Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (30 page)

On my first cautious foray out of bed, I feel like a refugee, with all my worldly goods—the epidural, the catheter and urine
bag, the drips—dragging along beside me. I am still bent right over. I make it perhaps twenty feet before I have to turn back
and retreat to the safety of my bed. I slump back on the pillows, worn out. My stomach has been sliced down the center, from
the top of my belly button to my pubis. What with the appendix scar and the cesarean scar, too, my body will look like a metropolitan
road map. Sexy, huh?

All day long, people come to do things to me—inject me to prevent blood clots, check my blood pressure, replace my drip bags,
empty my urine bag, take my temperature. One of the toilets, I am told, has a big sign on the outside of the door—
MRSA, DO NOT ENTER.
Even this doesn’t disturb my newfound equilibrium. I look at the inside of my right arm, blue from the wrist to the elbow.
The bruising will go,
I tell myself.
Some of my veins aren’t working as well as they should. New lines have to be set up. So what’re a few sharp needles between
an overworked nurse and a malleable patient?

I’m relentlessly upbeat. I do the breathing exercises as prescribed by the physiotherapist, and every time I get up, I venture
a little farther down the corridor. Each day the number of tubes diminishes. First to go, after three days, is the epidural.
Without it, the pain is less severe than I’d feared—it’s kept under control with injections, and after another twenty-four
hours, I manage to wean myself off the painkillers altogether.

“You’re doing very well,” the consultant says to me on his rounds, as consultants always do. “But we can’t take this tube
out of your nose until your bowels start functioning. Nothing to eat for a while yet, I’m afraid.”

For the first time in my life, I’m not interested in food. “I’m planning on going on a trek at the end of November,” I tell
the consultant. “In the Atlas Mountains. Shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

“Hmm. That’s only about two and a half months from now. You’ve had major surgery, and although I wouldn’t say it’s impossible,
I can’t guarantee you’ll be up to it. And it’s certainly not something I’d recommend so soon. Let’s see how well you recover
and not make too many plans, okay?”

“Okay,” I say aloud. Not okay, I say to myself. Not even having half my insides out is going to stop me from going on that
trek. I have to prove something to myself, though right now I can’t think what that something is.

• • •

I’m no longer nil-by-mouth. Mike turns up with chicken soup.

“Since when did you become a Jewish mother?” I ask, sipping tentatively at my first sustenance for ten days.

He grins. “Since just before I poured the soup from the carton into this mug and popped it into the microwave at the end of
the corridor.”

“Oh, Mike, you and Stanko are perfect angels. You have no idea how grateful I am to you both for coming to stay.”

“Since I’m your favorite cousin, it’s the least I can do. We’ve already booked Sharon to come and give you a foot massage
and a facial as soon as you get back. Now that your nose tube is out, I can see the damage that’s been done under that nose
plaster over the past ten days. Major extraction is called for.”

“Please, Mike, don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

“We’re going to have lots of fun, sweetie. Stanko is the Jamie Oliver of Sarajevo. You will be so spoiled.”

“I am already,” I say, and I mean it. Except at that very moment, I start to retch, and Mike’s chicken soup is regurgitated
all down my nightdress. Mike looks panicked and shouts for a nurse.

“Not to worry, love, this often happens at the beginning,” says Amy, the staff nurse, as she arrives to take over. I know
for a fact that Amy has been on shift for seven hours and hasn’t taken her compulsory break yet, because she told me so ten
minutes ago.

“Perhaps, Mike, you’d better go,” I say. “Sarah’s coming soon, in any case, and I need to clean up. Might have a little rest
before she arrives.”

Mike looks grateful for the get-out. “Think of the fun we’ll have,” he says, waving and blowing kisses until he’s out of sight.

• • •

“Goodness, Sarah, you look worse than me,” I say as my ghostly sister drags over a chair like a weary Sisyphus and sits down
on it, red-eyed, puffy-lidded, and with a face the color of cement. I can tell she’s been crying.

“Poor you,” I say, “racing between me and Mummy like this. You don’t have to come every day, you know. I’m so much better
now. And I’m sure Daddy needs all the help he can get.”

