All the Time We Thought We Had

by Gordon Darroch

  The doorbell rang. An ambulance man of supernatural size filled the gloomy doorway. I led him through, followed by a smaller colleague, and they pulled up chairs at the dining-room table. In their unhurried Dutch manner, they asked Magteld to talk them through the events that had brought them to our door. The larger man’s hands were like scoops. They listened both to her words and to the rasping grind of her lungs.

  ‘You’re all blocked up,’ said the bigger man.

  Magteld nodded. She no longer resisted. If anything, she looked relieved that the decision had been taken for her.

  His hulking hands grabbed the handles of her wheelchair, and the pair of them pushed her out into the street, lifting her into the back of the ambulance as if she weighed no more than a blanket, and shut the doors.

  ‘Are you coming with us?’ said the smaller man.

  I had barely slept, and I wanted to keep the children’s routines as unblemished as possible. I would need to serve breakfast in a few hours. I said no. The ambulance man said nothing, but he held my gaze a few seconds longer than was comfortable.

  The ambulance sped off down the road, its blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. I felt a sensation in my stomach as if I’d swallowed a hot chunk of lava.

  I’ve no idea how I slept, but when the alarm went off two hours later I got up, made the children’s breakfast and phoned the hospital. The doctor on duty told me Magteld had been given oxygen and antibiotics and was stable, but urged me to join her as soon as possible.

  ‘What about her radiotherapy appointment?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s in no condition to have that right now,’ said the doctor. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Think about bringing them with you. I can’t guarantee she’ll survive this.’

  I sent distress flares by text message to her parents and sisters. In a few minutes I would call Euan and Adam downstairs and explain to them, as they ate their sandwiches, why their mother was not there. I still wanted to send Adam to school, to preserve the sense of normality. If things took a turn for the worse he was only ten minutes away. Euan would have to come with me, since he had nowhere else to be.

  Reality was breaking up. How could Magteld, who had been sitting in our garden toasting Euan’s birthday less than forty-eight hours ago, now be lying in a hospital bed, rigged up to an oxygen mask and in mortal danger?

  Because she had been in hospital in Glasgow recently she was deemed to pose a high risk of spreading foreign infections. We took the lift to the fifteenth floor and found her in an isolation room, separated from the corridor by a plastic curtain and covered in signs instructing all visitors to disinfect their hands. She was effectively quarantined.

  She lay propped up by two pillows with a plastic mask on her face, her eyes bright, her breathing heavy and urgent. She gave me a smile and a little wave. The doctor came in a few minutes later. Magteld’s eyes moistened as she looked at me and Euan while the doctor explained her situation. Her lungs were full of fluid, and the only way to clear them was to purge her system with oxygen. In her weakened, sleep-deprived state it was a far from risk-free exercise, but it was the only option. I understood it all with sudden, violent clarity.

  And yet even now Magteld seemed fiercely, defiantly alive. I clutched her hand. After her secondary diagnosis in January I had promised to write her a poem, but I’d completely failed to even start on it. ‘Don’t go away,’ I said. ‘I’m going to write it for you.’ She jerked her head up and down and smiled again.

  A nurse came in and asked her how she was feeling. ‘Better,’ rasped Magteld. ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ said the nurse. ‘Save your energy.’ She started explaining how she could offer Magteld an energising reiki massage, but Magteld cut her short with a vigorous shake of the head.

  Dr Houtsma arrived a short time later. He was as frank and compassionate as ever, but his jaw was clenched. ‘We need to keep you on this machine for about eight hours,’ he said. ‘It’ll feel like running a marathon. It’ll be hard work, but if the antibiotics don’t clear your lungs by teatime, we’ve got real problems.’ He had the air of a conductor exhorting his orchestra to pour their souls into the finale. As the nurse gave Magteld her first injection, Dr Houtsma proposed to reconvene at the end of the day.

