It's the 6th anniversary of her death today, and I'm remembering how I was sitting on my Discovery Bay sofa working my way through the whole series of Friends on my laptop when the email came in from the Doctor at the Dignity Lifestyle Resort to call him.
This was his second email that day. The first was to tell me that she'd recovered well from her second broken hip and, having been immobilised - like a car?- for six weeks, they were going to try and sit her up in the next few days. She would have had little understanding of this as her dementia was pretty advanced by then.
Her organs had failed and I made the decision not to resuscitate her if she became unconscious. I didn't want my mum to be rushed to hospital and be forced with violence to wake on an unfamiliar bed in a brightly-lit room surrounded by unfamiliar hospital staff. I didn't want her to be frightened as they saved her life, for what? To go back to facing an incomprehensible twilight for how long? Better that she slipped away surrounded by people she knew and trusted, if indeed she was capable of trust. Or knowing people.
I was told later that this was a remarkable decision: that families mainly ask staff to try hard to re-alive people and take out their anger on them when they don't succeed.
At that point my passport was awkwardly in Liverpool Passport Office being renewed two years early in order to ensure a new red one before the deadline. I'm so grateful to the London FCO duty staff who helped me understand the Emergency Travel Documentation process. I flew to India two days later. This in itself was risky: people we knew had been stopped trying to exit the country and only allowed to leave after succumbing to dodginess.
My mother had been kept on ice in a temporary morgue until I arrived. It's remarkable that there was one around. Bodies in India are traditionally cremated on the same day. As her body was taken out and prepared for the tiny rustic funeral rites, I watched a trickle of water from the morgue and wondered if any of my mum's DNA was escaping.
It was small, but moving. Just a couple of us there. I did as I was told without understanding why. I don't think you're supposed to question anything.
Funny, though. My mum was "difficult" in her later years, worn down with frustration and disappointment, perhaps. Bullied by colleagues. Unable to articulate how much she missed my dad.
We didn't really get on. I went through the motions. It took me a long time to work through my rage that she did not, could not, understand. I'm ashamed of how I was.
Even before the dementia, she seemed not to comprehend anyone else's feelings beyond her own focus. Since her death, though, in odd ways I find myself remembering her foibles, repeating her idiosynctratic, creative use of language. Employing Marathi words where English ones don't exist. I'm thinking of you, ge. Hope the life you came back to is full of fun and devoid of hardship.
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