there, Helen kept asking me, ‘How does that feel?’ She actually made me feel much worse. I came out and got into the car but I could not drive for quite a while. I felt shell-shocked. I had palpitations and chronic pins and needles all over my body: I was in a state of panic. It was a living hell and on reflection I imagine an experience like this could be quite dangerous to some people.

In April 2003 Dan and I had our second IVF attempt, which also failed. The distance that was coming between us was now even more pronounced and Dan seemed to be retreating into himself. While I knew Dan adored me, he was so focused on having a baby he couldn’t see anything else in his life – despite the fact he had everything. His friends told him how lucky he was to have his job, his lifestyle and me, but that didn’t seem to be enough for him any more. I could only conclude that his love for me was conditional: if there was not going to be a baby, there would be no us. From the moment he got the news that we needed to have IVF, he wasn’t the same person. We still did things together and we were still having sex but we were no longer close like we’d been at the beginning. It was so sad as we were drifting apart. It made me feel like it was my fault and my emotions were running wild, all over the place.

Looking back at the emails we sent to each other during the day at work, you can see just how much it dominated our lives – the mere fact that we were sending emails about
it was bad enough. In one of them I wrote to him, ‘Knowing how much you want a family, I am also a realist. I feel that our relationship will go AWOL if things don’t happen.’ That is exactly what was starting to happen.

On reflection, I think Dan was emotionally immature. His unrealistic expectations of life demonstrated that to me. I used to say to him, ‘I wish I could sprinkle some positive fairy dust in your tea.’ He would reply that he wished I could, too, yet despite wanting to be positive (or saying he did) he did nothing to help himself. Try as I might I could not turn his negativity into optimism. He had lost his perspective on life. He wanted everything, so he decided he had nothing. It’s a destructive path that we can sometimes take, turning our backs on what we already have because we are so focused on what we don’t have. I take the attitude that
now
is what matters and I try to make the most of every day. That doesn’t just mean work, it means enjoying the company of friends and family and other things that are really important in our lives. You really have to immerse yourself in what you are doing, whether it’s trying to finish a task, playing with children or having a drink with a friend. There is absolutely no point thinking about what has gone before – if I had spent time dwelling on events in my past I would not be where I am today. I believe my ability to put things behind me and to extract the most from each day has helped me become successful. I once read a saying – ‘The past is history, the future is a mystery and the present is a
gift’ – and, to an extent, I think that is true. You can only direct life so much. Pinning your hopes on the future to the exclusion of all things, as Dan did, is not healthy. If you are waiting for happiness to find you, you might be waiting a very long time.

Sometimes the future comes too early, as it did when Mum’s illness began to savage her body. In June 2003 she died. We had known it was going to happen soon: her cancer was too far gone and had ravaged her in a matter of months, but that still didn’t make it easy to accept. It had been a difficult few months, and Vanessa and I were relying heavily on one another. I am sad to say that Dan was not much help. His obsession with having a baby and with his own happiness meant that when I needed him most, I was not getting any support. One evening I was feeling very low and asked him if he could come straight home after work. He replied that he couldn’t since he had to be at a retirement party. Nothing I said would change his mind.

Three weeks before our mother died, Vanessa and I took the difficult decision to put her in a home. She was fragile, both physically and mentally, and John wasn’t looking after her. In fact, as time went on, he showed even less compassion. We knew Mum did not have long to live and although we were aware that moving someone to a home can make them deteriorate more quickly because of the physical and emotional upheaval of leaving their own environment, we felt that she was in much more danger from John’s
indifference. We managed to find a nursing home close to where both Vanessa and I lived. It seemed good, there were nurses there and we knew she would be cared for. John was very relieved. He kept saying things like, ‘I can’t sit here and watch her die,’ as if he cared, but we knew it was all about him, not her. Still trying to protect me from having too much to do with John, Vanessa went to the house to help put Mum into the vehicle they had sent for her. I waited down the road and then got in with her. I told her gently that she was just going into hospital for a few tests. We didn’t want to frighten her by saying she was going into a home. Her dementia was very advanced by this stage and we were worried that anything could have confused or frightened her even more.

Vanessa and I took it in turns to be at the home with her. We were there pretty much all of the time, except when we went home to sleep. One night in June 2003 they called us to say the time was near. We quickly got dressed and raced to the home to be with her. We sat with her and held her hand. She had lived such a lonely life and there was no way we were going to let her die alone. John did not visit her once from the time she went into the home. In fact, nobody visited her except Vanessa and I and my father, who spent time with her the day before she died. When we arrived there that night she had deteriorated very rapidly. It could have been the dementia talking but she kept asking for my dad. This was the first time I’d experienced death. Nothing
prepares you for it, least of all anything you see on television or in the cinema. There they present a scenario where, no matter what illness the person seems to have, they go peacefully and quietly. It all looks very painless. People with terrible illnesses do not die peacefully. They struggle and they gasp for every breath. To watch my mum going through it was harrowing and it is something I will never forget. At one point I tried to cover Vanessa’s eyes but she wouldn’t let me. Mum died with us both by her side, holding her hand. We sat there in silence at the realisation it was over and that she was gone. For all that had happened in the past she passed away knowing that we loved her. As soon as Dad heard he came up to the home to support us and then sat with Mum on his own for over an hour. We then we had to ring people and tell them. I sometimes wonder what the point was of calling anyone since she did not have any friends visit in her dying days. As far as I’m aware, even Vera, who had been at her wedding, did not come. Without wanting to apportion blame, I don’t think Mum was given the correct palliative care. She suffered a lot of pain and had no access to a Macmillan nurse, which she should have had. While the home was good and they had nurses to administer her morphine, there was not enough support in the lead up to her transfer there and it was too late to change things once she’d moved there. We did actually go looking for a hospice at that time but the ones that were close by were all full. I think
she slipped through the net, partly because of the way her GP would not speak to Vanessa and me, insisting on speaking to John, who was largely indifferent.

There is no doubt that my mother suffered far more than she needed to – and she is just one of thousands of people who are treated in the same way. I find it extraordinary that we let people go through pain to the very end of their lives, deluding ourselves that they are dying a ‘natural’ death. There is nothing natural about suffering when you are patently going to die in a few hours or a few days. I would not have said this before having this experience, but now I think sometimes the way we treat the dying is totally inhumane. Sure, there are ethics involved but I have a sneaking suspicion that, like many things in this world, it’s not just about that but also about people being too frightened of being sued. I don’t have the answers but I do know we all need a better choice than the one we have. On the day Mum died I called Dr Clark, who was responsible for her nursing home in Caterham, and said, ‘There must be something you can give her to speed this up.’ She was literally crying out.

His words were, ‘You wouldn’t treat a dog like this, would you?’ Until you are right next to them, you don’t know how it feels to see someone suffer, to watch them go to the very end attached to a morphine pump – which I desperately wished would speed up. I couldn’t bear watching her suffer and, although it may sound shocking to some people, if the
doctor had said, ‘Here you are, this will help her. I won’t do it but you can,’ then I would have done it.

Mum’s funeral was held at St Mark’s Church in Biggin Hill. I was so depressed about everything by then, I didn’t shed tears. Mum was dead, I had problems with Dan and I was worn out from depression, although nobody at the time had told me it was that. I just felt so empty and all I could do was hang on, dealing with each minute as it came. Not least listening to the vicar reading the sermon with material John had provided – saying things like, ‘She had friends that really cared about her.’ Well, she didn’t have many friends because he didn’t like it unless they were also friends of his, but where were they when she needed them most? He put on such a show at the funeral, walking behind the hearse and pretending to be the loving, bereaved widower.