The Duncliffe Bluebells

Finally, I have started that thing for which I gave up my computing work; taking my mother out to see the things she wants to see for the last time.



Yesterday it was the Bluebells at Duncliffe woods.



We none of us know exactly when we are to die, but she has been put on standby. "Be packed and ready to go."



Her condition is inoperable, and she has informed us all that in the event of a further stroke there are to be no more resuscitation attempts.



She knows now that everything she sees or smells or touches could be for the last time.



Normally these woods are accessible only by footpath, but at rare occasions the Woodland Trust opens up their logging tracks to allow cars to visit. The car park I first arrived at was an uninspiring rectangle of loose chippings amongst straggly trees.



I spoke to the woman who was marshalling, and backed the car down a nearby track until we were surrounded by bluebells.



I left her with little petal, sitting amongst the quiet of the trees and went walking with the camera. I am now to be her eyes.



She in turn will put names to some of the pictures I shall put on a CD for her to view on her new laptop.

Could you walk through through these mossy tracks and look around you with composure if you knew that you would never see them again?



I found afterwards I had lost the knack of holding the precise focus needed for delicate shots, the blurriness you will detect is a tremor in my arms and shoulders.



I had heard there was an orchid that grew locally, and I think I found it, but I will need her confirmation. My initial description of what I had photographed was met by little petal stating firmly that 'Bluebells can be purple, too'.



I believe that it reassures her to see this springtime episode, knowing that it will keep on happening after she has gone.



Thinking about it is becoming very painful indeed to me. The loss of my father all those years ago was bearable because it was so quick; a telegram, then eight agonised days at his bedside convinced that he would rise again, and the final realisation that there were things in life that were greater than my beliefs about the power of the mind and the strength of the will.



She insisted that she took us to lunch, and so we drove to an old inn called the Coppleridge Hotel, with a view from the dining room window of Duncliffe hidden in the haze that characterises the Blackmore Vale. She and little petal were talking about the hospital visits. I have not accompanied her on any of them. They both decided to have starters only, in order to have a sweet; so I decided to have a main course, followed by a starter. A herring, pan-fried in oatmeal, and while they had their sticky sweets I had five asparagus spears in melted butter. I have developed a love of simplicity, eating one thing at a time to savour it to the utmost.



She has decided not to go back to the large hospital so many miles away. Although they are the centre of excellence for her sickness they have not lived up to this claim. They lost her folder of notes as it was transferred from one department to another. Imagine nature losing some of the flowers one year as winter moves into spring, "I'm sorry, but it is a very large planet and these things sometimes happen".



(I've removed the section here about arthritis because of something I since learned.)



She has resolved to stay with the smaller hospital in Yeovil, because it is nearer, and friendlier. She and little petal had felt obliged to try and cheer up not just the patients at Taunton Hospital, but the staff as well, they all looked so sad and serious.



I finished my meal and had a coffee, managing to convince her that if we got a folding wheelchair to keep in the car we could venture further afield on our trips. Although I could go out on my own with camera and video, and return like some small-scale Marco Polo with tales of wonders for her to view, I feel that she needs to make the effort to go out one last time to places, to see the world and reassure herself that it will always be there.



I don't know how I'm going to conduct myself these next few months. I want her to have as long as she possibly can, but I am finding it agonising on the periphery. I can do nothing to help her condition, and neither, it seems, can the health service. Supposing it takes a cynically appropriate nine months? Can I bear it?



This is a rehearsal, I suppose, and I must play my part.



There is no understudy for my role.



Or for hers, either.