Things I Couldn't Tell My Mother: A Memoir

by Sue Johnston

  It was great to all be back together but while we were filming I was leaving the set and heading straight to see Mum. There is a scene in the episode where Jim puts down a laminate floor. I’m not in it because I had been called to the hospital. After we filmed the scenes by Nana’s bedside as she is dying, I again had to head straight to my mum’s bedside in the hospital. It was very sad for me. Liz reminded me of my mother. In her later years Mum had snow-white hair like the wig Liz wore as Nana, and looked quite like her. But it was more than that.

  When the ‘Queen of Sheba’ episode aired later that year I didn’t tell my mother that it was on. It would have been too upsetting for her, and for me. She identified with Nana and to see her die would have shocked her.

  Everyone seemed pleased that The Royle Family had returned and with such a heart-rending story. I was just very sad for Liz. She loved the Royles, we really were a family for her. Since then we have made three Christmas specials and Liz has been sadly missed by everyone.

  *

  Other people had begun pointing out to me how ridiculous this situation was with me flying up to be with Mum whenever I had a free moment. Aunty Jean took me in hand one day.

  Mum was having a doze in her chair and Jean nodded to the garden, so we both went outside. Jean was thoughtful for a moment, then she said, ‘Susan, love, you can’t go on like this.’

  I was on the verge of tears. She was right, of course, but hearing it said out loud made me very upset. I felt slightly underhand, out here in the garden discussing my mother’s life when she was only a few feet away.

  ‘I’m going to move home and look after her myself,’ I said again, feeling that this was definitely the only option.

  Jean shook her head. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said gently. ‘How would you live?’

  ‘Well, I’ll find a job,’ I replied.

  ‘Where? What else can you do?’

  She had a point. I’m not sure there was much call at Warrington job centre for someone who could recite Pinter. I shrugged my shoulders, fighting back tears.

  ‘Susan, if you moved back you’d want to kill your mother within five minutes and she’d want to kill you,’ Jean reasoned with me. ‘It’s madness. You need proper help. Not me, not anyone else we know. Real help from people who know what they’re doing.’

  I looked at my aunty Jean and nodded. I couldn’t move back home, it was nonsense. I needed to keep working and mum needed full-time care. But as with everything with my mum it took me a long time and a number of changes in my mother’s condition to implement what Jean and I had discussed.

  I seriously considered bringing her to live with me, but Joel was living with me at the time. He cared very much for my mother, but I knew that when I was away with work the burden of care would naturally default to Joel and I didn’t want to shoulder him with this responsibility.

  Where my mother lived in Warrington was a great community, with lovely neighbours and people who looked out for her. I felt that if she was to go into a care home it must feel like this. So I began to notice care homes, seeing if they fitted in with the picture in my head of what a care home for my mother should be. Whenever we were out for a drive or a meal I would spot them, having never noticed them before – in the same way when you get a new car you suddenly see that make and model everywhere. I’d think, did they look inviting, did they have a sign half hanging off, unloved and uncared for which immediately made me think ‘like my mother would be if she went there!’

  One day I was driving through the lovely village of Grappenhall on the outskirts of Warrington when I spotted a care home that looked perfect. It was in a lovely position, just by the side of the canal in a semirural setting. There were two pubs in the cobbled square, which I thought would be handy for people visiting my mother – not that I’m saying she drove everyone to drink but it was nice for people to go for a catch-up after they’d visited. I could imagine us going for walks along the canal. There was a wonderful old church next door; in fact, the old people’s home had formerly been the rectory. It looked so inviting that I was a bit worried about going in because I thought it might be a disappointment. I’d been to retirement homes before, when I’d visited other elderly relatives, places that were a dreaded cliché of old people’s homes: they weren’t clean, smelled of urine and were like glorified prisons. After such a promising start from the outside I dreaded this place being the same.

  As I walked in a lovely nurse came over and introduced herself and was so warm and welcoming that I felt immediately at ease. She was the sister and introduced herself as Theresa. She said that she understood that the decision I was trying to make was an extremely difficult one. She explained that everyone who came through the door on behalf of their elderly parents had the same choice to make after coming to the same impasse in their lives. It feels like a very solitary decision to make when you’re the one having to do it.

  She showed me around and the staff all seemed very jolly and happy to work there. There were some bits of my first trip around the home that were how I had feared it to be – some old people were sitting in the TV room staring into space or sleeping – but of course this came with the territory. The important thing to me was the feeling of industry around the place. There were activities, people were here to interact with the residents and make their days interesting. There were some playing cards – which I knew my mother would love as she was a big fan of canasta. There was occupational therapy taking place and there was a group of old ladies having their hair done because, it transpired, the owner was a hairdresser and this was one of the weekly treats. Also I was told that they gave manicures on a regular basis. I couldn’t help thinking that my mother would love that, being pampered every week. Food was cooked fresh on the premises. The notice board was full of ongoing activities and photographs of trips and outings that the residents had been on. I would recommend to anyone looking at a prospective home to check out the notice boards and see what regular activities there are.

