Home (standard:Psychological fiction, 1627 words)
Author: Peter Ebsworth	Added: Aug 25 2003	Views/Reads: 3506/2443	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An old woman lives in a nursing home believing that she is 40 years younger and still living at home with her husband and children. Her son regularly comes to visit although she no longer recognises him. On this one occasion her delusion coincides with hi

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The young care assistant held the elderly resident's forearm and elbow
as they shuffled down the long corridor towards the visitors lounge. 

“ Silly bits and pieces cluttering up the fridge, damn stupid.” Ruth
replied, free arm picking at the air. 

“Your son's visiting today, Ruth. He'll be here soon, won't that be
nice?” 

“Need a sit down first, before they get home. My legs hurt.” 

All the care assistants were encouraged to talk to the residents whether
they were capable of understanding them or not. Gentle rhythmic 
conversation brought comfort. Any understanding was a bonus. 

Ruth was led to her favourite chair in the visitors' room, or at least
the chair staff thought that she seemed happiest in. A deep terracotta 
wing ... 

* 

...chair by the window was acknowledged by all the family as ‘mom's
chair'. The chair was tucked under a small side window to catch the 
late afternoon sun and the position of the standing lamp ensured a 
strong clear light in the evenings as she did her cross-stitch or read. 
It had wide feather-down cushions that had just enough space for Billy 
to squeeze in beside her to read his picture books. When he got tired 
he would lay his head in her lap, sometimes to doze, sometimes just 
because he needed a little comfort and reassurance in a big world. 

The lounge was the room that she loved the most. Almost one entire wall
was taken up by the great bay window looking out over her garden, and 
another by an earth brick fireplace where they burned logs in the 
winter, put flowers in the summer and stacked fir cones in the fall. 

Over the fireplace Frank insisted on hanging his painting of a sailing
ship struggling on a stormy sea. As a younger man he had dreamt of 
going to sea himself, and as this painting was as close as he was ever 
going to get he was not going to take it down even if the blue did 
clash with the apricot walls. As she lowered herself slowly into her 
chair she smiled and shook her head. 

‘ Men and their silly dreams of adventure' she thought. 

* 

Bill Webster entered the reception area of the Orchard View Nursing Home
feeling the same mix of emotions that he always felt. Pleasure and 
dread. Pleasure at the prospect of seeing his mother, and dread that 
she would have slipped even further away than on his last visit. 

Next to the curved reception counter, he saw the Home's duty nurse
sorting through some medical records. She glanced up as he approached. 

“ Ah, Mr Webster, here again. It's a shame that some our other
resident's children can't make the same effort as you do to visit 
regularly.” 

“ It's no effort, Mrs Brownlow, no effort at all. I just wish that she
still knew who I was.” 

“Maybe there are moments when she does,” she reached out and gave his
arm a squeeze of comfort. “ With her type of degenerative condition, no 
one knows what might still get through, even in the later stages like 
your mother's.” 

“Let's hope so. I take it that she's in her usual place,” he said,
already starting towards the visitors' lounge. 

“I expect so, Mr Webster, I expect so.” Attention returning to the
medical charts. 

Care staff in the corridor nodded in recognition as he passed. Every
week for almost five years he had been visiting, some of the more aware 
patients thought that he worked there. 

From the doorway he could see his mother in her favourite chair by the
window. Shrunken and bent forward, time draining her essence like a 
ripe fruit left in the hard heat of the sun. She was smiling, looking 
at a place on the carpet in front of her as if there was something 
there that only she could see. 

* 

A small rustling sound made her turn away from the picture to see young
Billy laying in the middle of living room floor turning the pages of 
the Life magazine ‘Countries of the World' book that Frank had given 
him for his birthday. She wondered how it was that she hadn't heard the 
boys come home. Seeing her looking at him, Billy got up, still 
clutching the open book and came over to her. 

Bill walked slowly across the visitors' lounge to arrive beside his
mother's chair and on impulse knelt in front of her, taking her hands 
in his, positioning his head to intercept her gaze. 

Billy's usually smooth brow was crinkled up in concentration. When he
arrived at her chair he laid the book over her hands pining them to her 
lap. 

“If you could be anywhere in the world mom, where would you want to be?”


With his eyes fixed on hers, Bill quietly asked, 

“Where are you mom? You're not here anymore, so where are you?” 

“Home with you, Billy” she replied. 

Her son didn't turn away after getting his answer, but continued to hold
her gaze with his soft blue eyes. Pulling her hands away from under the 
book, 

from out of his gentle grasp; fragile, trembling fingers 

she leant forward to softly stroke his cheek, 

gently touched his face as she whispered, 

“ I love you, Billy Webster, and I always will. Don't you ever, ever, be
forgetting that.” 

Bill Webster laid his head in his mother's lap. 

Home, together, one final time. 


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