Ma, Jackser's Dyin Alone

by Martha Long

  ‘This is always the worst time for you, Jackser, isn’t it?’ I said quietly, holding his hand and looking into his face. ‘Somehow, around the same time between the hour of three and four a.m., the dead hour, that is when you start coming around, waking up. Then I see the pain and the fear and the fright in your eyes. There is so many things going on for you at that one time, isn’t there, Jackser? You get the panic of not being able to breathe. You get the fear of it, the sickness, the horrible discomfort of your night chills that get worse then. You suffer the helpless feeling of being trapped in your tired old body, frustrated and angry because it has let you down.

  ‘I remember, Jackser, that claustrophobic fear you always had of getting sick. You always feared that, Jackser, didn’t you? That is why you stayed away from doctors. You were never sick in your life, yet you always feared you were. It worried you. You were a bit of a hypochondriac!

  ‘Many is the day I heard you say, as you worried you might be sick or even going to die, “Wha would tha pain be, Sally?” You would say to me ma as you rubbed your chest with your fist, getting a worried look on your face. Me ma would stare, blinking like mad, looking worried, with her eyebrows knitting and her lip getting chewed up and down. Then she would take a couple of coughs after thinking about it, then snap, “Ahh! Will ye leave me alone for fuck sake! There’s nothin wrong the matter wit ye at all! It’s all in yer fuckin head!”

  ‘You would raise your eyebrows, keeping them up there, with your mouth dropped, getting yourself ready to tell her, “Don’t come the fuckin hound wit me, Missus!” But then the sudden annoyance would all drop away, and your face would settle, letting your eyes look happy as you would say, “Ye think so, Sally? So ye wouldn’t think it’s anythin serious then?”

  ‘“Not at all! Would ye stop outa tha?” she would laugh, relieved to see you’re happy with what she just said – that there’s nothing the matter with you! Then there isn’t. So she has nothing to worry about either.

  ‘Yeah, Jackser, everything you ever feared has now come to you. Most of all, and I think it’s true, your worst fear of all is here now. This is what terrorises you the most. The knowing that death is just around the corner, waiting to take you. That must be horrendous for you; I can’t begin to imagine what that must be like. All your fears coming true at once, because they are all happening right inside you, now, this minute!

  ‘But, I am with you, Jackser. I will shadow you in your fears, every step of the way. I feel myself reaching in closer to you. I am getting a deeper sense of who you really are … were, Jackser. I’m sitting here now with my remembered days of you – rare them so treasured sunny days of my childhood. They warm me, oh, but they pain me too. I want to cry my heart out for the loss. I want to go back and find the man you were, the one who gave me them very few precious memories. He was there all the time inside you, Jackser! You could be so soft, so aware of the simple things we needed. You would shout at the ma to do something for us. She never cared, she never noticed, she barely existed, Jackser. But you were more alert. It is like I said, you would get us taken to the doctor, get me enrolled in school, even though I hardly set foot in the place. Still, you did do it.

  ‘It could be just a moment in time, a little happening that took place in a few minutes. They are so very, very few, them precious little memories. They come out of so many years that we lived, day by day, under your terror, yet they happened. I have them now. I see the man you could have been. I yearn now for the lost child in me – the one you never gave that love to. I feel that pain and loss. I feel the pain for you, for the terrible loss of the man waiting inside you that you never became. He would have made you happy; he would have given us all love. He would have filled the lot of us up with so many happy memories we would have burst with the love. We would never have had to know what it feels like to live in a cold, dark world where we could do nothing but wait.

  ‘Waiting for either this world to end or something good in this one to bring us out into the sunlight. To look up and see the golden rays of the sun warm us and be given something of the good food we knew existed out there. We saw it in the shops, we saw it in people’s shopping bags. We saw people smile, we saw happy, laughing children holding hands with their happy, smiling mothers and fathers. We saw them warm and dry, with good heavy leather shoes on their feet. We knew there was a life out there. But we could do nothing but wait and hope. We were young, oh, so very young, but little children will always have hope. I didn’t wait, Jackser, for the world to bring it to me, I kept my hope and went out and got what we needed from the world, Jackser. Yes! You know that. I just went out and took it. Nobody will give it to you. Why should they? It is every person’s burden to look after their own first – that is the way of the world. But you and the ma left us to the law of the jungle, Jackser. We had to survive because you were trapped inside yourself.

