The Blackbird

A short story

This is a story about assisted dying. Some readers might find it distressing.

Rose struggles up through the fog and opens her eyes to sunlight and gold. The cherry tree outside the bedroom window is losing the last of its leaves. It gleams with a lustrous sorrow as it relinquishes them one by one and lets them drift to the ground on shafts of sunlight.

Will it be like that? A letting go, a downward flow into oblivion.

She feels a sense of solidarity with the tree. Each dying day is like those leaves, precious because they are so few, and so soon to be gone.

She hadn’t expected this ecstasy, this clinging to every rare moment of life. She knows how the end will come but not when. It will surely be soon, though. The pain is bearable. It’s the helplessness and humiliation that are defeating her. It’s right to do it this way, before it destroys them all, especially Laura.

They have the paperwork. All they have to do is phone the doctor and then wait for him to come. Everything has been planned, leaving nothing to chance.

Laura still won’t accept it.

“No Mum, we’ll never let you do that,” she insisted when Rose told the family about the diagnosis and her decision. Six months or less, they’d said. That was nearly a year ago. “You cared for me,” said Laura, crying. You gave birth to me and nursed me and you were there for me through all the sad, bad times. Now I’m here for you, for as long as it takes and whatever it takes.”

Such loving conviction shining tearfully in those blue eyes. Such determination in that face. Did she have any idea what she was promising? Rose doubts it.

The cherry tree was in bloom when Laura and Richard brought her to live here, when the cancer began to make its presence felt. The tree was a billowing bouquet of springtime flowers. On warm nights Rose slept with the window open so that the fragrance whispered into the room.

Laura has done up the small room beautifully. She wants her mother’s dying to be the very best it can be. She’s painted the walls in soft yellow in imitation of the morning sunshine. There are photographs of Rose’s favourite people and places on the walls. Pete and Rose on honeymoon in Paris, young and smiling in each other’s arms with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Laura and Benji, aged eight and four, laughing at some forgotten joke in the garden of the old house.

The house has been empty since Rose moved in with Laura and Richard and the children.

“You must sell the house,” Rose told Laura. “I won’t be living there again.”

“Absolutely not,” Laura insisted. “There will be time enough for that, Mum. Just let’s enjoy the time we have left together.”

Rose knows they’re struggling financially. This house is too small. When she moved in, Luke and Tommy had to start sharing a room. Amanda still has her own room. If they sold Rose’s house, they could afford to buy somewhere bigger.

But Laura doesn’t want to let go. She has let go of too much already. Her father. Her brother. She clings to her mother and her old home, because that’s all she has left of her childhood.

Rose’s gaze drifts to the photo of Benji in his graduation robes. So young and bright and full of promise. It was a drunk driver. Benji was twenty-two. Is he waiting for her out there, tomorrow or the day after or the day after? She wants to believe that. She wishes she could believe it.

And Pete? Will he be there too, waiting to welcome her with their son?

Laura has put a table of special mementoes next to Rose’s bed, with a vase of fresh flowers. Today it’s white roses and lavender. There’s a wedding photo, Rose’s face framed in blonde curls and a long white veil with a bouquet trailing down the front of her dress, Pete holding her arm, stiff and shy in his shiny new suit. She reaches out and trails a finger down the front of the glass. A bony finger, as if her skeleton is already struggling to get out.

“Hello there,” she says to Pete. “I’ll see you very soon.”

Pete died of a heart attack five years ago. They were married for forty-five years. He was too young. Only sixty-eight. But he smoked all his adult life, and he had high blood pressure.

She always thought she would outlive him by decades. She comes from a long line of octogenarians and she was fit and healthy until the twinges started in her stomach. But now here she is.

Still, seventy-three is a good age, and she’s had a full life. She ought to be thankful. She is thankful.

She misses Pete. It was a good marriage, all things considered. There’s been a Pete-shaped absence in her life since he died. It’s a gentle absence, not like the jagged grief of losing Benji that’s never really gone away.

If you live into your seventies, you must expect to lose people along the way. Even so, Benji was too young. It’s an offence against nature to see your child on a life support system, to have to agree to the machines being turned off and to wait with him while everything fades away into forever. That was the only time she ever saw Pete cry.

Her dying is nothing, nothing at all, compared to that. Even so, she can’t deny that she’s afraid.

Laura was wild with grief when her brother died. She dropped out of university, went travelling, phoned home often needing money, leaving Rose and Pete wondering if they had lost not one child but two.

But Laura came back, purged and ready to live again. She finished her degree, met dull, reliable Richard, married, had children, all in the proper order, all just as these things should be.

