Wait!

‘Fifteen minutes, you have fifteen minutes to vacate the property!’ an authoritative voice banged on the door to the flat. It was stupid o’clock on a Saturday morning and the banging was relentless until I got out of bed, pulling on my dressing gown as I went to open the door. I, as well as the rest of us in the flat, had a hangover. We came into a bit of money on the horses the previous day and celebrated well into the night.

The man who was standing in the doorway, clipboard in hand, screamed that we had ‘fifteen minutes to vacate the property!’ I had completely forgotten that it was this Saturday the bulldozer was coming. After all they had been threatening to tear down the block of flats on so many occasions that I didn’t believe them when they stuck that big piece of red paper on our door the week before.

My head was pounding, and I could only manage to open one eye without getting the overwhelming urge to vomit. I scrambled around the rooms, waking my husband, Kevin, and our two grown up children, Johnny and Emily as I went. I rushed over to the sink and opened the cabinet under it to grab the black sacks.

As my husband and son, appeared holding their heads wondering what the banging was about, I handed them a bag and ordered them to take what was sentimental and that the rest could be replaced. I filled a glass of water and poured it over my head. I found the cold-water soothing. I refilled the glass and carried it into my daughter’s room. I threw it over herself and her boyfriend, of whom I didn’t approve, and they both sat bolt upright. I turned away, as the sheet barely covered their naked bodies. I tore off two black sacks and threw them over my shoulder. I think they were more embarrassed than I was.

As the minutes passed the black sacks kept flying. ‘Remember,’ I reiterated, ‘only sentimental things!’ I got grunts as responses. I myself had a bag half full of family pictures and had to stop, the room was spinning so fast around me. I barely made it to the bathroom to vomit.

Exactly fifteen minutes to the second later, the banging recommenced. I groaned as my head felt like it was about to explode.  

I answered the door again, ‘times up!’ the little man with the clipboard grinned. I gave up on collecting any more objects for my bag praying that what I had was all I needed. ‘You need to vacate the premises now!’ the little man said tapping his clipboard with a pen. My eyes rolled as I, alongside my family, reluctantly obliged.

As I descended the eight flights of stairs that I had cursed on more than one occasion over the years, a tear fell down my cheek. I looked back as my half naked family in their bathrobes followed. As we reached the second floor, the obligatory ache in my calf commenced. I remembered bringing my Emily home for the first time all those years ago. That was the same year the elevator stopped working and I was in agony after having a c-section as I, with the aid of my husband, somehow managed all eight flights.

As the family grew, so did the effort to get up the stairs. It was no joke having a toddler, a new born, and an arm full of groceries in general…but to get them all safe and sound to the eighth floor was a different story. Oh how I cursed those stairs, but at the same time they were a part of the experience that was my life.

As the last ten steps came into view, I wept uncontrollably, refusing to walk down them. My family passed me by and proceeded to go outside. I hugged my designated black sack and sat on the tenth step. I remembered my son had tripped upon that very step when he was three and lost his first tooth. It was the same very step where my daughter, on the way to one of her many ballet recitals, had slipped on some water, tumbling to the landing beneath, her ankle broken, her dream of becoming a ballet dancer obliterated.

The man with the clipboard, looked at his watch and tapped his foot beside me. ‘C’mon missus, we have a demolition to do!’

Reluctantly I rose from my family’s history and slowly ambled towards their outstretched arms. The work men cheered as I exited the building. I stuck my middle finger up at them, the tears beginning to flow. I walked behind the barrier, along with all the other old tenants, and the onlookers who had wanted the block of flats to be demolished for years.

Johnny, my son, started to panic. I put my hand on his arm and told him it would be ok. ‘No, it’s not that,’ he started his eyes wide as saucers, ‘we forgot nana!’ My heart sank. I clasped my hands over my mouth. How could we possibly have forgotten my mother? I was ready to cross the threshold of the barrier as Johnny lept over it, the wrecking ball in full swing.