  ‘You could have been so many things, Jackser. You did have gifts. Oh, but, Jackser, you never made it. You had too many things going against you. You had the demons in your head – the paranoia, the voices probably. They held you in an iron grip. You had the little boy inside you screaming out his terror. You had to relieve the screams of his pain as he was whipped by grown men. It never ended for you, your grotesquely inhuman childhood, even though it was so very many long years ago when they caged you up in that barbaric institution.

  ‘Yes, I know, you told me. It was in the 1920s, Jackser. An awful time for poor children to be in an institution. A world war had just ended; Ireland was now in the middle of a devastating civil war. The British moved out and the Church moved in. They grabbed up everything and everyone, and turned the country into a fortress of institutions. Jesus! It was brutal. It drove you mad!

  ‘Oh, I have seen that little boy in your eyes, Jackser, when you would show him to me after a bad beating you gave me. You would look at me with pain, and say, “I’m sorry I hurt you. But ye see, tha’s wha the Brothers did te me! They always said it would make a man of me! I lost me head, Martha. I’m sorry. I only want te do wha’s right fer ye! You’re a good kid. I’m sorry. I know I go too far, but … tha’s wha they taught me!” you would say, letting your voice trail off, letting me see the pain of that little boy inside you.

  ‘So, yes, Jackser, I know how he felt. I know his terrors. I know you, Jackser! You had too much to carry inside you. The ma ate you alive, Jackser. She had her demons too. She held you in her iron grip, wanting you to save her. She was a woman drowning, and, as only someone will do when they are drowning, she clawed at you, not letting you loose, bringing you down with her. Because you couldn’t save yourself, never mind give her what she needed. So you both fed off each other’s madness, with us, the children, needing one or the pair of you to show us a bit of mercy. To show us a bit of human kindness, just to know what it feels to be like other people – the happy people who live in the light. We could only look at them and wonder and wait and hope. But it couldn’t ever happen, no. So it never did. Jesus, Jackser! You two were like two shipwrecks drifting together in a vast ocean of the world. Then, as angry waves rose, you slammed against each other, crushing everything caught between you. The damage done, the children never grew up they just got older. They too never made it. They are now drowning in a vast sea of misery. So now, like you and the ma, Jackser, they too are forever lost. Harry, we already know, decided twenty-eight years is long enough. The darkness in his world was just too unbearable. He had spent an eternity waiting, hoping and searching. He never did find a path leading into the golden sunshine that waiting world was ready to offer.

  ‘But nature has her own brutal way of keeping up the survival of our species. We can’t all die out. Yes, Jackser, I’m bruised but I’m a lucky one – oh, so very blessed. Someone must have been looking down on me all along the way. I muddle my way through, learning from both your mistakes. It was a hard lesson I learned from you, Jackser. Oh, but I learned so much. I use it to nourish myself; it helps me grow. Oh, I indeed did take in so much.
I understand the pain of human suffering. It makes me terribly human, Jackser. It makes me want to reach out and wipe tears. It won’t allow me to walk away and not offer to ease another’s pain. It teaches me not to expect, but to act. It teaches me not to wait for the world to knock on my door. It won’t. It teaches me patience. I spent a long time waiting, Jackser, just to control my own destiny. Life prepared me well.

  ‘I learned the power of controlled fury. I will be relentless, without mercy if someone tries to take or to harm me or what’s mine. Yes! I learned some of your brutality, Jackser. When I am faced with that, I will sink lower than them. Brutality does not recognise goodness; nothing and nobody will get the better of me. Nothing and nobody keeps me down, Jackser! Life goes on and I’m going with it. This world belongs to me too. Yes, I cannot but be influenced by your brutality, Jackser. I carry that part of you inside me too. As the Christian Brothers taught you, you taught me. I did not just see you as that little boy when you showed him, Jackser. I also saw the face of the Christian Brothers when you were at your most brutal. They were very inhuman – demonic, I would say they were, Jackser. So I also hold that smouldering fire deep inside me too. It lies dormant, sleeping quietly. I only use it when it needs to come out. It does not control me, Jackser; I control it. I try to develop as much goodness in my life to keep out its darkness. Oh, but the rage is useful. I have climbed mountains with it. It has pushed me to endure and keep going with an icy-cold determination to succeed – that fire raging in my belly, Jackser! It could have been a very useful asset for you too, Jackser, if only you could have harnessed its power and brought it under control. Oh, if only it could have been used wisely. If only …’

  ‘Martha!’