Rose looks at the photo of the grandchildren on the wall. Ten-year-old Amanda with her brothers on either side, Luke, aged eight and Tommy, aged five. That was taken last spring, when they went to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park to see the azaleas and rhododendrons in bloom.

Rose was in a wheelchair. She could only walk short distances by then. Laura made light of the task of pushing her. There was something carefree about her in those early days, as if she relished the opportunity to care for her mother. Do all women feel that duty of care, that need to be needed?

Laura is working from home while she’s caring for Rose. They thought it would all be over by now. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks, but it’s already been seven months.

Laura is no longer carefree. She tries to hide it from her mother, but Rose knows her daughter too well. She knows the furrows that sit between her eyebrows, the tense grooves that appear down the sides of her mouth, the sharpness in her voice when her tone belies the effort of finding the right words to reassure her mother.

“It’s alright Mum. Really, it’s alright.”

“I’m sorry Laura. I’m sorry.”

“Shh. It’s not your fault Mum. You don’t need to say sorry.”

“But the smell. I’m so ashamed. And the bedding. You have to wash all the bedding. I think it’s time, Laura. I really think it’s time.”

“No.” Laura sounded terrified. “I won’t let you do it Mum. Whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, I’m here for you.”

It has only happened once, but it will happen again. The cancer is winning. Rose’s body is giving up. She has promised herself that if it happens again – when it happens again – she will insist that the time has come. Deep down, she knows that next time, Laura might not resist.

Her daughter is falling apart before her eyes, with the unrelenting strain and worry of caring for her mother and her children, doing her job, running the house because it’s a traditional marriage and Richard regards occasionally hoovering the carpets and loading the dishwasher as his contribution to the housework. Why do women repeat that pattern generation after generation? The caring, the nurturing, the nursing.

But Rose has been so glad of Laura’s care these last few months. Life has been good. Until the accident last week, she’d persuaded herself that it could go on like this while nature took its course. But now? Nature is taking over with a raw animal force. Rose does not want their last memories to be of an incontinent old woman dying in her own shit.

Suddenly, she hears it. The window is open a crack, and the blackbird has arrived to sing his hymn of welcome to the day. He comes every morning to the cherry tree. Every morning, he gives Rose reason to be thankful that she has awoken to another day, another rare and precious gift of time. She closes her eyes and listens.

It’s the sweetest of sounds. Clear and pure in the morning air. A distillation of the joy of living. Soon, she will hear it for the last time. Will she dissolve into the melody, become a song of joy, floating free and unconfined in the light of an endless new day?

Who knows?

How can she explain that every day she wants to wake up just once more because that sound is the most beautiful sound in the world, and every morning the blackbird comes to remind her of the sweetness of living?

Then the noises from downstairs blot out the blackbird’s song.

“No, I haven’t washed your gym kit. You’ll have to wear it as it is.” Laura’s voice, crackling with tension.

“I can’t. It’s all creased and dirty.” Amanda protests noisily. “I’m not going to school. I won’t go to school.”

“You have to go to school. Eat your breakfast and hurry up.” Laura is shouting. She never used to shout at the children.

“I won’t. I’m not going. I’m staying home. You can tell them I’m sick.” Amanda is also shouting.

“You can’t stay home. I told you, you’re going to school.” Laura sounds choked, as if she’s about to burst into tears.

“I hate you. You can’t make me.” Amanda is crying.

“I’m so bloody sick and tired of you all.” Laura’s voice is thick with sobs. Rose is shocked. This is all her fault. Her stomach gripes with anxiety, and then she feels it.

No, please no. Not now. Not like this. She clenches her bottom as tightly as she can, but her muscles are weak and wasted.

She uses a bedpan now. Another reason why she thinks the time has come. The humiliation and indignity of it all. But the blackbird. The blackbird is still singing. One more day. That’s what she tells herself, every day.

She tries to hold it in. If she can just wait until Laura gets back from the school run. She won’t be long. But that’s too long. She can’t hold it in.

“Luke, where’s your school bag? Hurry up! We’re going to be late.” Laura’s voice again, shrill with frustration. Where’s Richard? He must have left early.

“It’s in my bedroom,” says Luke.

“Well, go and get it, now!” shouts Laura.

Rose feels the hot, shaming mess escape her body. Then the smell. Too late. Too late. She tries to hide it under the duvet, but the smell won’t stay hidden. She hears Luke’s feet on the stairs. Please no. Please, don’t let him come in. The door is open. He comes in, bright-eyed in his school uniform.

“Hello Grandma. Are you alright?”