Though Sarah looks at me, her eyes have no life in them. She’s staring but not seeing. Her voice, like her eyes, is expressionless.
“I can’t keep this from you, Hope, not any longer. It’s all over. Last night Mummy took an overdose. She knew exactly what
she was doing. She took just enough pills, but not so many as to make her sick. And when Daddy went to sleep, she must have
washed them down with alcohol so she’d fall asleep herself.” Sarah’s voice doesn’t falter. “By the time Daddy woke up, she
was unconscious, the empty pill bottle on the bedside table. If it weren’t for the bottle, he might have thought she was still
sleeping. Within twenty minutes of getting to the hospital, she suffered heart failure. Right here on the seventh floor, two
below you. I can’t stay long, Hope, I have to go back to Daddy.”

Propped up against the pillows, I hold my arms open for my sister. “Just come here, Sarah,” I say quietly, “come here.” And
then she’s in my arms, sitting on the side of the bed with her head against my chest and huge, heaving sobs racking her body.
I stroke the back of her head again and again. “Sarah, my love, it’s over. And in the best way. The alternative—the long,
drawn-out suffering—would have been too horrible. Too horrible for her and too horrible for Daddy. She did the right thing
for both of them.” Finally, my mother has done the right thing.

“It’s just been too much to bear,” Sarah says, sobbing. “I thought I might lose you, too. Both of you in this same damned
place. You look so fragile, you’ve almost disappeared. And then all the time I’m trying to be strong for Daddy, to hold it
all together. And now the funeral, and the shivah, and having to face all those people. And you not even able to be there.
If it’s bad for me, it must be even worse for you.”

“Oh, my sweet Sarah. My beloved sister and friend. It’s not worse for me than it is for you. You see, you can’t lose someone
you never really had. I’ve been searching for the mother in our mother for most of my life. I don’t have to look anymore.
It’s not worse for me, because you loved her despite her faults. You forgave. I didn’t. I’ve spent too much of my life mourning
her absence, but these past few months I’ve realized I can live with it. And now that she’s gone, she’s no more gone for me
than she was before.” Sarah’s still sobbing, but less urgently now. “I’m sad for Daddy, and for you, but that’s it. I have
you and William and your kids—you’re my family. I have Daddy. And Olly. I have Maddy and all my friends. And who knows? Maybe
I’ll even have Jack again one day if I can come to my senses and start behaving like a proper grown-up. And if not, I’ll still
have a life. Mummy gave us life, and she gave me you—I’m so grateful to her for that.”

Sarah’s sobbing is silenced now, her breathing less heavy. I continue to stroke her hair. Somewhere in this building where
lives saved and lives lost are common currency, my mother lies dead. I’m one of the survivors, and I’m glad of it.

• • •

In Jewish tradition, a funeral must take place as soon as possible following the death. While I lie in my hospital bed, dozens
of friends and distant family members gather with the mourners to attend my mother’s funeral in a cemetery on London’s outskirts.
As is also traditional, the service is short and austere in the company of the coffin. No music is played. The coffin is led
from the prayer hall to the allotted burial space, further prayers are said, and the coffin is lowered into the earth. Those
who come to attend the funeral file past the grave one by one, each shoveling a clod of earth onto the coffin.

It is not customary in the Jewish religion for women to recite the Kaddish, which is the mourner’s prayer, but Sarah has brought
into the hospital for me a memorial candle that will burn for twenty-four hours if the hospital authorities don’t declare
it a fire hazard. My mother’s funeral is at noon. I light the little candle twenty minutes later, around the time the actual
burial will be taking place. “Goodbye, Mummy,” I say as the wick lights. “May you rest in peace.” I reach for my Walkman on
the table next to the bed and slot in a cassette of Mozart’s Requiem. Then I lie back against the pillows and take refuge
in the music. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, who wooed his friend’s beloved with his poetry, I turn to Mozart to convey to my dead
mother all the emotions I will never fully articulate. The yearning, the anger, the sorrow, and the forgiveness—all there
in Mozart’s haunting mass.

• • •

I’ve been dozing in the chair next to my bed. I open my eyes and see a somewhat stooped elderly man walking tentatively toward
me. My eyes adjust their focus, and I can see it’s my father, with Sarah following just behind him.

“Daddy, it’s you!” I exclaim, my excited voice in sharp contrast to my frail physical condition. I haul myself up, slowly
and shakily, like an old lady.

