by Sue Johnston
The next morning I had set the table and I woke my mother up and brought her through. There was a place set for each of us and I had made a hearty breakfast. As I placed the food in front of my mother she took her napkin and smoothed it out over her knee and then picked up the salt cellar and looked thoughtful. After a few moments she said, ‘You do do things nicely, don’t you, Susan?’ Then she put some salt on her breakfast and began to eat.
She had no idea how much that one little line of praise meant to me. I suppose I had always yearned for my mother’s approval, which wasn’t something that was readily given. But it was little moments like this with my mother, little jewels of memory that I now treasure. The fact that they were infrequent makes them more poignant.
We drove back north; the journey was long and had many toilet stops but it had been worth it for Mum to see her sister one last time. Aunty Millie died a month later.
*
My mother had her ninety-second birthday in the grounds of the home. It was July 2007. It had been a beautiful sunny day and she, who was always smartly turned out, looked lovely in her pearls and the M&S dress I had bought for her. She had been very bright and alert all day, so much so that she got me to one side and said, ‘Your aunty Jean’s had two pieces of cake,’ and later after a quick recce of who was supping what, said, ‘Mind this lot don’t drink all the wine; I want to make sure there’s some left for the staff.’
Shortly after this my mother began to sharply decline. Not long after, I received the call to say I had to go back for the last time.
*
I sped back from London and sat next to Mum and took her hand. She was in and out of consciousness but she knew that I was there. I told her what a great childhood I had had. Knowing that she had heard this gave me some peace. I settled in next to her bed as visitors and nurses came and went.
The nurses had warned me that once someone is in decline in the way my mother was, they might start seeing people in the room who weren’t there. It brought me straight back to my dad shouting, ‘Mam!’ in the bed just before he died and I assured them that I was prepared for it.
The days passed and I kept my vigil, chatting to my mum, trying to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. She looked so old and frail. The fact that she wasn’t sitting up, immaculately dressed wearing her red lipstick, was still a bit of a shock to me. In fact, it was only a few weeks earlier that Mum had stopped reaching for her red lipstick and I knew then that she had given up. It makes me sad to think of that now. The nurses were wonderful, coming in to make sure I understood when anything was happening why it was happening. They encouraged me to talk to her, reminding me that hearing is one of the last things to go. I found real comfort in this and tried to talk to my mum as much as possible.
As my mother lay in her bed for what would be her final night, her arms, by now tiny and bony, began reaching up in the air. I sat next to her, watching in fascination. One would reach up and she would make a little noise, then it would go down, only for the other to be raised in the air, her fingers moving as if plucking the strings of a harp. On and on this went all night, reaching up relentlessly. I soon became worried that she may be exhausting herself but she seemed so compelled to continue, and it became quite eerily beautiful to watch.
The following day my mother had calmed down, her arms were no longer rising and falling. Joel had joined me at her bedside. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. The nurses changed shift and the new duty nurse came in to say hello to my mother.
‘Hello, Margaret.’
My mother opened her eyes.
‘You’ve got Susan and Joel.’
She suddenly became animated. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘Joel, my favourite person in the world.’
Joel and I looked at one another and laughed, nothing changes! My cousin Pauline arrived and a little later my aunty Jean and cousin Elizabeth came in to see Mum on their way back from a funeral and stayed for a while. When they left, David and Ali arrived. They had driven from Woking after calling me and being told that she was near the end. We were all gathered around the bed. Mum was very peaceful now, and her breathing had become faint and shallow.
At one point I got quite panicky thinking, ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like the way her face is changing.’ Her face seemed to be getting greyer, more lifeless, and I found this hard to watch. Then there was a moment that caught us all by surprise. I had taken my mother’s top set of false teeth out but I had forgotten about the bottom set. Suddenly her lips puckered exaggeratedly then her mouth opened and all of a sudden these teeth shot out as if they had been delivered from the deep. We all laughed, shocked, but it was a moment of levity in this sad day. I knew that these were my mother’s last hours but even so you are never truly prepared for it. And then she reached out, we helped her up, she sneezed, and then I felt the life leave her. As she lay back on the bed, her beautiful piercing blue eyes staring at me, I knew that she had gone.
Afterwards we all went outside and I got very upset, and one of the nurses came and asked if I’d like to go back in and see her. I wasn’t sure that I did but I thought that I should, so I went back into the room. The nurses had dressed my mother and placed white roses across her breast. Her eyes were closed and she looked so peaceful. It was such a kind thing for them to do and I was extremely grateful.
We had to wait for the undertakers to come and one of the nurses added another kindness. She brought in a box of wine, which was extremely gratefully received, and we all sat drinking it and talking. There felt like such a need to just talk and be together.
*
When I think back on the days after my mother’s death it is always with a bit of bewilderment. There was so much to do in those following weeks that the actual activity somehow propelled me through. Unlike my father’s funeral that took place within a matter of days of his death, my mum’s had to be held a full two weeks afterwards. Susie was an absolute godsend. She is very organised and extremely good at planning things, so she stepped in and took me under her wing.
