Sandstone Press

Tweedsmuir

Posted by RLD on 15th November 2009

Tweedsmuir was the title John Buchan took when he was elevated, as it is put, to the House of Lords. The Tweed is a river that runs through border country, but there are many kinds of borders. The last sixteen years, at least, of my mother’s life were blighted by Parkinson’s Disease. Probably it was more because the diagnosis took some time. Indeed, I understand that an element of chance was involved, and the instincts of an enthusiastic young doctor who decided to investigate along an unlikely line.

Her deteriorating condition took her out of the flat she had lived in for twenty eight years, since she was forty, and away from our peripheral housing scheme. The flat was situated on the second floor with two flights of thirteen concrete steps to be negotiated every time she left the house. At the top of each flight she would lean on her stick and contemplate the drop before leaning forward and surging downstairs. That is the impression her eventual movement gave, a lean forward and surge. When she was eventually assigned a sheltered flat in Ibrox she almost flew down the stairs so desperate was she to leave.

At Clifford Gardens she lived in a condition of worsening paralysis almost until her death. In fact she died fourteen years later in a Care Home named Ailsa Craig that was located nearby. While she was on two sticks; that is, after only needing one stick but before the zimmer frame, and then the wheeled zimmer, and then the wheelchair which she never really became proficient in, or the powered chair which was a terror because her reactions were too slow and she crashed into things, and before the chair from which she could not move without assistance, or to perform the simplest of life’s functions, there came a point when she required a hip replacement.

This was carried out at the Southern General Hospital, by chance in (or from) the same ward where she had given birth to me. Because she needed particular attention afterwards she was placed in a Care Home on Tweedsmuir Drive in Crookston. Yes, as well as being old ‘Pound-a-Word’ Buchan’s nom-de-noblesse and a place in the Borders, Tweedsmuir is also a Care Home in Glasgow. There I visited her from my home in Dingwall. The overwhelming feeling through all of those years was helplessness, but especially at change points like this one, and at the end.

Reading this poem now I can see how I compensated for those feelings of helplessness with an extreme control of form. Its four verses are in eight line iambic hexameters, rhyming a, b, c, b, a, c, d, d throughout. I also worked to create a congruence of meaning with the rhyming words. So, mind is related to time as indeed it is, long gone is obvious, best is the rest which might say ‘not us’, and go is met by an exclamation, ‘O’, again as it so often is.

The nurses’ rounds go around, roads glow I guess in memory, heads and checks is chilling. The repeat of holds on is perfect but was much considered because it seemed too easy.

The longing to speak, which she could hardly do by the end, is associated with time, three weeks in this case, and will do. Strength and length also pass muster. Live at home and long ago again is chilling. Then and spent speak of an irrevocable past tense.

Quick and kiss, yes, there was a quick kiss on parting, and another much later. I was far away, which is to say we were living far apart, but we had not changed essentially, neither for that reason nor because of the accursed disease. What is between is very often unseen. The door was always open to more. It still is although her death has rather frozen things.

I struggled with the banality of the last line, eventually accepting it because the damned thing defied me and insisted on its presence. The emotion in this poem is as real as the control. Do not ask me how it is done. I can no longer write to this standard. The artist is a monster.

Tweedsmuir

My mother has her mind
but wonders; for how long?
The nurses do their best
but when their homes are gone
old folks lose track of time,
their minds slow down and rest.
Time comes they just let go.
Their mouths become like ‘O’s.

The others sit around
the television glow
and wander in their heads
on half-forgotten roads
while nurses do their rounds
of pills and teas and checks.
My mother just holds on.
That’s what she does; holds on.

She’ll stay about three weeks
while she regains her strength
enough to live at home.
She’ll make it back at length
but how she longs to speak
about the long ago.
No one is left from then,
the best of life is spent.

These visits pass so quick
and are so long between,
I live so far away.
The time flies past unseen
to steal our parting kiss.
Her brown eyes haven’t changed,
they see me to the door.
I’ve never loved her more.