Tipping Points
“Where were you brought up, Celia?”
“Here, Mum”.
We moved here as a family forty seven years ago.
And now I am back, trying to finish off my thesis. The television is on. Dad wants to read or talk, but always ends up falling asleep in his special red chair. It lays him down and tips him up again, borrowed leverage to help him stand. I am sitting by the fire, occasionally looking up from my laptop. Mum watches Dad closely as he sleeps, relaxing slightly when she sees his chest move.
My brother’s old room. Mum’s office more recently, though not for a while. Pictures of grandchildren, folders of Mum’s poetry, an anthology with one of them published within. Several boxes of porridge, tissues, toilet paper, washing powder, shampoo, tins of soup and peaches (Brexit-ready stockpile but useful in lockdown), a commode (new, in readiness), moved to make room. My laptop connected to a bigger screen.
“Celia, Celia!”
“Here, Mum!” I go downstairs.
The dining room, door open. I can be seen on shuffles between living room and toilet.
Cable stretched between laptop and socket, piles of papers, engineering and scientific magazines, post, crossword books, pencils, glasses, mats, coasters, several 3D-printed prototypes. Bags of medicines.
The special red chair. “Here are your tablets, Dad”. A fumble. The glass of water falls. The laptop dies.
But is resurrected.
Dad cheers across the breakfast table as I submit my thesis online.
A hospice ward. An uncomfortable chair. Kind doctors and nurses. A loud patient in the opposite bed. Laptop on my knee, blue-gloved fingers tapping – minor thesis corrections now – while Dad sleeps. And wakes. And tries to talk, his voice getting fainter, no leverage to help him speak.
A rented flat down the road. Husband making me cups of tea. Putting warm food on the table at my back. Desk looking over the road.
Laptop propped on books.
A different ward. One other patient. Quieter. Nearer the nurses’ station. A more comfortable chair – it can lie me down and tip me up again.
Laptop on my knee.
Doctors squat down, talk to me, kind eyes above their masks.
Laptop thrust aside.
Mum, brothers, grandchildren, are allowed to come. Two at a time.
Laptop in my bag.
A side room. One bed. Me and a brother either side. Early morning sun streaming through the open window. A resting face.
Laptop at the rented flat.
After Dad left the house a month before, Mum thought she was no longer at home.
Even though she was.
When Dad died…
I no longer have a writing room.
Even though I have.
Celia is finishing her post-viva corrections for a PhD thesis on spiritual despair and the mutability of Medieval devotional language at the University of Kent
Instagram: dr_celia_mill