As the air horn blew, signalling the area wasn’t safe for the wrecking ball which stopped inches away from the building, there was Johnny, ducking and diving between workers with hard hats trying to gain entry to the building, just as he would do on the rugby field. My heart was in my mouth. How could I have forgotten my very own mother.

It took three of them to eventually tackle Johnny to the ground, mere feet from the buildings entrance. All I could hear was his panic, which mirrored my own, saying over and over, ‘we forgot nana! we forgot nana!’

The small man with the clipboard began to look pale and pasty. It was his responsibility to make sure everyone was out of the building. I watched, teary eyed, as his supervisor approached him angrily, Johnny still on the ground, a knee on his back. The supervisor quickly got my boy up and to his feet and sent him back to the barrier where I was ready to pass out at the thought of forgetting my own mother.

Johnny, my twenty-year-old son was not afraid to show his emotions. He buried his face in my shoulder and sobbed, ‘I tried,’ he kept crying, ‘I tried!’ All I could do was rub his tightly shaved head and say, ‘I know son, I know!’ I reached into my dressing gown pocket and retrieved a tissue. It must have been days old but it did the job none the less.

I stood feeling weak at the knees as the round, authoritative figure in a shiny yellow hard hat waddled his way over to us. I pushed Johnny aside so hard that he fell into his father arms. ‘When can I get me ma?’ I asked matter of fact. I was met with a brick wall.

‘You tell me where she is and we will get her for you!’ he said tapping his pen against the clipboard. It was obvious he wasn’t impressed with the worker who supposedly ‘swept’ the building. In his eyes it could have been a fatal mistake.

‘Can our Johnny just run up and get her?’ I asked, Johnny nodding beside me.

‘No one besides my guys are going into this building!’ he said sternly, unnecessarily so. ‘What flat were you in?’

The word ‘were’ set me off again. The tissue, although saturated, made another appearance. I noticed the round man furrow his brow at me before reaching into his own pocket and took out a brand-new packet of tissues. He offered them to me. I graciously accepted and told him she was in the room off the kitchen in flat 802 on the eighth floor.

‘She’s in the room off the kitchen in 802,’ he repeated into his walkie talkie. ‘On it boss!’ was received. I blew my nose on the nice clean, fresh tissue and started to breathe better because of it. I heard nothing but static for what seemed like an eternity before the radio buzzed, ‘there’s no one in the room off the kitchen boss!’ I saw that his eyes were becoming stern. ‘She’s not in the room off the kitchen!’ he said with irritation towards me.

I held my hands close to my chest, ‘she’s in the silver-coloured vase behind the cornflakes,’ I informed him. He started to repeat my words into his walkie talkie, ‘she’s in the silver vase behind the……’ he stopped. His eyes were confused at first but then turned angry. ‘She’s dead?’ he bellowed.

‘Oh god yea, me ma died three years ago!’ I answered as a matter of fact.

The supervisor left us at the barrier and made his way over to the gardai. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was talking animatedly to them for a while before my mother made her appearance. I fanned my face with my hand, a wave of relief washed over me. I could breathe freely again.

The round angry supervisor snatched my mother off of the guy who had rescued her. He strode over to us and addressed me angrily, ‘is this what you were talking about?’ he held my mother up to the light. I reached up and grabbed her, pulling her free from the horrid man who was handling her roughly, she deserved more respect than that.

I held her the same way I held my daughter when they first placed her in my arms. I kissed the top of the urn and rubbed it as I swayed from side to side, almost trying to comfort my deceased mother.

‘Are there any other members of the family missing?’ the supervisor asked with his hand on his hip in disgust. ‘No,’ I said as he started to walk away, ‘wait,’ he turned. I did a head count just to be sure. My beautiful Emily and her no good boyfriend smiled at me, as did my son Johnny, and then my husband, Kevin, who enveloped me in a hug. I wiped a tear from my eye and was ready for the demolition to commence, after all, all we needed was each other.

picture from pixabay