Margaret
Another story inspired by my family. This time a far more serious theme. Like a lot of families we have had to deal with our share of dementia, the horror and distress of seeing someone we love retreating into a shadow world and changing.
This offering is fiction, but it is based in hard learned experience.
Margaret
Margaret looked down at her bed.
It stood a neat testament to her early rising. Beds should be exited by six and made by seven thirty, except on Sunday when an extra half an hour was acceptable.
“Early to bed, early to rise” was one of her mother’s maxims.
One of many.
And Margaret agreed with her, provided the time between the two events was spent in uninterrupted sleep.
She wondered what her mother would say if she found her lying down on her bed in the middle of the afternoon, a week day afternoon. A single, silent tear rolled down her cheek, she was so tired she felt sick, the nausea coming over her in waves.
More than anything she wanted to lie upon the bed and sink down into the depths of oblivion. Sink down into sleep and stay that way until some internal clock announced she was no longer tired.
She allowed temptation to seduce her and sat down on the edge, one tiny excuse would see her head on the pillow and her eyes crashing shut. And she would have found that excuse but for the knowledge her mother would awake from her afternoon doze in the next half an hour and demand her attendance.
The room had been hers long ago, she’d left it behind for a world full of possibilities, but her mother had kept it almost unchanged, forever Margaret’s room.
A sheet anchor in the storms of life or a cable to drag her back?
On the table in front of the window was an unfinished jigsaw. She marked the days by how much or how little she was able to do. Once she had sewn intricate pictures in cross stitch, setting each little cross like a jewel in a frame work, building a beautiful creation out of colour and time and patient skill.
Now she was too tired to concentrate, to count the stitches and to match the threads. She satisfied her need for creative order by jigsaws in those few precious moments when she had any leisure.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
The querulous voice sounded from below. She shut her ears and tried to ignore it just for a few last precious seconds.
“Margaret!”
Once she had sat in this same bed and cried out for comfort. And a woman she loved had come and given it, soothed her fears, eased her pains, wiped away all tears.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
“I’m coming,” she replied and went to answer the demands of an old lady who now only remembered a name.
(c) Bev Allen 2011
This offering is fiction, but it is based in hard learned experience.
Margaret
Margaret looked down at her bed.
It stood a neat testament to her early rising. Beds should be exited by six and made by seven thirty, except on Sunday when an extra half an hour was acceptable.
“Early to bed, early to rise” was one of her mother’s maxims.
One of many.
And Margaret agreed with her, provided the time between the two events was spent in uninterrupted sleep.
She wondered what her mother would say if she found her lying down on her bed in the middle of the afternoon, a week day afternoon. A single, silent tear rolled down her cheek, she was so tired she felt sick, the nausea coming over her in waves.
More than anything she wanted to lie upon the bed and sink down into the depths of oblivion. Sink down into sleep and stay that way until some internal clock announced she was no longer tired.
She allowed temptation to seduce her and sat down on the edge, one tiny excuse would see her head on the pillow and her eyes crashing shut. And she would have found that excuse but for the knowledge her mother would awake from her afternoon doze in the next half an hour and demand her attendance.
The room had been hers long ago, she’d left it behind for a world full of possibilities, but her mother had kept it almost unchanged, forever Margaret’s room.
A sheet anchor in the storms of life or a cable to drag her back?
On the table in front of the window was an unfinished jigsaw. She marked the days by how much or how little she was able to do. Once she had sewn intricate pictures in cross stitch, setting each little cross like a jewel in a frame work, building a beautiful creation out of colour and time and patient skill.
Now she was too tired to concentrate, to count the stitches and to match the threads. She satisfied her need for creative order by jigsaws in those few precious moments when she had any leisure.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
The querulous voice sounded from below. She shut her ears and tried to ignore it just for a few last precious seconds.
“Margaret!”
Once she had sat in this same bed and cried out for comfort. And a woman she loved had come and given it, soothed her fears, eased her pains, wiped away all tears.
“Margaret! Margaret!”
“I’m coming,” she replied and went to answer the demands of an old lady who now only remembered a name.
(c) Bev Allen 2011
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