When I was a kid, I heard the same series of noises almost every night. The nights I didn’t, were the nights I was asleep early and slept through it.
A slight creak, as the floorboard moved outside my sisters room. A whisper, and then the board in my room. Then the whisper in my ear. “Goodnight my love. I love you.” Sometimes I would open my eyes, and mum would smile at me and stroke my hair before she left. Some nights I’d hear her more than once, some nights she seemed to pace the hallways from dusk til dawn.
There was always a sadness to my mum, even before my dad left, even when they seemed a fully loved up couple. She didn’t have any other family. I once asked her about it, why she didn’t have parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, anything. She smiled her rueful smile and said “Why would I need anyone else? I’ve got my two girls, that’s all the family I need.”
Don’t get me wrong, she had friends. She was fun, she was loving, she was the life of the party. But there was always something else in the back of her eyes, and on some of those nightly check ins, although she would smile at me, I could see she had been crying.
I’ve been thinking of all these things today, while I make sandwiches and talk to the florist and walk aimlessly through my childhood home, tidying perfectly tidy rooms and fluffing perfectly fluffy cushions. My own daughters are arriving tomorrow for the funeral, my eldest has two young children and my youngest is vying for a big promotion, so while they both offered - completely genuinely - to drop everything and be here today to set up, they were both obviously slightly relieved when I said no. My sister will arrive any minute, in a whirlwind of emotion. Not that I don’t feel it myself, but after all, 93 is a good run, and it was peaceful, and she kept her faculties and mainly her health right to the end. We went out for lunch just 2 days before she died, and we laughed like we did when I was a kid.
This house feels so empty without her. But although I promised my eldest - who is after all a therapist - that I would write down my feelings about my loss (“Write it down as if for a stranger”, she urged me, something about using distance to process), I’m afraid that’s all I can muster for talking about my feelings right now.
My sister arrived, as predicted, in pieces. She saw mum a week ago and can’t believe she went downhill so fast, and no amount of me explaining that this is how things go sometimes will convince her. I managed to get her to calm enough to sit down with me, in the seats we always occupied as children, her on the “squishy chair”, me on the end of the sofa. We had a few drinks and reminisced, as you do on these occasions.
We talked about the time we tried to convince mum to sell up, get a little bungalow somewhere. She gently refused, and then when we persisted, less gently dug her heels in. We asked how she could manage a place of this size all on her own, and she gestured around. “Do you see any sign that I can’t manage?” she asked. We had to concede, the place was as it always had been. Clean. Calm. Home. We always felt safe here.
We talked about the time a kid at my school hit me in the playground. Once she had checked me for injuries and calmed me down, she stepped out of the room and phoned the kids parents, speaking very quietly and calmly, too quietly for me to hear, although I strained my ears at the closed door. That kid never came near me again. My sister has a similar story, although instead of physical bullying, she was told scary stories about monsters under the bed - silly now, but a big deal when you’re 6. My sister came home in floods of tears, scared that the monsters were going to get her. Mum scooped her into her lap. “There are no monsters here, my love” she told her. “Monsters aren’t allowed in my house.” My sister asked if mum was scared of monsters. Mum laughed. “No love. Monsters are scared of me.” Then she called the bullies parents. Again, my sister never had another problem.
Now that I’ve come to bed, my thoughts and emotions loosened by a small drink and a big talk, I’ll confess, I’m feeling a huge loss now. I don’t understand how someone so strong, so vital, can be gone. 2 weeks ago all 5 foot nothing, 100 pounds soaking wet of her, strolled into a restaurant by my side and I know nobody saw a frail 93 year old lady. She had a presence that made her seem like the tallest and strongest person in the room, and it feels impossible for her to be…
I was interrupted in finishing that sentence. It’s after the funeral now, well after. My sister and I have been talking late into the night again, and we have a lot more talking to do. My daughters, their partners and kids, plus my sisters son, are staying in a nearby hotel, and we will need to device what, if anything, to tell them tomorrow.
While I was writing last night, I was interrupted by a crash from the bathroom. Assuming my sister had stumbled into something (we are both notoriously clumsy, ever since we were kids) I went to see if she was OK, and was confused to find her coming out of her room, thinking that the noise had been me. The bathroom was trashed. The mirror and shower screen were broken. My mums toiletries, which I hadn’t the heart to throw away yet, were scattered over the floor, spilling everywhere. A pang of grief hit me once more as the scent of her lilac flower handcream brought back an image of her that felt too real to handle at that time.
My sister and I looked at each other. “What happened?” she asked. I could only shrug, bewildered. Then a noise, like a hissing, began from my sisters room. Because we were standing in a damaged bathroom my mind leapt to a burst pipe or similar, so without thinking any further I rushed into her childhood bedroom. She followed on my heels.
On entering the room, we were both hit with an unbearable pressure, forcing us to opposite walls. I could hear whispers, I’m told she could too, saying much the same things, in a hundred different voices.
“Finally…”
“Ours now…”
“After all this time…”
“So delicious…”
And then. A voice we both knew well. In a tone that, ridiculously, struck more fear into me than the bewildering cacophony so far, because it spoke to me on an instinctive level, learned since childhood to mean somebody was in Big Trouble. The last time I heard it was when mum found out I’d been smoking behind the music room at school. My sister told me later that, absurdly, though we are in our 60s, on hearing that tone she wondered what extra chores she was getting and what exactly she had been caught out doing. But I digress.
“WHAT do you think you are doing?”
The cacophony of whispers cut out immediately.
“LEAVE my girls alone!”
The pressure holding me to the wall abated. As my senses came flooding back, the scent of lilacs from the bathroom hit me hard. Looking at my sister across the room, I knew she had the same feeling.
The voice spoke again.
“Those of my blood, those who they love, they are off limits. I made that clear decades ago and nothing of any substance has changed on that score. Leave. And clean up your mess on your way out.”
A rustle swept through the house. When we looked later, the mirror and screen were still broken, but the shattered glass and spilled toiletries were gone.
My sister spoke first. “Mum? Are you… was that….. mum?”
Nothing.
So another late night, we talked, we compared our experiences, they were much the same. Finally we went to bed, exhausted. Then, I heard a creak, and a whisper from my sisters room.
Then another creak, closer.
“Goodnight my love. I love you.”
I opened my eyes. There was nobody there. Just a gently pressure on my hair, just for a second, and a lingering scent of lilac.