  I was then shown the bedrooms and they were all bright and spacious and the whole place was light and airy. There was no gloom and doom, or sense of God’s Waiting Room about this place. Outside the gardens were green and well kept and I could imagine my mother sitting out there on a summer’s day. The area too was somewhere that I knew my mother would be happy with if she could ever be happy about the idea of going into a care home. Grappenhall was near Stockton Heath, ‘the posh part of Warrington’. When I was younger my aunty Millie had a friend who they thought was posh and lived in Stockton Heath. I think maybe subconsciously this notion that my mother should go somewhere she deemed well heeled led me to drive around the area. After my look around the care home that day, I came away feeling lighter. If my mother could go somewhere like this, then I would feel a lot happier that she was well cared for. At the time though, it still wasn’t a decision I was willing to make on my mother’s behalf.

  Within weeks of this, however, my mother was in hospital with another bout of illness. The doctor was a constant visitor to her bedside. My mother was on a respirator most of the day and her dementia was getting completely out of control.

  It was clear now that she was becoming a danger to herself, and the nurses at the hospital tried to impress upon me the need for more consistent long-term care: my mother could no longer look after herself. I was taken to one side and told that they would not sign her out unless she had somewhere to go where she had night-time care. I called the home in Grappenhall and asked if there were any places available. There was, in a shared room. I was just relieved that they had a place. So I reluctantly told her about the home. I said that it was somewhere she could go to convalesce.

  As it happens, this turn of phrase appealed to my mother. She had been ill with respiratory problems all her life, and after her severe bout of pneumonia when she was in her forties she had been to a convalescence home in North Wales to recover. She had quite enjoyed the genteel notion of ‘convalescence’; there was something about th
e ritual surrounding that word that seemed to really appeal to her. She had been a hypochondriac for years and I think that the idea that she was being looked after post-illness was tantamount to her being able to say, ‘See, I told you I was ill!’

  So she went from hospital to the care home. I told her that she could go home when she was ready, but I could see that she liked it from the day she moved in. She shared a room with another lady at first so there wasn’t much space to make the place her own. I asked her then if she would like some artificial flowers and pictures. I wanted to make the place more homely for her, but she couldn’t have real flowers due to her asthma. When she moved to her single room I suggested that I should bring more of her own things in. I wanted to be gentle in this as I didn’t want her thinking she would never see her own house again. It was all very gradual, just a few bits brought in at a time. Making sure she was settled was most important.

  My mother always kept an eye on what was going on back at her house. One day I came in to find her sitting there in her best clothes, ready for the off. ‘I want to go home, I can’t stand all these old people!’ she hissed, looking round to make sure that none of the ‘old people’ had heard her.

  ‘You can’t go home, Mum,’ I said, thinking on my feet. ‘The doctor needs to see you first before you go anywhere and he’s not around at the moment.’ I sat down next to her. ‘What’s the rush to go home?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s my home, I can go there if I want, can’t I?’ She fixed her eyes on me. ‘You haven’t sold it have you?’ As if all of this was a Machiavellian plot on my part to sell her two-bed bungalow and pocket the riches.

  I explained that she couldn’t go home because she wasn’t well enough.

  After this whenever Mum mentioned her house I was always keen to reassure her that her house was still there for her to return to whenever she wished. It often felt like dealing with a child in that I was always negotiating, always giving hope without promising something I couldn’t deliver on. She never did go back, and as time passed she asked for more and more of her things, and made a real home for herself in the care home. But always in the knowledge that she could return to her own house any time she wished.

  Once in the care home her imaginings became less distressing, or at least there was always someone there to hold her hand and try to help her make sense of what she was thinking. But at the same time, what was going on in her head seemed to get increasingly fanciful. The nurses in the care home would wait to tell me what my mother had come up with that week. I arrived one morning to see my mother, sitting in her chair.

  ‘Have you brought him?’ she asked.

  ‘Brought who?’ I replied.

  ‘Well, I hope you have because they’re all waiting for you,’ she said, nodding through to where the nurses were.

  I was confused. ‘Who am I meant to have with me, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Your boyfriend,’ she said. ‘That one.’ My mother gesticulated at the TV; Wimbledon was on.

  I went in search of one of the nurses and found Theresa. ‘We’ve all been hearing about you,’ she said with a grin. ‘You’ve been having it away with Rafa Nadal for the past six months, according to your mother.’

  Theresa said that my mother would sit watching the tennis waxing lyrical to her and her colleagues about how her sixty-three-year-old daughter was stepping out with the twenty-two-year-old tennis player.

  This wasn’t the first time that she had me linked to a sporting superstar. She would tell my family when they went to visit that I was pregnant. No mean feat for someone in their early sixties, but not only was I pregnant, I was pregnant with David Beckham’s child, who just so happened to be living next door according to my mother. My family thought this was hilarious and would always have something to say about this. ‘Has the baby been born yet, Sue? It’d better get a wriggle on, it’s been in there two years,’ and ‘Wait till the papers find out, Sue…’, ‘What will Victoria say?’ At least in Mother’s imagination my choice of men was easy on the eye!

