Discipline is the road to freedom

got the call half eleven quarter to twelve at night it said thomas hq and i knew it was serious it was the old man and mum had had another fall banged her head and was in hospital you want to get up here as soon as you can and i knew straight away that this was it so i went there in the morning and there was a group of family types standing in a room with the old lady breathing heavy with eyes closed a new atmosphere but it felt alright people coming and going talk about who was there and who was not all very formal and standing to attention the old man lording it and organising sandwiches and familiar with the staff looking at his watch eyeing us up and down inspecting for faults – midday – it was obvious she wasn’t going to be standing up again and creeping around in the truth of my brain i was happy for her and a sense a tiny tiny crack in the dark of excitement edging its way through my body mum was getting intermittent morphine shots and i wondered what kind of stuff would be in the medicine cabinet back in their en suite bathroom i would stand next to mum and put my hand on hers and say encouraging things and hope she could hear me in the couple of years leading up to this point me and her had become closer i’d begun to think of us as friends and she would occasionally say things to me i knew she’d told no one else but there at her side with the comings and goings and small talk formal staged talk carrying on in that room with a long view i had this under feeling she was in the process of finally escaping but what what was i to know then i still knew nothing i didn’t even know who i was i knew fuck all apart from the fact i wished my siblings and old man would disappear and leave me alone with mum and the long shot of sneaking a swig of that industrial strength oramorph this went on all day my faith and belief in the old mans stoic stiff upper lip were being tested throughout those long hours and i dared myself to wonder a couple of times if he actually gave a damn was he no he couldn’t be more interested in keeping order over all and sundry flirting with the staff and keeping up appearances surely not no this was just his way of dealing with it holding the wheel guiding us through the storm surely it was normal to be more concerned with us than his wife of sixty three years laying there on the bed the life ebbing away from her he didn’t seem to give a fuck but no someone’s got to keep a grip on things and set an example – around seven or eight that evening they all got the notion and left including the old man leaving just me my brother and his wife it could’ve been better but it was a vast improvement within twenty minutes of the departure of the high ranking nazi officials mr death entered the room and my mother began to display an awareness of his presence everything changed the light the atmosphere the very air in the room one could sense it smell it and as my mother approached her death i felt myself dying too or what i had thought was my self what i’d displayed as my self what had been manufactured as my self began to crumble and leave my body as if some unwelcome decaying phantom it was tangible exciting and uplifting i felt closer to my mother than i ever had done i loved her i wanted to be back inside her my hands tightly gripped the seat of the chair i was sitting on next to the bed so as to physically stop myself from clambering under the coverings and into the bed with her i felt i was a part of her for really the first time in my life i felt a passionate love for her and a need for her as if a baby shat out of her and connected still to her intrinsically reliant on her this sensation this feeling and awareness this realisation of birth death coming going was absolutely incredible it was an ecstasy – mother stirred and the murmurings of deaths rattle sounded the legs twitching and signs of twisting from side to side she was trying to get out my brother on the opposite side of the bed i went to the nurses station an hour before a shot had been administered come and fetch me if she seems distressed and we’ll give her some more by this stage of the game i’d forgotten all about my own greedy needs and the last thing in the world i wanted was to be detached from this moment i’d never felt so alive i described the symptoms and sure enough shortly after the nurse entered the room holding the big needle.