Letter to Mum from Home
My UK book publisher, Canongate, invited me to write and read a letter for their #ReadALetter initiative. You might want to check out other letters written by people in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic on the Letters Live YouTube channel, and you can learn more at www.letterslive.com. Here is a video of me reading the letter, followed by the letter itself.
Video originally published by Canongate.
Vancouver
April 10, 2020
Dear Mum,
I am sitting in the garden on this Good Friday in Vancouver and thinking of you. It has been almost four weeks since we left Glasgow, in rather a hurry as you might recall, after Justin Trudeau called all Canadians to come home. I remember feeling rather cared about when I heard the urgency in our prime minister’s voice.
The magnolia stellata by the back deck is blooming magnificently this year with all the sun we’ve been having. Remember we planted it after Dad died twenty-three years ago, and it’s been such a companion to us all these years, in his honour. I feel lucky that your green thumb got passed along to me, although if you were here you might comment on my rather poor pruning job of the wisteria. Being 88 with sore knees makes gardening for you rather impossible these days, doesn’t it? I am glad you have Anneke helping you with it once a week.
Since we got back and through our fourteen days of quarantine, I have been thinking a great deal about our conversation the night before I left, about COVID-19 and the global pandemic and your wishes.
I had to break the news to you gently that evening before we left, that with you being in the high-risk age group you would have to stay indoors for the next few months and not have any visitors, to protect yourself from the virus and not spread it to others. You said Mary was a Godsend and perhaps could add more hours and live-in fulltime as your caregiver, until everything settles down. Your practical side kicked in and I was glad to hear you strategizing and so happy Mary agreed.
You asked how the virus affects people and I explained in my ‘nursey’ voice that most people get fevers and bad coughs, as well as the usual aches and pains like most flus. Most people recover in a week or two, but some people get very sick quite quickly and require hospitalization and sometimes intensive care, with ventilators to help them breathe. There have been quite a lot of deaths Mum, I remember saying quietly, in the hopes that the words would sound soft and not too scary to you.
Your response was immediate. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go to hospital even if I did get very sick. You have always known what I want—a quick easy exit when the time comes, with some good drugs to help me on my way. You’ve seen my advanced directives. No interventions to prolong my life. And all you kids would take care of me here wouldn’t you, like you did for your Dad?’
We gave Dad such a good send-off didn’t we? He had such a sudden and short illness at sixty-seven with that horrible, untreatable brain tumour but we made the best of it didn’t we? The endless re-runs of Dad’s Army and the plentiful supply of Marks and Spencer’s champagne got us through. And of course the grit and grace of our beautiful family. Dad did die peacefully in the bed you shared for thirty-eight years, all of us at his side. Yes, it was dreadfully sad but not horrifying, and it was gentle and not frightening. It was how an expected death should be.
You looked at me then with those intense blue eyes and in that moment I remembered all the other conversations we’d had over the years. You’ve always been adamant about not having your life prolonged if you got dementia like your mother and two sisters did, in their eighties. You’d always say, ‘I have had a wonderful life and I don’t want to go into a home, or be kept alive, if I don’t have all my marbles. I just want to die with dignity.’ All four of us kids have heard you loud and clear and fully support you Mum. And that evening before I left, I told you that, of course, we would come and look after you at home if you were dying.
But Mum, I needed to write this letter today, to say what I couldn’t that night, because I didn’t know then. Because the stay at home orders had not yet been implemented.
Mum, if you do catch the virus, which you likely won’t, we wouldn’t be able to fly home from Canada and take care of you, and if you were admitted to hospital you likely wouldn’t be allowed any visitors. Kate and Sarah might be able to drive up from London and Mary would certainly take excellent care of you at home. She reassured us she would but I hate the thought that I couldn’t be there with you. All these years working with people at the end of life and then not being able to be with you would be heartbreaking. I always imagined I would see you out of the world like Dad, with ease, and some decent laughs along the way. And fingers crossed I still will, some years from now.
My biggest hope is that you don’t catch the virus, so you must do as you are told by Mary , which I know is hard for you, but please stay inside and don’t have any visitors and swallow that disgusting oil of oregano to boost your immune system that I left you on the kitchen table.
If you were ill and I couldn’t be with you, don’t worry, I would Facetime, Zoom, Skype, phone, write letters, send videos and anything else I could think of to tell you how much I love you, and what an amazing mum you have been to me. We would also make sure you got the best medical care possible to ensure you’d have a peaceful and dignified death with as little suffering as possible. Your wishes are written down and videotaped and I am glad for that. Your prior planning has made everything so much easier for all of us. We won’t ever have to panic our way through conversations in the midst of a crisis.
Daphne and I have also discussed our advanced directives specific to COVID-19. With her being a doctor on the frontlines of palliative care she and her colleagues are all preparing for the what ifs. If I had the virus and needed to be hospitalized with breathing problems, I would want to know the likelihood of me getting better in ICU. If there was a 60% chance or higher that I could make it out of the ICU and survive, then I’d likely try. But if not, I would give my ventilator to a younger person who has more chance of survival and more good years to live.
I would choose to go home to die. Dying in an ICU without my beloveds around me is not a choice I would make.
So, Mum, although I imagine this might be a hard letter to read, I hope it reassures you somehow that we will take the best care we can of you during this bizarre time, even though we aren’t actually able to travel to see you.
In the meantime, enjoy the daffodils and your rhododendrons soon to be in full bloom and I promise to send you a photo of the wisteria blossoms.
Talk next Sunday as usual. Thanks for listening and please call me when you get this letter so that we can talk about everything.
I hope our plan for a visit this Fall will happen.
Much love
Janie xox