LET ME STAY, PLEASE
“I wont go anywhere…” Mary whispered brokenly, her words barely carrying across the faded lounge of her old cottage. “This is my home. I won’t abandon it.” Her voice trembled with stifled tears.
“Mum” John tried, glancing uneasily at the frayed edge of the carpet. “You know I cant look after you properly You have to understand.”
Sadness clung to Johns features. He could see how anxious his mother was. There she sat, huddled on the sagging sofa in the living room of the little Hampshire village shed never left.
“Its all fine, Ill cope on my own. I dont need anyone running after me,” Mary retorted obstinately. “Please, just leave me be.”
But John knew the truth. She couldnt manage. Not after the stroke. Mary Smith had always been prone to ill health, and John remembered well how hed once taken months off work to care for her after she broke her hip. Shed tried to act brave, but those first weeks she wasnt able to take a single step without him.
Recently, Johns job had started to pay well for the first time. Hed been planning to renovate the family house that summer, make life more comfortable for his mum. And thendisaster. The stroke changed everything. Not a fresh coat of paint, but getting her out to the city was what mattered now.
“Clairell get your things packed,” John said with a nod to his wife. “Just let her know if you need something, Mum.”
Mary offered no reply. Over her shoulder, autumn breezes tugged gilded leaves from the ancient oak shed grown up beneath. With her working left hand she gripped her lifeless right with quiet fury.
Claire rummaged in the battered wardrobe, asking constantly what to bring, what to leave. But Mary simply stared out the window, her mind far adrift from housecoats and crooked glasses.
Mary Smith had spent her sixty-eight years here, as her neighbours slowly drifted away. Shed been the seamstress of the village, first at the tailor’s, thenafter it closedworking odd jobs from home. As work dried up, she poured herself into her garden and house, her hands and heart entwined with its soil. How could she possibly abandon all this, to live like a stranger in a distant, city flat?
“John, shes not eating again,” Claire sighed, entering the kitchen and setting a plate down with a deflated clink. “I I cant do this much longer. Its just too much.”
John glanced from his weary wife to the untouched meal, shaking his head in mute despair. He inhaled, then left for his mothers room.
Mary sat still as a painting, gazing from her new window. Her eyesgrey and drainedseemed fixed on a place far away. Her good hand hugged the dead one, willing back some spark of life.
The room was crowded with physio gear and hand grips, pill bottles stacked like soldiers. If John hadnt nagged, Mary would have left them untouched.
“Mum?”
Nothing.
“Mum?”
“Johnny?” she replied, faint and slurred.
Speech was a struggle after the strokeher words blurred and soft. Shed improved, but John still had to concentrate to catch each phrase.
“Why not eat, Mum? Claire made all this for you. Youve eaten next to nothing for days.”
“I dont want to, son.” Mary turned from the window as if in slow motion. “Truly, I dont Please dont make me.”
“Mum What do you want? Just say the word…”
John sat beside her, and she clutched his hand.
“You know what I want, Johnny. I want to go home. Im scared I Ill never see it again.”
John sighed, shaking his head.
“Mum, you know Im at work every day now, and Claires always at the GPs with you. Its winter outjust wait for spring. Please.”
Mary nodded. John smiled, kissed her forehead, and left the room.
“Before its too late, son Before its too late,” Mary whispered to the empty room.
“Im sorry, IVFs failed again,” the consultant said gently, removing her spectacles as she addressed the younger woman.
Claire gasped, clutching her face.
“But why? Why does it work for everyone else? You said after the first attempt, we had every reason to hopethe odds are forty percent! But this is the third time, and still nothing!”
John was silent, his hand tight around Claires. His thoughts wandered to Mary, likely finishing her physiotherapy at the other end of the clinicthe collection time was coming up.
“Listen,” the consultant breathed, “I understand. This is your dream. But the obsession, the endless stress Your body wont respond unless you let it.”
“How can I not be stressed?” Claire snapped, her frustration bursting through. “Im working from home just to afford these bloody expensive rounds. The endless appointments, the pillsall of its wrecking my health. Then Im expected to look after your mother, John, while she refuses food, refuses water, wont take her medicineanything! Yes, I want a baby, maybe then my husband will divide his attention between us for once.”
