Marilyn Stowe Blog

Family comes first – and we often learn it the hard way

How many of us take our loved ones for granted? It is easy to forget that in a split second, lives can be transformed forever.

Last week I had finished writing my post about John Ruskin, had exercised flat out on my Wattbike and was looking forward to a calorie-filled Sunday lunch with my sister Suzy and our husbands. We were going to try out a restaurant in Harrogate and then do some Xmas shopping.

Then the telephone rang – and everything changed.

My sister was crying on the phone. Our mum had fallen and was in hospital. Dad had called Suzy in a dreadful state and asked her for help. My parents rely very much on her because she is a wonderful nurse with them.

The accident had happened in Netanya, Israel, where my parents spend part of the year. Mum had been admitted to hospital and my sister needed to travel out as quickly as possible. We were told that it wasn’t serious: my mum was in shock, but ok.

Unlike Suzy, I know I’m not a good nurse – but I do have my uses. Within 20 minutes I had my sister and her London-based daughter, Abby, booked on the next flight out from Heathrow and a car had arrived to take Suzy straight to London’s Heathrow Airport. With Suzy on her way, I spent most of the day on the phone to my dad, trying to keep him calm. He sounded increasingly desperate as he described my mum’s condition. Very worried about them both, I telephoned some of their friends and asked them to see if they could help until my sister arrived. When the friends called back, they made some comments about my mum’s condition that worried me more. My sister arrived, phoned from the hospital and said that although my mum was suffering from superficial head injuries, her condition was stable and there was no need for my brother or me to travel out.

The next day the world changed again. Suzy asked me to get there as fast as I could.

I found myself at Luton Airport, on the next flight out of the UK to Tel Aviv. Two thousand miles from my mum and panicking, I spent £50 on sweets, chocolates, energy bars moisturized tissues and magazines that somehow I thought we all might need in the hospital.

I arrived in Israel a few hours after my brother, who had taken a night flight from London. I checked into a local hotel and a waiting taxi took me to the hospital, where I raced up a few flights of stairs to my mum’s ward. I flew past people on trolleys in the aisles and people lying in beds until I came to the end of the ward and saw a side ward with four women in it. One of them was my mum. I couldn’t easily recognise her from her facial injuries. I went straight up to her and kissed her. She managed a weak smile and whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you”. All those years of hiding my feelings from clients came in very useful at that point. I was terribly shocked when I saw her and couldn’t show it. The feelings are difficult to describe.

The main challenge was stabilising her through the trauma she had sustained. She had fallen flat onto her face. She isn’t strong or well, and her blood pressure was dangerously high. There were two drips over her bed. My exhausted father was sent back to their apartment to get some sleep along with my brother. Suzy, Abby and I sat on some white plastic chairs we found to monitor my mum through the night at her bedside.

At around 2 am I found myself looking around the darkened ward, thinking how surreal it was. What was I doing in a Middle Eastern hospital where few people spoke English? Nothing made sense. When had I last eaten? I couldn’t remember. Why wasn’t I asleep at home? Why was my mum lying in that tiny bed so ill?  The woman in the next bed suddenly sat up and cried out. Her appendix had been removed and she was six months pregnant. She was in terrible pain and clearly thought she was miscarrying. I ran and got the nurse and a doctor, but there was no treatment they could give her. They told her to try and get some rest, but I managed to understand from her that she was too frightened to go to sleep. So during that night I found myself nursing a complete stranger. My Luton tissues came in handy to mop her brow; I fetched her some water from a vending machine,which she sipped through the night. She held my hand at one point, as I was trying to get her to sleep and at the same time there was Mum in the next bed, who also had to be nursed. At one point the woman asked me in her broken English if I was a nurse, and I said no. It was one of the kindest things that anyone has ever said to me.

As for my mum: a wise person once said that there is no point worrying about what might happen in the future. Just love those around you as much as you can. That’s what I told myself and kept telling myself during that night as Suzy and I watched over our mum.

Che sera, sera. What will be, will be.

My mum made it and we are all now home in England. What’s more, when she was first discharged, “as weak as a kitten” in her words, she still managed (with help) to light the Shabbat candles in their apartment. Together we celebrated the first night of Chanukah with the lighting of more candles. She sat at the table to eat for a while, and again it was all surreal. It seemed we had gone back in time forty years, and that we sitting around the table as children again. My traumatised parents – my barely recognisable mum and my stressed out dad – beamed at us, and told us how much they loved us.

Many of us, like me, have families and friends, parents, spouses, children, brothers, sisters and grandparents, that we take for granted. We don’t tell them often enough, perhaps never, how much we love them.

At this time of the year, all of us, with or without faith are meant to celebrate a season of goodwill to all mankind. Families will spend time together with families. Friends will be with friends. Not everyone will be able to tell their loved ones how much they are truly loved. Many more will be desperately missing their loved ones: spouses or partners, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren. They will be missing them and aching for an opportunity to tell them how much they are loved. Please think of them, too; there is nothing to lose by reaching out. Che sera, sera. What will be, will be. So what is stopping you?

Seasons Greetings, and much love to everyone.

Image credit: Mary Cassatt.