“Hello, darling girl.” He smiles. “What a crazy old world we live in.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen him since before I came into hospital. And for the first time, he looks every one of his eighty-two
years.

We hug, but gently, each aware of the other’s frailty. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” I say over and over, overcome by the emotion
of seeing him again.

Sarah is dressed head to toe in black. They have evidently come straight from the funeral.

“You’ve lit a candle,” my father says.

“Yes, it’s from Sarah. Even at a time like this, she thinks of everything—she brought it in for me, though I fear a nurse
will be round any minute to snuff it out. Come and sit down, both of you. I’ll get back into bed to make more room.”

“Thank God you’re all right,” says my father. “I couldn’t bear not being able to get in to see you.”

“The surgeon says I’m recovering incredibly well, and I even kept my lunch down today. But you must have come straight from
the funeral. How did you get away with that?”

Everything feels unreal. My mother is dead. I’m playing gracious hostess from my hospital bed. And my father and sister, who,
according to custom, should be back at my father’s house, ready to greet well-wishers, have gone AWOL.

“I got the rabbi to announce that the shivah would begin at eight o’clock this evening, but that in the meantime we were unable
to have anyone back to the house,” my father tells me.

“You have no idea how pleased I am that you came,” I say, welling up again.

“I couldn’t wait a minute longer to see for myself that you’re all right,” says my father. “Your poor mother’s gone now. I
don’t give a damn about doing what’s expected. My daughters are more important than any damn protocol.”

I’ve said nothing about my mother. I have to find the words, the right words. “Daddy, isn’t it better that she went this way?”

“I just wish she’d told me. I could have helped her. It must have been so lonely, planning it all on her own.”

“I’m sure she did it to save you from any culpability afterward,” I say. “To be absolutely sure no one could accuse you of
euthanasia. It was another gesture to show how much she loved you.”

The tears are gently trickling down my father’s face. “I shall miss her so much, so very, very much,” he says simply.

“And so will I,” says Sarah.

“Oh, look,” I say, saved by the tea lady with her trolley. “Three cups, if you don’t mind.”

“We’re not supposed to—” the tea lady begins.

“Yes, I know, but my father and sister have come straight from a funeral, so if it isn’t too much trouble . . .”

“Glad to see you’re getting a bit of your old spirit back,” says my father. He turns to the tea lady with his most beguiling
smile. “Two sugars, please.” And she smiles grudgingly back.

I
t’s been two weeks since I left the hospital, during which time I have developed a special relationship with the mailbox on
the corner of my road. At first the glossy red marker of my recovery was frustratingly out of reach. By the time I had tied
the laces of my trainers and put on my coat, I was almost ready for a lie-down. Having shuffled not more than half the two
hundred yards or so distance, I needed all my energy to shuffle home again. After about five days, I reached the milestone
of the box itself. For the next few days, I counted how many paces beyond the box I could go, while reminding myself to conserve
sufficient energy for the return journey. Today was another milestone. A red-letter day! I walked right out of sight of the
postbox and round the entire block. It took me twenty minutes, double the time it would normally take. I got home and promptly
fell asleep on the sofa.

I am shocked at the state of me. A stone lighter than when I went into the hospital. When I can steel myself, I look in the
mirror at my naked and battered body and examine the scrawny flesh, which seems to have divorced itself from the bone and
tendons and sinew beneath. I’m not certain there’s any muscle left. My stomach is a war zone, crisscrossed with the scars
of bloody battles, some faded, but one—larger and fiercer than all the others—still red and raw in defeat. The angry eight-inch
vertical gash of the bowel resection; the diagonal slice of the appendix scar; the horizontal slash of the emergency cesarean.
It’s as though I’ve been attacked periodically with a machete. Is this a body you could ever allow a lover to see? Would Dan
and I still have ended up in bed if we’d met after my latest round of vivisection? How would Jack feel about me with this
new fault line through my center?

There’s nothing I can do about my latest war wound, but I can make a solemn oath never again to complain about being fat when
I put on an extra pound or two. It’s the kind of hopeless pledge I know I’ll break the minute I’m well again, but for the
moment I am convinced that for a woman of fifty, there is definitely such a thing as too thin.