Not you AGAIN................

It had been a long shift. 
On nights, there are no visitors but the same amount of nursing gets done, tablets are administered, people are checked and turned, reports are written, a presence is needed in a room where a tiny woman is making the lonely crossing to the other side. 
On the night when I had been listening to the radio interview, with Siobhan curled in the corner of a chair that resembles a giant pram, and while my sister lying silently on the airbed , contemplated the flickering candle on the sill, we all listened to my husky voice saying words, a resident was hovering in the blue space between here and there.
M and I had many conversations.
Readers may remember she made me the hand knit patchwork quilt that spurred and re-kindled my interest in a hobby I did not know I loved. (It was in this vein that I rocked up to meet friends last week in a jumper I had knit for a "Man" but which I was now sporting. The sleeves touching the ground. )
On one fine day as I handed her a pattern she was workin we talked about the darkness. .At 97 years old, she was still afraid of the dark, and the unknown. It was poignant that day and I swallowed a lump in my throat and took a deep breath to say.
"You must never be afraid of the dark, it is in the silence and the warm darkness that you will be re-born into a life that far surpasses your present one, there is nothing for you to fear, you came here alone and screaming, and you will leave and go home, peaceful. There is much love for you there"
She grabbed my hand in a firm grip and repeated her fear of the unknown  and the fact that she had do this frightening thing alone, singly.
It troubles me that the very old have unresolved issues, and genuine fear about the act of death itself.They have been reared on the mushy pulp of the Gospels, named for Saints, schooled in the Bible, chanting latin at mass, Good Friday a black fast, Lenten a time to deny the self and save, the priests  on high altars with their backs turned, then after Vatican Council 1 & 2 the priests standing facing them and speaking in English. Almost 3 weeks to the day I watched my Aunt take that journey last year. It felt like a crucifixion, as her knees were twisted together under the thin blanket, and she raised herself again and again on her elbows exhorting all of us to "Pray, Pray, PRAY!" As a child she was reared on hell and damnation and the Devil. I believe it coloured her entire life.
How could a system that adapted and cherry picked a" religion" ever hope to control it.
It's a black fast. Em, Now it's not.
The host is consecrated and can only be offered by a parish priest. Em, now it's not - any Eucharistic minister can offer from their hands to yours. 
What about the babies in Limbo? What about all the poor souls in Purgatory? What indeed.
I was so busy in Siobhans room I did not hear the quiet sigh that escaped her lips -in the room down the hall- as M slowly slipped out of her body and hovering gently looking down at her family in the halflight -  ascended  higher and higher with her guardian angel at her side -   into a Universe of pure and unbelievable love and colour,  the angelic whispered words of love and encouragement into her ear as she realised she could Easily do this. Her heart may have been left behind in the stiffening remains but her spirit and soul had been released and were joyfully connecting with all there is , has ever been, or ever shall  be. I will miss her and thank my own God that I had the foresight to hand make her a card with my gratitude for eternity - (which she displayed in pride of place on her sill) and also to place a poem by John O Donohue under the pillow of my Aunt. I like to think she found it there after I left as it would have been crinkling enough under the pillow to make her look.

Beannacht 
"On the day when 
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble.
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window 
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue, 
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays 
In the currach of thought 
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you

May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours
May the clarity of light be yours
May the fluency of the ocean be yours.

May the protection of the Ancestors be yours

And may a slow wind

work these words of love

around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life "       - J. O'Donohue 1997. 

There is a room where the carers and nurses go last thing  at night and last thing  in the morning. The lady there is a night owl and is put to bed and woken after everyone else. Mary Glasses was the nurse on nights and she was in overseeing the patient and chatting to a colleague. They were discussing whatever women discuss while they are working, weather, men, the state of the nation, particle physics. One of them is starting a shift, the other finishing. 

"God and I'll be glad to see my bed this night" says one to the other. The nurse is checking the toileting chart on the back of the bathroom door, a tiny series of boxes with checks or circles.
"I hear you" says she making a note on her pad.
Another voice chimes in with a sentence.
A voice hoarse and husky from silence, a voice unused for an aeon,making perfect sense and in total context, Siobhan has spoken.
Mary Glasses goes white in the face.
"I was that shocked I had to sit down, it was so strange...... I have never heard her speak, never knew what she sounded like. We were both so completely thrown that if I was to be put on a rack I have no idea what she actually said. You have her voice!".
Can you imagine?
I didn't t know whether I needed a shit or a haircut when I heard this. I follow the nurse around the kitchen pumping her.
"In the name of Goddle Mighty can you try to remember, what exactly were you doing or saying...... Put yourself back in the moment", I beg.
"Neither of us know, we were simply flabbergasted, I put it in the report and highlighted it" says she stirring a mug of hot milk.

I feel like weeping and gnashing my teeth and doing handstands all at one and the same time. "I just couldn't get over it and all night I told everyone about it and they were as shocked as I was - and in the morning I came in and said Siobhan, Siobhan, and pulled on her arm in the bed and she opened her eyes and looked at me and said "Not you, again" and smiled. "

Sweet Jesus.
On the night that M was slipping into the darkness, taking that solo journey, that despite the millions you may have you take alone, we were listening to MY voice, prating away on the radio interview about how I cannot remember what my Mothers voice is like.
"Look at you" I say -wiping juice off her chin and from the folds of her blouse - "as soon as I close the door behind me you are in here talking to the nation". 
There is not a flicker. I squeeze her arm gently - "Siobhan, ..... Siobhan".......... then "Ma am, Ma am".
Nada.

I never need to fear that I don't know what her voice is like as it is my own, and I am hers, and you are ours. Did the flickering light of the slowly fading christmas tree that is her brain boost and surge for a heartstopping moment, or did this woman try and get a message to the prodigal daughter she called a "divilskin" and a "scourge" by saying ............"Not YOU again" and smiling her beautiful smile.