First of all we had to decide where the funeral would take place. There was the crematorium, or the crem, as we refer to it in the north. Mum was to be cremated but I always found ceremonies at the crem very perfunctory so I wanted a service elsewhere first. Next to the home where Mum had lived was a beautiful church so we called up and went to meet the vicar. He was fantastic, such a fun man. Susie and I suggested a few of Mum’s favourite songs and he was very happy for us to have non-religious music, as well as hymns.
Whereas I would have made do with whatever was on offer, Susie wanted to make sure my mum had a right royal send off. She never sees obstacles anywhere; she just makes things happen. She looked around the church. ‘We’ll get a piano in,’ she said, ‘and I know the perfect vocalist.’
During the intervening two weeks between my mother dying and her funeral, I had to go back to the care home to clear out her belongings. Susie came with me. It was very sad and something I found extremely difficult. In her room there had been a picture of Mum and her sisters when they were younger. And there was a picture of Joel at his graduation, or so my mother thought. When my mum said that she would love a picture of him graduating, we didn’t have the heart to tell her he hadn’t gone to the ceremony. So we mocked up a picture of him with his mortarboard and certificate that was taken in my dining room! The other picture, which took pride of place, was a head shot of my German Shepherd, Brontë, which Joel had taken and Mum requested should be in her room. I might add that there were no pictures of me!
Brontë was our most beloved dog. When he was younger, Joel would stay at my parents when I was away working, but by the time he was sixteen he wanted to stay at home. I was worried about him in the house on his own so I decided that I would buy a guard dog.
We found Brontë and gave her that name because she was from Yorkshire. She immediately became part of the family. She dug everything up. Every plant, every flower was up and out of the ground as soon as my
back was turned. Brontë lived to a ripe old age and she was thirteen when we had her put down. It was a very sad day for me, and more so because of how upset Joel was. Brontë was his dog and even though he was twenty-eight when she died he was inconsolable.
We never told my mother that Brontë had died. Nor did we tell her that we had another dog, Ebony, although I’m not sure why. I think she would have had something to say about me having another dog alongside Brontë. Ebony is a black Labrador and was my dog in Jam and Jerusalem. She was also with me on the set when I filmed My Uncle Silas and she was more at home in front of the camera than I was. Whenever my mother was around, before she went in the home, we’d pretend that Ebony was Susie’s, as Susie lived next door to me. It became a ruse in which everyone seemed to be involved. Dean Sullivan used to thoroughly enjoy winding me up in front of my mum about Ebony. Ebony would be on the furniture and Dean would say to my mother, ‘Look, Margaret, that dog. She’s very badly behaved, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she is,’ my mother would agree. She loved Dean and would go along with everything he said.
‘I tell you, Margaret, if that dog was Sue’s it wouldn’t behave like that, would it?’ Susie would glare at Dean, trying not to laugh. He would continue, pretending not to notice, ‘Susie, though, she lets that dog run riot.’
My mother would nod in agreement at the Gospel according to Dean while Susie and I would have our backs to him, trying to stop our shoulders betraying the fact that we were hysterical with laughter.
So Brontë had been my mother’s firm favourite and it was sad to have to take those pictures away. I packed up her little amount of belongings and took them back to her house where there was the much larger task ahead of me. Something that has stayed with me about the process of clearing my mum’s stuff was that in the end, what she really wanted with her were just a few photos containing her treasured memories. We spend so much of our lives buying and acquiring things but none of it seems to matter in those final months, certainly not in my mum’s case: family was what had mattered.
When I set about tackling her house, Beryl and Peter, my mum’s next-door neighbours, and my aunty Jean and Susie again were all fantastic; all on hand to help me as I trawled through Mum’s belongings. We spent days sorting through them, some of the stuff she had kept for years. There were even wedding presents that were still in their box. I tried to throw away as much as I could but I am a hoarder and my mother’s boxed wedding presents are now in my attic and no doubt will end up being passed on to Joel to either throw away or keep in his attic.
But what struck me most was the things of mine that she had kept that I had no idea she even had, programmes from theatre productions I’d been in, cuttings from papers and magazines of shows I’d appeared in. I was ever so touched. She would never in a million years have shared with me the fact that she was keeping these things.
*
The day of my mother’s funeral finally arrived and we made our way to the church. The lovely thing about it taking place in the church next to the home was that some of the residents could attend, and as we pulled up outside they were all there waiting for her. I thought this was such a lovely thing, such a mark of respect for my mum. Then the staff all came into the service. I think my mother would have really loved this, as she had been so happy in her final months there.
Susie had had the order of service printed with two pictures of my mother on the front, one as a little girl and the other as an old lady, which was such a lovely personal touch. When my cousins entered the church carrying the coffin with the beautiful blue cloud of flowers on top, I just knew that we had done my mum proud. I read, as did Margot, and Dean said the eulogy which was very touching and funny.