  Sanneke was already at the hospital when I arrived from Adam’s school. The rest of the family appeared during the morning. The room was unbearable, with its smell of plastic and its chirping monitors. Magteld didn’t care for having her family crowding round her bed, especially when the doctors were with her. This was not how she had scripted her last days. We worked in rotation, looking in every now and then to utter a few encouraging words, as if she were taking part in a charity challenge. The rest of the time we sat in the waiting area exchanging light gossip.

  Harsh pure sunlight streamed in through the high windows. Euan kneeled on the cushioned bench, not saying a word, gazing down at the tiny people creeping along the pathways. I wondered how long he would last before somebody had to take him home.

  As lunchtime loomed I buried myself in organising the rest of the day. I found a leaflet about overnight accommodation for relatives. Someone would need to take the boys home and put them to bed while I stayed in the hospital, since there was no question of Magteld coming home that night.

  The doctor visited again, calmer now, since Magteld seemed alert and bright. She was breathing more freely, though she felt tired. It was just a matter of battling through and taking her rest in the evening. She nodded. Speech was beyond her. The doctor proposed to come back at five o’clock and review the situation. I took it as a positive sign that the medics were happy to let the treatment run its course.

  I fetched Adam for his lunch break. There was just time to bring him upstairs. He took in the strange scene with the oxygen mask and the plastic tubes and wires connecting his mother to various computers. After a few minutes of watching silently, he went over to the window and peered out. Then I took him downstairs for lunch in the hospital canteen. Magteld couldn’t kiss him or do any more than wave. I promised him we’d return after afternoon school.

  In the canteen I kept the focus on immediate concerns: what to eat, where to sit, when he needed to go back to school. Talking in this mechanical way insulated me from thinking about what was going on upstairs, in the room where Magteld lay, beyond the salvation of love.

  By the time I got back from the school, Marlies had arrived, completing the family. She was in the room with Magteld. Euan was starting to behave like a wasp in a jar; I asked Luc to take him home for a break. ‘He can come back this evening,’ I said to Sanneke, who raised an eyebrow and replied, ‘This evening?’ Then Marlies emerged from the room in a slow dash, her eyes filled with tears and talking about ‘the hazy look in her eyes’. And I understood that the universe had tilted.

  In the weeks that followed I often pondered when Magteld knew that the die was cast, the ball bearing in the roulette wheel had landed on zero, that she would not be coming home, at least not in this form, that last night’s steamed pears had been her last meal, that she would not see the sun set again or sit with me in the living room, our hands clasped together, feeding on pear ice-creams and the life-and-death drama of Breaking Bad. That this hospital bed, in this awful sterile room with its disinfectant signs, was where her journey would end.

  I went in and registered the watery gaze in her half-closed eyes. She turned her head and beckoned me with a light grimace. I clutched her hand. ‘I don’t want anyone here right now,’ she whispered. ‘I just want to rest.’ I nodded and went back out into the corridor. I filled the time trying to sketch out her poem, which I had decided would have some connection with flowers, since that had once been her livelihood. I phoned my parents, and Stephanie, who had been due to start looking after the boys the next day.

  I went back through the curtain. Magteld’s eyes had a different aspect now, a wretched stare of disbelief. She lacked the
strength to sweat or shiver. I grabbed her hand and said, ‘Shall I get the boys?’ She nodded wearily, her eyes soaked with tears. Now she knew, now she truly despaired. I rushed back outside. Diny phoned Luc, who had just arrived at our house with Euan, and instructed him to come straight back out again. How would an autistic eleven-year-old deal with this catastrophic breakdown in the world order? Adam had disengaged from the circle and was staring out of the window. At first I wanted to wait until Euan returned, so the boys could be together in the now imminent final scene. But after around ten minutes I changed my mind and took him through the curtain.

  Magteld was lying back, her skin pallid, her eyes diminished to grey slits. Her mouth hung open, her upper teeth jutting out like a shipwreck, as she hauled in the breaths. What must she have been thinking in the time since I last saw her? Gordon, where the hell are you? I want my boys here now. I grabbed her limp hand and spoke: ‘Euan is coming, Euan is coming.’ Not a flicker of recognition. The reiki nurse appeared and picked up one of the hand-held monitors wired to Magteld’s body. The number on the screen was ticking slowly downwards. Whatever it was measuring, the message was unmistakable.