  Someone was calling me. I opened my eyes slowly, very slowly, feeling a hand on me, knowing someone was gently pressing my arm.

  ‘Are you awake?’ I heard the voice speaking, whispering close to my face.

  ‘Ohh!’ I moaned, making an effort to lift my head.

  ‘Good morning,’ the night nurse Brenda laughed, looking down at me, holding her breath, with a smile on her face, waiting for me to surface.

  ‘Morning, did you say, Brenda? Sure, that’s been here since five o’clock this morning,’ I grinned, squinting up at her with one eye closed. ‘Is it time to be on the move?’ I yawned, nearly breaking my jaw, then stood up stretching myself, trying to get rid of the creaks and curls, twisting every muscle in my body.

  ‘How is he?’ I muttered, looking down at Jackser.

  We both stared, with her saying nothing as we closely watched his terrible gasps, seeing him continue to fight for every breath. She just nodded her head slightly, staring at him, then looked at me, taking my arm and whispering, ‘Come on, you need to worry about yourself as well.’ Then she inclined her head towards the door, saying, ‘Let’s go! I have your breakfast waiting.’

  I followed her out of the ward, then we stopped as she said, ‘I’m off duty. Gawd, what a night! Did you see the cardiac arrest we had two wards down?’

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t know what happened, but I heard and saw the flap. Everyone seemed to be on this floor at the same time, including James! Doctor Collins. He came hurrying past the ward … Well, more like shuffling. Then in his hurry he dropped his stethoscope. Wait till you hear this, Nurse. He bent down to pick it up, then fell over his flip-flops!’ I laughed, then said, ‘He’s not getting much kip these nights on his graveyard shift, is he? Mind you, it doesn’t stop him trying!’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about that fella,’ she snorted, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘Yeah, he’s very dopey, isn’t he?’ I said, looking at her. ‘I think he broke his stethoscope when he landed on it!’ Then we gave a roar, laughing our heads off.

  ‘Good enough for him,’ she said. ‘If ever a doctor fancied himself, that fella does. What he lacks in brains, he makes up for in ego! He thinks he’s a consultant already, the way he marches around here in that pinstripe suit, throwing out the white coat behind him.’

  ‘Yeah, wonder where he got the suit, Brenda? It’s a bit short in the legs,’ I laughed.

  ‘Oh, from his father. One of his cast-offs,’ Brenda snorted. ‘The dad is a consultant,’ she sniffed, sounding like she hadn’t much time for them.

  ‘Yeah, I see them. They flash in and out of the place, then they’re gone! Off to see the private patients in their private suite, then it’s off for a round of golf!’ I said, not thinking too much of them meself. Then we went quiet, with the two of us running out of puff. It was too late, or too early in the morning, for us to be showing such energy.

  ‘Did the patient make it last night, then, Brenda?’ I said. ‘Who was it? I mean, what bed were they in?’

  ‘It was Ellen, Mrs Casey.’

  ‘What? She’s dead?’ I said, getting a shock.

  She nodded, looking at me.

  ‘But, sure, she wasn’t that old. How old was she, Brenda?’

  ‘Sixty-one.’

  ‘What happened to her? The first night she came in here, she was sent up from casualty, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Brenda said, taking in a sudden breath that got caught in her throat.

  I looked at her, seeing the dark shadows under her lovely blue eyes. She’s looking very pale and tired, I thought, staring into her face.

  ‘Tetany!’ Brenda said. ‘She went into shock. There was nothing we could do. We tried resuscitation, but nothing,’ she said, shaking her head and drawing her lips together in a straight line, letting a look of regret come into her eyes.

