Memories are made of these

Then the thunder came once again!
Having ticked the administration details at the bottom of her mum’s prescription she had collected moments earlier from the doctors, Esther handed it over to an assistant she hadn’t seen before. Perhaps Diane, the lovely chemist assistant, was on holiday, Esther thought. She sat quietly and with total foreboding. Again the shop bell rang and Esther’s eye’s fell onto the cenotaph opposite the little shop door and she thought of such earlier loss for their little town. Then in with a whirl and a flurry came Mona from the cake shop pushing open the chemists black part glazed door with the sign still showing closed, then winked and sat down next to her. In that moment, Esther recalled her kindness and how she had often warmed her spirit as well as her faith in mankind as she handed her a cake, after she had left her newspaper which was at the end of her round all those years ago.
“Hello Esther. Is your little family well? Catherine, the biggest, must be almost six now, being born only weeks before our little one I believe!” She continued as she sat there with Esther, allowing her words to flow from a tap on full lock. “A picture I thought your little girl was, as she trotted round the playground with her Easter bonnet on that she clung to, the poor little soul, as the winds ripped round the playground till the ET photographer got his best shot.”
Esther smiled as she thought back then to how she had labored and tore up the newspapers then glued and stapled clumsily but still her very best to create a hat that would stand up to scrutiny when they all stood there and watched the next day in the playground. Poor little child, she had thought, but hopefully oblivious to the unfortunate creation she hung onto that sat on her head and slithered and dipped like a drunken bird in a tree as so many proud parents and relatives had gathered round to view the exited but blustery procession.
Workers from the Boot and Shoe Company stood close by with their noses close to the new windows of the office block where their boss would sit when not on his cruise, and their charge hand down there in front of them waving across the playground with a fag in her hand and they free for a while. The worker knew, as she watched her little grandson that when he grew up there would be no factories left to produce crafted shoes as all there was then as she surveyed the folk stood there in the playground with denims and trainers, and all made by those in distant lands for pence in sweat-shops. She didn’t know then when that day would come, but felt it would be soon. And then she could have the cord cut free that chained her to the factory from early morning till night, but then with little money to pay the bills till old age struck and that of course was if god allowed.

When love was not enough
“Laura Jones?” The white-coated assistant with glasses swinging on a thin cord round her long neck, smiled and handed over a small white paper bag to Esther and apologized for the long wait, and then she carried the antibiotic, which would cure her mum’s ills they said, back through their pretty town and past the school where her oldest child was. She pushed hard her buggy with Elizabeth now asleep. Her daughter’s sandaled feet just dangling with tiny nose peeping cutely above the blanket and sucking her fingers. Later, with doubt in her mind, but still a forced light voice, she handed over the bag to her mum who sat in her rocking chair near the cracked window and the door where the plaster was practically nonexistent from the constant slamming throughout the years. Then Joe shouted from upstairs for another mug of tea.
“I will sort him out mum, you take care of yourself, and take this first tablet, and I’ll get you some water. Did you sleep well in my own old single bed, with no one to wake you again?” Esther handed her mum the glass of water, and then climbed the stairs and opened the door, where her stepfather sat upright with a dingy scarf around his neck and one round his throat with an ashtray overflowing with fag ends, and an empty pint mug upended and his dog looked across at her and their eyes met. Could he still not moderate his language and stop thinking of his own needs or always insisting he was right.
“Oh, it’s just you! Where is your f….in mum? I’ve been sat here hammering a good five minutes for my tea in the cold, whilst she sits down and wastes her time with you!” Esther took his mug from him and looked at his glass eye that sat upwards in a saucer near to his false teeth, and his face looked craggy and old as his bony ankle poked out from the sheets and she felt like cutting his head off! He sat there propped up with four pillows, to ease his breathing from emphysema, most nights, and she wanted him dead.

There was rarely any sign of tears with her mum, her crying being done at nighttime, no doubt beneath her sheets, but this time her left eye socket was very red and bright as she coughed again. Esther and Andrew had earlier exchanged glances and then almost simultaneously had questioned the throat specialist and then their anger and shock could be contained no further.
“If you really think we are taking her home to die, she can barely swallow her drink now, then you sorely mistaken. She has the same rights as everyone else disabled or otherwise.” That had been yesterday. Esther and her brother had had to borrow a wheelchair to push their mum, she was so weak to travel the short distance from the main entrance to the x-ray dept.
A nurse had taken her into a cubicle and a short time later she was pushed back to them and they were told quietly to take her home to die. The specialists may have said that the prognosis was poor, and that they did not think she would be able to cope with the operation, or the tubes and recovery afterwards, due to her blindness, but surely she should have an equal chance? How dare he, or anyone else, think that they wouldn’t fight for their mum? Of course she would struggle with the wires and tubes that wove and protruded and intruded into her now frail body, but she would manage just as others might do. It was the night preceding the major operation that Esther, whilst looking for her mum’s admittance letter, came across that last typed letter to them all.
“Stay where you are mum, and rest, I will do his tea and cut his sandwiches. You need to take care of yourself, why not go and pack your case ready for the hospital tomorrow? With sharp precision she cut his ham sandwiches in four whilst wishing his mustard was as toxic as arsenic.
“Here is your tea Joe, right on the middle of your plastic little table near your slippers. I’ll pop this Braille radio times of yours right next to your shoes for a while.”
In that moment as she looked at him she hated him. With the words of the specialist still ringing in her ears, the Lark that was her mum might soon be set free but not in the way she had always imagined. A major operation was carried out, which was to take over thirteen hours and her ribs would be broken and the growth removed….if they could…there was a one in ten chance of success. Each time the phone went, they thought it was the hospital and Joe was quiet. For the first time since he had been with his wife, in so many years, he had been kind and supportive and listened to her fears though his alcoholism continued. At last the phone rang and it was the hospital, informing them that she was through the operation and was to be taken to intensive care, where the next six weeks were to be crucial for her recovery. Joe owed her love, would he still give her hate now he knew how poorly she was?