  I did point out to my mother that I was well past the age where women usually fell pregnant. ‘Well,’ she said looking at me like I’d been up to something she disapproved of, ‘I know they can do things these days.’

  When I was visiting my mother I tried to think of things to bring with me that she would like, but the things that she enjoyed were limited. She wasn’t a book person; in fact, I rarely saw her read so much as a magazine, unlike me. I love books, and not just reading them, I love owning them, some might say hoarding them – I can never throw a book away and always feel it has to go to a good home or stay on my shelf. In fact, my mother once commented to my friend Margot, ‘Our Susan would rather read a book than clean her house,’ as if this was the ultimate besmirchment of my character. My mother would much rather put the vac round.

  So in order to keep my mother entertained I would talk to her or bring things in to prompt her to chat. When Mother was in a genial mood she liked to talk about the past. When she was fed up it wasn’t such a good idea as she could become quite maudlin. I would gauge how she was feeling and would often bring in old photographs for her to look at if I felt she was up to seeing them. She would remember everybody and these old pictures would open up a wealth of stories and memories for her. It was nice for me, too, to hear these stories. We often found it hard to simply chat when we were in one another’s company, we soon ran out of things to say, but having these photos as a memory aid meant that my mother had lots to talk about and I was happy to listen.

  One thing my mother was happy to impart, right up until her final breath, was her opinion of others. The nurses would be in chatting to her, ‘Are you all right, Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, love, thank you. You’ve been very good,’ Mum would say smiling and then as if to reiterate how good she had been, she’d add, ‘She’s been very good, Susan. Can’t do enough for me.’ Mum would then watch the nurse leave. The minute the door was shut my mother’s vinegar face would form and she’d tell me in no uncertain terms, ‘I can’t stand her!’

  ‘Why?’ I’d ask, horrified.

  ‘She gets on my nerves,’ she’d say, with no further explanation.

  She could be so charming to your face, my mother, but God help you if you turned your back!

  Chapter Twenty

  AUNTY MILLIE WAS everyone’s favourite aunt, I loved her dearly. She was the sister closest in age to my mum. She was beautiful and bubbly and she and Mum were very close and shared a special bond. She was staying in Woking with my cousin David and his wife Ali, when Ali discovered blood on some of Millie’s clothes. It transpired that Millie had been hiding the fact that she had breast cancer. She must have been worried sick but had never told anyone of her concerns. Millie was the opposite to my mother. Where Mum was happy to tell everyone about every ailment, whether real or imagined, Aunty Millie had never taken a pill or seen a doctor. One of my favourite stories involves Millie. I was filming My Uncle Silas with Albert Finney, and David and Ali brought Millie along to the set. I knew they’d be delighted to meet this legendary actor. I was saying something about being tired when Millie looked at Albert and piped up, ‘Wait till she gets to our age, eh, Albert?’

  ‘How old do you think I am, Millie?’ Albert laughed.

  Millie shrugged, the same age as her evidently. Albert is seven years my senior so would have been in his sixties; Millie was ninety at the time!

  David and Ali took Millie to hospital but she didn’t want to go. Once she was examined and the test results came back they discovered that it was too late to do anything about the cancer. All that they could do was care for her.

  I knew that I had to tell my mother. There were lots of things that I kept from Mum, that I thought she would only worry about, especially when she was older, but at any age I didn’t want her to find out that Millie had died when she had the opportunity to see her one last time.

  I told Mum and she immediately wanted to see her sister. The funny thing about mum be
ing a hypochondriac and worrier was that when she was actually faced with something real and important, like her sister dying, she took it on the chin and became very practical, even now that she was very elderly.

  I packed for the trip, making sure that we had provisions for the drive down. My mother wasn’t a great traveller by this time and we couldn’t go anywhere without a good supply of Tena Lady, so Woking was going to be a bit of a challenge! I had to get my mother and her wheelchair in and out of the car but there was no complaining from her, she was in good spirits all the way there.

  We arrived at David and Ali’s and they were waiting to help me get my mother and her wheelchair out of the car. I gave them both a hug; it was a very emotional occasion for all of us.

  I had brought Mum’s walking frame on wheels and Mum shuffled into the conservatory where Millie was sitting. Millie had very little sight left now, her eyes had been failing for some time.

  ‘Is that you, Margaret?’ Millie asked.

  ‘Yes, Millie,’ my mother said, moving towards her. Mum began to cry, it was heartbreaking to watch. I went over and helped Mum sit down next to her sister. Mum took Millie’s hand and they sat there for a moment, together. After a little while they began to chat and it was like old times: they reminisced and laughed, and it really was the most amazing and moving thing to witness, the love that these two old ladies had for one another.

  My aunty Millie became tired very quickly and after an hour she needed to sleep and so she and my mother said goodbye. They were both very upset, as were David, Ali and I.

  My mother and I drove to my London flat. I had bought it so that I had a base in London while working on Waking the Dead. It was a ground-floor flat in an Edwardian terraced house. My mother loved it. ‘It’s a bit like a bungalow, Susan, isn’t it?’ she had said, impressed that everything was on one floor and that we had access to the garden. We went to bed early that night after such an emotional day.