Suddenly aware, Claire fell silent and bolted from the room, her bag under one arm, her cheeks on fire.
“Im sorry,” John murmured.
“Its all right,” the consultant replied briskly. “Its not the first storm Ive weathered here, John. Dont worry.”
He followed Claire out. She sat collapsed on a little chair in reception, sobbing into her palms. When she looked up at John, her eyes were swollen and red.
“Im sorry, John. I I didnt mean what I said about your mum. Im just so tired so tired of watching her waste away here, tired of the negative tests, pouring thousands into procedure after procedure. I just cant do this anymore.”
“If I could, Id fix everything for both of you, I swear I would. But I cant”
“I know.” Claire smiled through her tears, squeezing his hand. “I know.”
For a few moments, they just sat there, holding on to one another. Then Claire suddenly stood, straightened her blouse and tried a brave smile.
“Come on. Marys probably done by nowshe hates these clinics. Always gets gloomy afterwards.”
“Your mothers barely making any progress,” Dr. Wilkinson said quietly, his spectacles perched low as he drew John aside out of Marys earshot. Claire stayed by her side.
“See, when you first came to me, I honestly thought she could recover,” the doctor sighed, “Her odds after a stroke werent great, but she had no bad habits, nothing chronic working against her. I thought she might pull through.”
“But she hasnt improved. I see it myself.”
“I suspect she doesnt want to. Shes given uptheres no fire left in her eyes, no will. Its as if shes stopped caring”
John said nothing, tacitly agreeing. He saw it every day: Mary had dropped over two stone, no longer herself, never moving from her chair, always staring out, silent, not reading, not listening to the telly, not talking to anyone.
“Sometimes after a stroke, behaviour changesit could be the brain,” the doctor added gently. “But when you first brought her, I didnt see this hopelessness”
“I dont think its the stroke,” John replied quietly.
“John,” Claires voice trembled down the phone, “can you cancel your business trip, please? Marys taken a turn. Im Im not sure youll get here in time”
She could barely get the words out. She knew how much his mum meant to him, and with a heavy heart she sat on the edge of the sofa, watching her mother-in-law lying listlessly, barely moving.
Once, Mary had watched the garden, played old records saved from the villageher fathers leftover collection from teaching music. Now she only stared at one spot, barely ate, only sipped at the milk she used to complain wasnt as good as home.
John managed to get back that evening and sat by his mothers bedside all night.
“You know what I want most. You promised me,” Mary breathed.
John noddedyes, he had promised. The next morning, they set out for the village. Mary refused the doctors help.
“I dont want a hospital. Take me home.”
It was early March, and by good fortune the roads hadnt flooded yet. John swung the car up the winding track and helped his mother into her wheelchair.
The snow was melting, rivulets running through the garden. Trees swayed in a gentle gust, and the sun finally had warmth again.
Mary sat outside for hours, her face radiant at last. She drew deep breaths, gazed at the sky, her eyes shining as tears slid down her cheeksbut they were tears of joy.
She was home at last. Watching the crooked little house, basking in the gentle spring sun, soaking in the familiar cries of the countryside and the bite of the chilly air
That evening, Mary ate a proper meal and sat out until dusk settled. The smile barely left her tired face. That night, as she slept, she slipped awayher smile still there. She died at home, content at last.
John and Claire took leave for the funeral and the practicalitiestidying the house, deciding what to do with it. But in truth, John needed a few stolen days to breathe the sharp, blossoming village air. Years had passed since hed spent more than two nights here.
Before returning to London, Claire felt suddenly ill and dashed to the bathroom, staggering back pale and startled, holding a pregnancy test. Shed always kept one or two with herusually for nothing. But nowtwo lines. Two.
“Its your mum Marys helped us, I know she has,” Claire stammered through tears, barely able to grasp it.
John looked skywards, blue and cloudless, and wrapped her in an embrace, tears in his eyes. Yeshis mother had given her final, most precious gift.
