In December 2015, Margaret got worse. She was still forcing herself up for an hour or two each day, but her hands and body were shaking, she staggered round the bedroom, the pains in her body were everywhere.
I rang the palliative care team leader and also our GP, Dr Stuart. They both came not long afterwards. They both assured Margaret that, these days, there was never any need to suffer pain. When it got unbearable, they would give her stuff, so not to worry. I was reassured. But Margaret was not.
She was given a prescription for morphine which I took round to Michael’s, our local chemist. In the last year, I never seemed to be away from him. He is an expert, everyone agrees, the cleverest chemist in north London, if not the whole world, never knowingly stuck for an explanation, a diagnosis and of course a recommendation.
Margaret now had so much medication that she had a wicker basket, the size of a Harrods hamper, in which she kept all her pills and potions, covered in a pretty red and gingham piece of cloth. It looked so like a picnic hamper that I feared the younger granddaughters might open it and start scoffing.
The morphine came as a liquid, in a little bottle, like children’s cough mixture. I wanted to have a small swig, but she would not let me. She took it for five days. The pain was a bit less, but she felt sick. It was changed to morphine pills. They did not seem to help much either, so steroids were added. Each time, the picnic hamper got bigger and bigger.
Six months earlier, I had booked my annual January trip to the West Indies, for the thirtieth year running, even though for the last eight years I had gone on my own. At the time I booked, she was still walking fairly well, but now it was clearly impossible, so I cancelled it. When I told her, she started crying. ‘I am ruining your life enough as it is.’
I was now doing all the cooking, such as it was, shopping and cleaning, while she stayed mostly in bed. One night, I decided to cook some fillet steak for each of us, which I had bought at Lidl months ago after swimming. She said she felt sick at the very thought of it, but agreed to give me instructions on how to cook it, telling me which pan to use, how to chop the red onions, make sauté potatoes and boil the green beans. I ate it all, and it tasted quite nice, but nowhere as nice as all those years of having it made for me. And the mess afterwards, dear God, the kitchen was like a dump. It took forever clearing up and totally ruined the enjoyment of the meal. And the smell of cooking, which lingered long afterwards, was horrible.
For the last few years, Margaret had almost become a veggie, only agreeing to cook meat for me once a week. She said it was the sight of the raw meat that had put her off. I could now understand what she meant. I think cooking is overrated. All that fuss, and then you have to do it all again the next day.
I also got her to give me instructions for using the washing machine. And the first time I used it, I caused a flood. Don’t know what I did wrong. But the water went all the way down the hall floor. What an idiot.
Margaret would still not discuss the future, or look back at the past. I was hoping to have some soppy conversations about the good times in our lives, the fun things we had done, you remember that hotel, wasn’t that a brilliant holiday, and the children and grandchildren, remember the birth of Amelia. But she was not interested. Or she did not have the energy.
Then to my slight surprise she started talking about three upcoming events she wanted to make, to somehow stay alive, till all these three events were over. It showed she had been going over things in her head.
The first was the long-planned visit of Theo, her best friend from her Oxford days, with whom she had shared a flat, who had got married after Oxford and lived ever since in the USA. Her husband Van, a Rhodes scholar, had gone on to be an economist in the Carter administration and an academic.
We had never been to see them in Washington, as Margaret refused to go, even when she was well enough, though we had visited them many years ago when Van had been a professor at Swarthmore. Theo had visited us many times, in London and in Lakeland. And of course they had written to each other all the time.
Theo did come, in December, as planned. And they had long chats. Theo, after all these decades in the USA, is now thoroughly American, of a certain sort, and had brought lots of books and literature about dying, which was thoughtful – what to do, how it feels, what can be done.
Despite being incredibly fit and active, she and Van were selling up their Washington house, where they had brought up their three children, and had bought into what appeared to be an apartment in sheltered housing. She brought videos, photos, pamphlets to show us all the wonders and support systems, which amused us. Being British, we privately scoffed. Americans, eh. But we agreed it was all very sensible.
We ourselves had made no plans for the end of our lives. Margaret personally had been donating money to Dignity in Dying for years. She had said she would like to be put to sleep, when the time came, not to suffer the pain and indignity of dying, forcing others to witness her suffering. Now, she was too ill to travel to Switzerland and be finished off. I don’t think in fact she would have done it, would endlessly have put it off, till it was too late, which is what was now happening.
In my own fantasy ending of my life, I would never even think of committing suicide. My plan is to stay in this house and arrange carers to live in. I am going nowhere. And I hope of course I will have enough money to pay for care and not expect our children to be burdened. I often did mention this, now and again, while having my evening drink and reading the evening paper, then moved on quickly to pondering Spurs’ chances in the League.
The other event, after the visit of Theo, which Margaret wanted to get through was Christmas. She had ‘done’ Christmas for years, decades of it, for the whole family, and relations, extended family and friends, massive Christmas dinners for which she did all the cooking. For the last couple of years she had not been up to it, so the children had taken over the family baton, taking it in turns. This year we were all going to have it at Jake’s.
She was not of course going to be there at his house, not the slightest chance of that, but she did not want do anything inconvenient, such as dying, and thus ruin the family gathering, deflecting us all from having a jolly, noisy, happy time.
