Mum and her BMW

Mum had emphysema when she died.   So did Dad.  They didn’t share oxygen bottles.  That would have been quite sweet (and economical).  Sweet rather than romantic.    What a miserable affliction.  Both of them lived for a decade or more where they struggled for breath.  Every morning there would be this extraordinary heavy coughing, finally resulting in a slight loosening of the nights deposit of phlegm.  The rest of the day was a constant struggle for breath.  Is there a more ordinary, disgusting and humiliating way to die?  Self inflicted – or was it?  Everyone smoked back then, everyone.  First they had “cork tips” then filter tips.  Not that they did any good, except they did stop the strands of tobacco entering the mouth.  Mum and Dad loved smoking, chain smoking all day.

None of their six children smoke.  Maybe smokers should sit with emphysema suffers for an hour each week, watching them ever so gradually weaken.  At first they seem not too bad, just a bit more coughing than normal.  But get them to walk up hill – then the lack of a decent lung full of air really begins to tell.  Then push them around in their wheel chair, with oxygen cylinder and air hoses.  Embarrassing for everyone.

Mum nursed Dad through most of his illness.   Watched him failing.  He was such a big and strong man.  And here he was unable to take more than a few steps without stopping to regain his breath.  Mum, knowing she was going to go through something very similar.  Dad died in 1988.

They both loved the outdoors, sport, the beach.  Mum loved to ride horses, to party, to be with lots of friends.  Gradually friends withdrew, I guess embarrassed by her illness.  Perhaps a suspicion that, like TB, it may have been contagious.  This drawing back by so many close friends really floored Mum.  The invitations ceased.  I could still go, she’d say, the wheel chair and oxygen make it fine.

Gradually Mum was forced to spend more and more time in bed.  Her bed looked out through French doors over the veranda past oak trees, across the valley to the hills and forest beyond.  She loved the view; in fact she had grown up with it.  Often we, the family, would sit on that veranda eating, chatting, drinking.  It was a more important space than the dining room or the sitting room.  We almost lived out there.   As mum’s illness progressed she had her end of the veranda glassed in to form a wee east facing sunroom.  She called it the BMW.

Why do you call it that I asked?  Well said Mum, sucking up the oxygen, well, there was this matron in Toorak who took pity on a down and out sort of chap and asked him what he used to do.   A house painter was his reply.  Well, she said, I really need my front door painted, I’ve got all the materials, if you come around now you can do that and I’ll pay you cash.  The job was expertly done in super quick time, so the matron, after a brief inspection asked would you have time to go around the back and paint the porch?  No worries said the painter.  After an hour or so there was a knock on the front door, the matron answered and saw the painter.  So you’ve finished the porch she asked?  No, he replied, I couldn’t find the porsche so I painted the BMW.

Cecil Poole, May 2013