  Adam came over to the bed and stood sullenly over Magteld. He couldn’t make her eyes open or her fingers twitch either.

  ‘Your mum’s dying,’ I told him.

  ‘I know,’ he said, and retreated to the window.

  Out in the streets his brother and his grandfather were weaving through traffic, racing against death. Luc and Euan still had to make it through the hospital to the lifts at the back, ride up to the fifteenth floor and along the corridor. Dr Houtsma rushed in, his shroud of affability now cast aside. ‘If there’s anything you still need to do, do it now,’ he said. I told him we were waiting for our son to come, and he pumped a shot of adrenaline into her arm. A few days ago we were hoping he could buy us another six months; now our best outlook was half an hour.

  Magteld was forcing the breaths out now. I squeezed her still-soft hand tighter and began chanting: ‘We love you, we will always love you, hold on, Euan is coming.’ A head of foam burbled up in the pit of her mouth. Her lungs had become a swamp. Her breathing stilled. The nurse, who was sitting by her bedside, waiting, shifted forward slightly.

  The curtain behind us rustled and Euan appeared in the doorway, smiling uneasily. All heads turned towards him. I shouted at Magteld: ‘Euan is here!’ A flurry of excitement, a shuffle of feet on the linoleum floor. Magteld heaved one more breath, then another, wrenched from the brink of the abyss. Her eyelids flickered towards the end of the bed, where Euan was standing. ‘She’s looking,’ said the nurse. And then stillness.

  The nurse leaned forward and placed a finger on Magteld’s wrist.

  ‘Ten past four,’ she said.

  In the months that followed I kept returning to her last moments, those two dredged breaths, the final flicker of her eye. Her implacable resolve to have the last word even as death closed its fist. Where did she gain the strength to endure for those extra few seconds and realise the wish she had made in Glasgow, to leave this world in the presence of her three boys? What did she see as the last of the light penetrated her eyes? Could she make out the outline of Euan, his clear blue eyes, his shimmering hair and innocent grin? Did she feel euphoria, or absolution, or closure? And why was it so important to record an image that she had no time to reflect on? Did she think she could take the memory with her?

  Dr Houtsma was the first to console me. He strode through the curtain, calm and businesslike, and shook my hand. I mumbled something incoherent. Everything had unravelled so rapidly, like a bundle of hay in a gale. Next came the doctor who had admitted Magteld in the morning and had been due to check on her at five o’clock, half an hour from now.

  A nurse quietly asked about organ donation. Thankfully Magteld had made it clear in her last months that she wanted the medical world to learn from her death, and I conveyed this in detached tones, as if directing a tourist to the bank. The medics withdrew, and the nurses dismissed us from the room. ‘You don’t need to see what happens here,’ one of them explained.

  Marlies reacted first as we emerged from behind the curtain. ‘Has it happened?’ she said. I nodded dumbly. We embraced each other in near-mute incomprehension, shedding stifled tears. We had lost a wife, a daughter, a mother, a sister and an aunt. Individually, our grief was unbearable; as a group, it bound us together.

  The nurse beckoned us back in. Magteld was still warm, still limp. One by one her family said goodbye and left. Once they had gone I sat down beside her. I had the sense of being on the threshold of death, suspended in time. Beyond the plastic curtain lay that fearful place, the land of grief, and soon I would have to rise and step through it, knowing I would never see her face again, and resume my diminished life. I was in no hurry to start that journey. Magteld lay, calm and attentive and beautiful, as I read out the poem I had promised her. I released the hastily assembled words into the hushed room. It was a relief to see her so still. The struggle had left her. She no longer had to worry about being assaulted in the night by pain and fear. That was my domain now.

  After sitting silently for a few more minutes I got up, imprinted one last kiss on her sweatless brow, and went through the curtain.

  I phoned my parents; my mother answered. For the first time since I was six she comforted me as I sobbed. Once I had hung up, the nurse came over and handed me the wedding ring I had placed on Magteld’s finger on that damp day twelve and a half years ago, together with her watch. It was time to go home.