For the first time in fifty-five years of marriage, I was allowed to go out and buy the Christmas tree for our house. I had never been allowed to do it, as I could not be trusted, and would come home with some rubbish tree just because it was cheap.
Now, she did not have the will or the energy to object when I said I would get it. I got a nice tree from a stall outside Morrison’s, at a nice price, which was £15. The previous year she had paid £50 at a posh shop in Swain’s Lane. But she pronounced it a nice tree, just as nice as any we had had in the past.
As usual, she listened to her Christmas carols. She never listened to music, had no interest in songs or music of any sort, and in the rest of the year she never put on a record or a tape. But each year at Christmastime she got out an old tape of King’s College Cambridge choir singing carols. She always listened to them in the dark, on her own, with the Christmas tree lights on. If I or anyone else came into the room, she would turn it off, trying to pretend she had not been listening to the carols.
I once brought back from the West Indies a reggae version of some Christmas carols, which I and the children enjoyed. She listened once, and then refused to have it on again. She only wanted the traditional old-fashioned versions sung the old-fashioned way.
Somehow, she got through the Christmas period at home with no collapses. On New Year’s Eve, she even managed to come downstairs in her dressing gown for our own New Year tradition, our annual ritual.
For over forty years, on New Year’s Eve, we would sit up late – sometimes till five past ten – and do Our Predictions, which I would carefully list, in my best handwriting. Firstly, we take a look back at the year just gone, listing the highlights. Mainly family-related highlights, like a new baby, a leaking roof repaired.
We also had a short list o
f Current Topics. This was about the subjects currently worrying us, at that very moment, as that New Year arrived. I liked doing that one. A year later, when I read out last year’s worries, we had totally forgotten most of them, the things that had been driving us mad.
Then we did the Predictions for the year ahead. If someone was pregnant, or sitting some exams, we would guess the outcome. Exact dates would have to be predicted for births – plus names. We never predicted sad things, never listed deaths or failures, just all the happy or relatively happy outcomes.
We did national and world things as well. If for example there was a General Election or Presidential Election coming up in the year ahead, we each had to guess the winners. With figures.
If there was a World Cup, we had to name the two finalists, same with the European Championship. And each year who would win the Premiership and the FA Cup.
I always liked reading out stuff from the distant past, asking her to guess where we were and what we were worrying about on New Year’s Eve 1966, or in 1984.
I did ask her to guess where we were on 3 December 1983. I had looked it up and knew we were in the Böglerhof hotel in Alpbach, Austria, on a skiing holiday. We went to that same hotel three years running. Margaret loved it even though she did not ski, leaving that to me and Jake and Flora. Instead, she would go for a long walk in the snow.
She knew at once where we were that year, as she always knew dates and places, unlike me. But she said asking her to guess one year was enough. She did not want to go back over old stuff, least of all old predictions. Nor to bother her with boring football predictions. ‘How long is this going on? I want to go to bed.’
But she played a bit of the game, to indulge me. I have now forgotten what she predicted on her last New Year’s Eve – on 31 December 2015. I wasn’t able to look it up till the next New Year’s Eve. That was the rule. Neither of us would have predicted Leicester in 2016. I probably said Spurs to win the Prem. I do that every year. Could it be next year – the year after she has gone?
The third thing she was hanging on for was to get to 7 January 2016, and my eightieth birthday celebrations. I had planned two events, a dinner party for friends and neighbours in the street and a party at the Groucho Club for my work and media friends. This was what we had done in 1986, for our Silver Wedding.
For the actual birthday on 7 January, I had booked a room at the Groucho. I had invited all the family, including grandchildren and my sister and brother and his wife, who were coming down from Carlisle, along with my long-standing media friends and colleagues. I worried how they would all mix together. Then later, I had arranged a dinner for the neighbours, not at home as in 1986, but at a local bistro, Bistro Laz, beside the Heath.
Margaret was never going to go to either of them, even if she had been well. The very thought of either of them, especially the Groucho Club, appalled her. But she wanted to stay alive, not cause either of them to be cancelled, in order to please me. And also please herself. She looked forward to our three children, in turn, coming to see her after the Groucho Club and telling her, blow by blow, details of the full horrors of what she had missed. Different details, of course, as they would have their own take on what happened.
And it came to pass. The Groucho party was a great success. We had live music by the Quarrymen and I danced with my younger grandchildren all night long. One of the things about young grandchildren is that they are not embarrassed. Unlike teenagers.
And everyone mixed well, my family and my media chums, who included the editor of the Sunday Times and editor of the New Statesman, for whom I have been doing columns for many years, and also old friends dating back forty years, such as Jilly Cooper, Joan Bakewell and Melvyn Bragg. Melv was even persuaded to sing or at least shout ‘Twist and Shout’.
Margaret was amused the next day to be taken through every detail, every awful thing I had done and said and had arranged, endlessly saying how pleased she was not to have been there.
She was pleased she had not ruined any of the three family events by something awful happening to her, such as dying, and it proved a distraction for her to hear all about the family Christmas lunch and my part y, after they were successfully over.