  I said nothing, just thought about Ellen. She was grand when she came in. She was sitting up in the bed laughing. I even made a joke to her as I passed her ward.

  ‘Do you know, Brenda?’ I said, thinking about it. ‘I only went in and spoke to her about two days ago. She was grand! There she was, sitting up in the bed, laughing and joking away for herself. When I saw her laughing like that, I turned and went into the ward saying, “Huh! There’s not too much wrong with you, judging by the looks of you. What are you doing in here?” Then I shook me head at her, laughing and joking, saying, “Jaysus! Some women will do anything to escape housework and cooking. You should be at home cooking your husband’s dinner! That poor man is probably out there right now, starving to death, fading away fast for the want of a bit of grub. Are you here for your holidays?” I said, laughing. Then she told me, Brenda. She said, “Yeah! You could be right. I don’t know wha I’m doin in this place! It was himself, the husband, tha brought me in here in the first place! I had a septic finger, look. I got it caught on a rusty nail. I was gardening. I thought nothin of it at the time; it didn’t even bleed, ye see!” she said, looking up at me, showing me the nasty-looking swelling on her hand. It was bandaged, so I couldn’t see much.

  ‘“They sent me up here, straight away from casualty,” she said, not able to figure out what all the fuss was about. “Then they sent him home. They said they were keeping me in.” Then she shook her head, looking up at the drip she was attached to, with the bags of antibiotics hanging out of it.

  ‘“Maybe I should have come in earlier, got a tetanus injection. But ye see, it didn’t bleed. If it had, the poison would have come out. But anyway, I wasn’t bothered,” she said. “Now look at the trouble I brought on meself, an the weather out there is blazing wit the sun. I could a been out there now, enjoyin me bit a gardenin!” she said.

  ‘“Ah, well,” I said to her. “You’re in the right place. They will probably let you home as soon as you’re off the antibiotics,” I said, moving off and making for the door. I wanted to get back to Jackser. Then I waved at her, Brenda. She gave me a big wave back, smiling. A lovely woman,’ I said, still seeing her with the big, bright, happy face and the eyes dancing outa her head, looking like she could get up to plenty a devilment! Always ready for a laugh.

  ‘She left it too late,’ Brenda whispered. ‘If she had come in when it happened, got herself a tetanus injection, it was such a simple t
hing. But now,’ she said, waving her hands, shaking her head.

  I stared, letting the shock and sadness show in my eyes and shaking my head with her, saying, ‘She’s gone! I did see her husband sitting out there on the bench in the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t thinking. I knew there must be something wrong. He was looking very worried. I stopped and put my arm on his shoulder, whispering, “Are you all right?” But he just nodded up to me. So that, when he didn’t say anything, I went on about my business, wanting to just leave him in peace. I was heading off down to the waiting room to grab a quick cigarette, because I couldn’t leave Jackser for long. I was anxious to get back. He wasn’t good.

  ‘So it was Ellen? That’s what all the emergency was about. I could hear the rushing and feet flying up and down, with the carts tearing along the passage. I even heard you all shouting to each other, trying to keep it down to a whisper. I did wonder what was going on. Then I could hear your voices getting louder. You were calling backwards and forwards to each other, right outside the ward. Then the lights went on. But I was in there with Jackser. I had to keep on my feet. Remember, Brenda? You came in just before it happened. We were trying to get him easy. He was in a bad way. Then you went off when he seemed over the worst, and I watched him, keeping him dry. I kept damping his forehead with the cloth,’ I said, ‘then leaving the wet rag sitting on his forehead. I was so intent on him I blocked out everything around me,’ I said, thinking all about that happening in the middle of the night. I could hear meself talking, sounding strained, like somehow I had done something wrong. What the bloody hell is wrong with me? I thought, staring at the floor.

  ‘You are exhausted, Martha. Come on! Go down and have that breakfast. It’s probably cold now. Put your feet up for an hour or so. You need it. Or I’ll have to be adding you to my list of patients,’ she laughed, giving me a dig with her elbow in me arm.