  We descended the fifteen floors, leaving Magteld suspended above us, said goodbye to each other in the lobby and headed out separately across the car park, where it had just started to rain.

  13

  Funerals in the Netherlands are arranged briskly, in a matter of days. Within a few hours of Magteld’s life ending, and with the sun that had risen as we sat together at the dining table still dangling in the sky, I opened the door to an immaculately dressed young man with an expression of studied compassion: soft wide eyes, a polite, conciliatory smile and the air of being ready to listen for all eternity.

  Sanneke and I guided him into the living room and gestured to him to sit down. ‘Was the lady ill?’ he asked.

  ‘It was expected and unexpected,’ I said. ‘She had terminal cancer. But until the last few days she seemed to be coping well.’ I tried to suppress a sob, then yielded to it. For half a minute it was the only sound in the room, which seemed suddenly to have swelled to the size of a cathedral. Then I took a deep breath and we carried on.

  The ceremony should last around thirty minutes, the undertaker said. It could be as formal or informal as we wanted. He handed us a brochure of coffins and waited while we picked one out. Magteld had specified a plain box, since the thing was only fit for burning. We needed to decide who would give speeches and what music we wanted to play. There was the facility to display a slideshow of photographs through the ceremony.

  Together with Sanneke, I went through her drawers and selected the last outfit she would ever wear. We agreed it should be something decorous and flattering since, as Sanneke observed, Magteld had become ‘more vain in her last days’. We settled on a recently bought black dress, with a silver band slung diagonally across the chest and the skirt halfway down to the knee. We folded it, put it in a plastic bag with some essentials, and handed them to the undertaker.

  The undertaker asked about dates. Friday would be too soon, I said, since my family would be travelling from England. Next Monday was fully booked, which left Tuesday. Sanneke felt that a gap of eight days was too long. The undertaker phoned his office and asked if there was space on Saturday. There was, and we booked a slot at the crematorium for early afternoon.

  I was most nervous about the flowers. This was the one element of her funeral for which I had specific instructions. I sensed Magteld hovering over my shoulder, ready to launch her most withering look if I went off track. She would want hyacinths, I said, and c
hrysanthemums and lilies, but only a few, or it would look too clichéd. Most importantly, lots of greenery and a loose, unfussy arrangement. She wanted the boys and me to each lay a single stem on her coffin; others could do the same if they wished.

  The undertaker would come back on Wednesday to pick up the photos for the slideshow and note our choice of music. I asked him how he got into his job, since he looked no more than twenty-five, a perverse age to be in the death industry. It was a personal choice, he replied; his family was not in the undertaking business. ‘I remember when my grandmother died and a man came to the house to organise her funeral. He seemed so kind and calm and reassuring. As I got older I decided that was what I wanted to do.’ It was a true vocation, I suggested, a job you had to be wholly committed to. He nodded, handed us his card and went out quietly into the weakening light.

  That week my Dutch vocabulary acquired all kinds of phrases I had no desire to learn, but the language of grief clings like brambles. Cards arrived with pictures of flowers and the words met oprechte deelneming (with deepest sympathy). Adam’s classmates compiled a book of pictures and messages, in Dutch and English, the pithiest of which stated plainly: ‘Don’t like it that your mother is dead’. Mothers I had only known a few days approached me in the playground and said ‘Gecondoleerd’ (commiserations), ‘Dat is jammer om te horen’ (I’m sorry to hear that) and ‘Veel sterkte bij dit grote verlies’. This last one has no true equivalent in English – literally it’s wishing you strength in coping with a terrible loss. I was grateful for it, since strength was the thing I needed above all. Another recurrent phrase was ‘We leven heel erg met je mee’ (our lives are very much with yours) – similar to ‘you are in our thoughts’, but more vivid because it speaks of shared experience.

  I was glad to be busy. I had to organise a cremation, console my children and deal with the gaping puncture hole in my life. Given a sliver of a chance, or five seconds too long to reflect, I would have folded like a shot bird.