Can you will yourself to live? I felt in this case, over those three weeks, she did. She had created three hurdles for herself, three family events to survive for, and had managed to stay alive for all three. With us in spirit if not in the flesh.
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NOTES FROM A HOSPICE
8 JANUARY 2016
Today, the day after my eightieth party, the palliative care consultant came, Dr Philip Lodge, the first time we had seen him. Felt quite honoured, having the consultant coming to the house.
I had been ringing the palliative care nurse to say how worried I was that Margaret was falling, staggering, and shaking. I was scared she would fall and break something.
Dr Lodge was in his late forties, none of the autocratic manner of some consultants, or their remoteness, but seemed at ease, relaxed, natural. He managed to be concerned and caring without being creepy or false, a hard trick to pull off. Some of the palliative care nurses had driven me mad putting on their caring face and voice, the way Fergal Keane used to do on the radio.
From time to time, as he talked to Margaret, I noticed Dr Lodge managing to stare round our bedroom, looking at all the photos and stuff. I do like a nosy doctor. It shows they are involved, that patients are real people not numbers. I couldn’t place his accent. Rather North London, which you don’t find in many consultants.
He checked Margaret all over, including the old wounds on her chest, questioned her about the worst areas of pain, such as her back and shoulders, but fortunately did not ask her to go yet again through her medical history. He had read all the notes, so she didn’t have to drag herself through her operations or treatment. I wish all doctors were like that.
He explained that going downstairs was more dangerous than going up, as the chance of falling was greater.
I told him how Margaret had suddenly lost the power in her right arm, so she could not lift things and, even worse, write postcards and letters, which she had done all her life. He nodded and said she would lose all the power in her legs soon. There was no change or lowering in his voice or demeanour, just a straightforward fact. Most doctors so far had shied away from revealing what the next stage would be, even when asked, which in this case Dr Lodge had not been. He just told us, which is how it should be.
Margaret was tiring, with all the questions about her pains, where exactly they were, how bad, and when. She tried to break in, cut him short, thanked him for coming, when she was sure he had so much to do.
‘Sorry, Margaret, I have to ask you some more things. This is my bread and butter.’
It was quite a witty thing to say. On paper it might look facetious but we both smiled, understanding the nature of his self-deprecation, as if he was a shift worker in a factory.
He asked Margaret whether she wanted to remain in her home or go into a hospital. Certainly not a hospital, we both said. She would rather die at home than in a Royal Free ward. ‘I would really like an overdose now,’ she said, ‘something to knock me out for good. I’ve had enough pain.’
He smiled and said don’t worry about the pain, we can control that.
He then got out a form which was marked Resuscitation Form. He filled in all Margaret’s details and gave it to me. It said that in the event of a total collapse, such as a heart attack, Margaret Davies had not to be resuscitated. I had never heard of such a form. I carefully filed it away. Margaret had lost interest by now.
He gave us some numbers to ring. He would by chance be on duty tomorrow, and so would Shebo, our main palliative care nurse. I had to ring either of them if Margaret collapsed. It was clear he expected this to happen, possibly over the weekend.
9 JANUARY 2016
Margaret is in the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead. After a hellish twenty-four hours, she is in bed resting, peaceful
ly, relatively pain-free at last, in a very quiet and very nice room with a large window and a view and absolutely excellent kind caring staff.
It has been a dramatic day. This morning there was a sudden increase in the pain – and the total loss of any strength or movement in her legs and in both arms. She has not eaten all day, because she couldn’t move her arms, nor could she get out of bed to go the lavatory, as her legs are gone.
I rang the palliative care team, and rang Dr Lodge, as directed, and left messages. Quite soon afterwards Shebo rang me back. She said Dr Lodge had managed to get Margaret a room in the hospice. She told me to expect the ambulance in two hours.
I was taking the call upstairs in my room, on the portable extension, standing looking idly out of the window into our street as we talked. Such a familiar street scene, all the houses so familiar, one I had been staring at in idle moments for fifty-five years when I was supposed to be working.
I was thinking two hours, that’s when she said the ambulance would come, no chance, pull the other, they won’t get an ambulance here for ten hours. Then blow me, as Shebo was still telling me stuff, an ambulance drew up right opposite our house. ‘Fucking hell!’ I shouted in amazement. Then apologised to Shebo, who was still on the phone. She could not believe it either. It was quicker than ordering an Uber taxi.
I watched as the ambulance got parked, rather badly, on the corner of Laurier Road and our street, on a yellow line, tut tut. Two paramedics got out and rang our bell. I rushed down and took them upstairs and into Margaret’s room.
They both stood there, looking glaked, which is a Scottish word my mother used, not sure how to spell it but it rhymes with ‘naked’, meaning dopey, confused. They had clearly no idea who Margaret was, her name or any details. I was rather bad tempered when they started going through a long list of dopey questions, such as had she had a heart attack.
It eventually emerged that they had been going to another emergency call which had been cancelled. By chance, they happened to be in the next street, Laurier Road, which is why they had arrived in two minutes. Hence they had had no time to find out about Margaret, who she was or her problem.
A Life in the Day Page 26