‘Nessun Dorma’ was sung, as was ‘Bring Him Home’ from Les Misérables, and then as they carried the coffin out the recording of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ again from Les Misérables was played. Everyone had the words in their song sheet and joined in. It is such a rousing emotional song and I was so pleased, it felt that we left on a high with a real celebration of my mother’s life.
I had decided that only a few of us should attend the crematorium. I thought that it would be more bearable if it were just myself and Joel and my cousins who had carried the coffin. I wanted everyone else to leave the church after the ceremony and head straight to the wake. I wanted them to go out feeling it was a celebration and I suppose I wanted that last little time with my mother for myself and Joel. It was very sad to leave my mother but I found great comfort in her funeral and from the show of love from all the people who attended.
We had the wake at the golf club near my house in Warrington. We’d organised a great party. I was, of course, terribly sad but my mother had had a good life and a long life. There wasn’t the same desperate sadness that I experienced at Veron’s and Dom’s funerals, it was the natural order of things. In the same way that we talk about a natural birth I feel that my mum had a natural death, which hadn’t even involved medical intervention like my dad’s.
*
I feel very strongly that those last few years with my mum saw a shift in the dynamic of our relationship. I had spent so many years trying to please my mother without ever feeling I had. But as she became weaker and more vulnerable she turned to me and it was having her need me that made me realise that we had a very strong bond. She was my mother and I loved her very much. In those final months and days in the home when she was frightened and needed someone there, it was me that she wanted, me whose hand she held. She looked at me with love and I was transported back to those times on her knee, waiting for Listen With Mother, feeling that the world began and ended with my family.
My mother and I had been through a lot over my lifetime, both together and separately, and there were times when I found her utterly exasperating. But she also gave me much to be proud of. She was a strong woman who provided me with a solid family bedrock on which to build my life. She may have struggled to let me go free, as the old proverb said, but she sure as anything gave me somewhere I could always return to.
Chapter Twenty-One
SINCE MY MOTHER died there have been a number of times when I have thought that I would really like her to share something that I know she would have loved. As I’ve mentioned, it is the everyday things that I miss the most – not being able to just call her up and tell her about a recipe I’ve read or something I’m watching on TV that I know she’d have enjoyed. Those small bits of life are the things I really miss sharing with my mother. However, there have also been a few big occasions where I wished both she and my dad were there.
In 2009 I was appointed OBE. It was 5 November. When I looked this up in my diary to check the exact date, the entry for the day says simply 9 a.m.: Palace, as if I am often at Buck House having tea with the Queen! I’m not. And this was to be a big honour.
I had actually met the Queen once before, about ten years previously, when she came to Liverpool. Paul McCartney was there and I hadn’t seen him for years. It was the year of the Golden Jubilee and the Queen was visiting Liverpool and would re-open the Walker Art Gallery. All the great and good of Liverpool had been assembled and my mother had bought a new outfit for the occasion. As we waited in line to be introduced to Her Majesty, someone said, ‘And here’s our own member of the Royle Family, Ma’am.’
To which she replied, ‘Oh,’ in a rather disapproving fashion.
I think I had thought the Queen might chat to my mother but she didn’t and my mum was very disappointed. She didn’t say it, but I could tell. A little later Paul McCartney made his way over and made a real fuss of my mother. She was over the moon. When he walked away my mother was beaming from ear to ear. Not such a dirty Beatle now, I thought!
*
In early autumn 2009, I had been standing in the kitchen with Joel who was visiting when I received a call from my agent. ‘Hi, Sue, are you in? I’m sending something over.’
I needed some milk and the dogs were cross-legged. ‘I have to
pop out,’ I said, ‘but if I’m not here they can put it through the letterbox.’
I thought it was a script he was sending.
‘You’ll need to sign for this,’ he assured me.
An hour later a courier arrived. I signed for my envelope and opened it to see ER stamped in large letters. I handed the pen back to the courier – he was a normal courier on a bike, not the liveried individual on horseback one might expect to be delivering something from the Palace – so the penny still hadn’t dropped.
Joel looked over my shoulder. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
I read down the page. Slightly stunned, I announced, ‘I’ve been awarded an OBE!’
The hardest thing was keeping it from everybody until the names were released to the press. Then the day itself arrived and I was allowed to take three guests, so I brought Joel, Margot and Susie. It was a strange experience going to Buckingham Palace. There’s a familiarity to the place, having seen it a thousand times on TV and in passing. But stepping through the doors was like stepping into another world. The rooms are vast and seemingly endless. The walls are lined with paintings, the soldiers are very straight-backed. There is a real sense of history to the place but it is by no means a museum. It is a busy working palace. In fact, there were so many people going about their business that it felt like a small town.
The thing that struck me most was what a relaxed day it was. They are so obviously adept at putting on these events that everyone there made us feel at ease. We chatted to some of the accountants, who were very nice, and it dawned on me that for many of the people who worked there it was just that, a place of work.