She tries to smile. “I’m fine. Hurry up. You need to get your school bag.”

“Eww, what’s that smell Grandma?”

“I had a little accident, but it’s alright Luke. Don’t tell your Mum. I’ll sort it out.”

“No Grandma. Don’t worry. I’ll get Mum.”

Before Rose can speak, he’s running downstairs, calling to his mother. “You need to come and help Grandma. She’s done a poo. You need to come and clean her.”

There’s a silence then. A long terrible silence. What’s happening? The blackbird has gone. Laura is coming upstairs, her footsteps heavy. The effort is too much. She appears in the doorway. Dear God, she looks ghastly. Her eyes are puffy and red, with dark shadows underneath. The grooves of stress are carved into her face.

“Couldn’t you have waited?” she says. “Why didn’t you call me?” She hasn’t spoken to Rose like that before. Impatient and accusing.

“I’m sorry Laura. I’m really sorry. I’ll be fine. Take the children to school. I can wait.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t lie here in your own shit for half an hour.” She yanks back the duvet roughly and winces at the smell. She bundles it up and throws it on the floor. Then she bursts into tears and folds her body over Rose’s.

“I’m sorry Mum. I’m so sorry. It’s alright. It’s not your fault. I’m so, so sorry.” Her hair smells greasy up against Rose’s face. Laura has always been fastidious about things like that. Her body shakes and shudders. Rose lifts her arms and wraps them around her daughter. It’s an effort. She’s so weak. “I’m sorry,” sobs Laura. “I feel such a failure. I want to care for you Mum. It’s a privilege. It’s my duty. I want to do it.”

“Hush, darling. Hush. It’s alright. Take the children to school. I can wait until you get back, honestly.”

“No Mum, it’s fine. They can be late. It doesn’t matter.” She sniffs and straightens up. She runs the back of her hand across her nose, then she goes and fetches a towel and drapes it over the armchair by the window. She opens the window in a futile attempt to get rid of the smell.

She eases Rose up and takes off her soiled nightdress, careful to avoid spreading the mess. Then she lifts Rose’s naked body gently in her arms and carries her over to the armchair.

“You’re like a little bird, Mum,” she says, holding Rose close. “I’m scared you’ll break if I touch you.”

“Oh, I’m a tough old bird underneath it all,” says Rose. She snuggles her nose into Laura’s neck. “You need to wash your hair,” she says, because that’s what she would have said, if everything were normal, if their relationship were still what it used to be, secure and loving enough to bicker and gripe.

Laura gives a feeble laugh. “You’re a bossy old cow,” she says. “You need to wash your bum.”

The laughter releases them, but there’s no release from this.

Laura settles Rose into the armchair and drapes a blanket over her nakedness, then she goes to the door and calls downstairs to the children. “You three get your things ready. I’ll be down soon.” Her voice is calmer now.

Rose looks out of the window, hoping to catch sight of the blackbird, but it’s gone.

Laura fetches a basin and tenderly washes her mother. She eases a clean nightdress over her shrivelled old body. The nightdress is decorated with sprigs of flowers and lace. Everything Laura does for Rose is done with such delicacy and care. The nightdress is soft against Rose’s skin, with a freshly washed smell that layers itself over the stink in the room. The bedding smells fresh and clean too, as Laura lifts her mother back into bed and leans her against the plumped up pillows, covering her with the duvet and bending to kiss her forehead.

Rose’s mind is made up. She’d like to ask the children to come up and say goodbye, but the room still smells. Maybe Laura reads her mind. She fetches a can of room freshener and sprays the room, then she lights a scented candle and puts it on the bedside table.

She goes downstairs and Rose hears her speaking quietly to the children, but she can’t hear what she’s saying. They come up, all four of them. The children kiss Rose on the cheek, one by one.

“Bye Grandma. See you later.”

“I love you,” she tells them.

Laura stands by the bedside a moment with her arms around the children’s shoulders. Rose takes a mental snapshot, because this is how she wants to remember them forever.

“We love you very much,” says Laura, “don’t we children?”

Yes. We love you Grandma,” they chorus. And then they’re gone. It’s as if they know, as if Laura is giving Rose permission.

Rose picks up her phone from the bedside table. She has a special number to call, so that she doesn’t have to join the queue for the surgery.

“It’s time,” she tells the nurse. “Could you tell Doctor Jenkins that Rose wants him to come today. He’ll know what I mean.”

This time, she thinks Laura won’t prevent it from happening. It’s time.

Then the blackbird is back, singing. How did he know? She looks out of the window, and sees a single leaf flutter down, golden and dying in the sunlight.