How Captain Mainwaring lightened my mother’s dying days

On Saturday evening I showered, shaved and, prompted by a strange impulse, put on my going-out clothes. Then I cycled round to the nursing home.

The door of room 33 was ajar and she was fast asleep, mouth open, brow furrowed, as if she were trying to make sense of it all. The electric motor-powered mattress was raised and she was sitting up rather than lying, her head lolling towards the darkening window. On the bed table was a box of man-size tissues, a TV remote, a little pink sponge on a stick for sucking liquid out of, and a baby’s plastic drinking beaker in which her tea had gone cold. Poor Mum! Her tide has receded as far out as it does on the Thames estuary at Southend and her skeleton is showing. Tonight I noticed the ruler-straight radius bone in her forearm for the first time.

Two months ago, when she was carried up to this top-floor room overlooking the churchyard with a view of the bay beyond, they didn’t think she’d last the week. Since then she’s lain up here on the air mattress while seagulls fly past the window day and night — though sadly the window is too high for her to see out. A fortnight ago the GP thought it would be a matter of days. Last week a community nurse gave her another week, two at the outside. Guessing how long she has left to live seems to me a frivolous calculation, like paying 50p to guess the weight of the cake at a village fête. But they cannot seem to help themselves.

I like to go and see her at the end of the day. Since the morphine syringe driver was installed she’s been asleep more than awake and my habit has been to draw a footstool close to the bed and perch on it and lay my hand on hers and watch her sleeping, hollowed-out face while the room darkens around us.