The Healing of Broken Souls

Chapter 17

My father still hadn't emerged from his room when I went to bed on Thursday night, but he was sitting at the table fully dressed when I shuffled into the kitchen in my dressing gown and slippers in the morning. He looked haggard and grey as if he hadn't slept for a week. He told me he'd eaten breakfast earlier so I pottered around making my own. 

"You don't look too good. Why don't you go back to bed for a while?" I suggested while I waited for the toaster to pop.

"No. My breathing is worse when I'm lying down, and I could do with some fresh air. But I don't feel up to being rattled around in the Land Rover. Why don't we stay home and sit on the terrace next to your orange grove again?"

"Okay," I said. "It's as good as anywhere and there's a chance we'll see some hoopoes. They sometimes hang around over there."

I was glad of the break. I'd had a restless night troubled by the prospect of selling my beloved home, coupled with the expectation that today might prove to be my father's day of reckoning.  

We went and sat side by side at the picnic table on the terrace and waited for something interesting to put in an appearance. To make conversation I explained that I let a neighbouring olive farmer harvest my oranges every winter and, in exchange, he gave me enough of his extra virgin to last me all year. As I was speaking, a pair of hoopoes flew in. They were always a delight to watch, with their cinnamon-colored bodies and zebra-striped wings. The hoopoes strutted between the trees with their feathered crowns erect, foraging for insects and emitting the distinctive calls that gave them their name. After half an hour they must have eaten their fill because they took flight as if connected by an invisible thread. We put down our binoculars in tandem.

"I think it's time you told me about my seventh birthday," I said calmly, making doubly sure my voice recorder was switched on.

"Okay, Michael," he nodded. "But I want you to hear me out."

"Fine, I'll listen," I agreed, steeling myself to relive that harrowing day all over again.

#

"You'd been invited to several of your friend's birthday parties that year," my father began. "So we felt obliged to have a party for you, even though your mother was going through a bad patch with her myasthenia. It was a Sunday and we'd been trying to keep half a dozen lively little boys under control all afternoon. Your mother was exhausted. After their parents arrived to take them all home, we sat at the table with a cup of tea and helped ourselves to the remains of the party food. You were busy playing on the table with your new toys."

He stopped talking for a few moments and I saw a far-away look in his eyes as if he was replaying that afternoon in his mind.

"Everything was fine and your mother was in the middle of saying something when she suddenly went quiet. I looked at her and she was just sitting there, stock still, staring at me, and I realized she was choking. You see, Michael, the myasthenia had started to affect the muscles of her throat. On a bad day, she often slurred her speech and had difficulty swallowing."

He paused to wipe his eyes with a tissue and my mind drifted back to those two women on the bus, and the awful words I had blurted in the classroom afterwards.

"It was as if she was paralysed. I pulled her off her chair and thumped her back to try and dislodge whatever was choking her. That didn't work, so I grabbed her from behind and tried the Heimlich manoeuvre. I'd taken a first-aid course at work and I'd been shown how to do the Heimlich, and how to do CPR, but I'd only practised on dummies, never on a real person."

I'd heard of the Heimlich manoeuvre and seen pictures, and now that I thought back to what I'd seen that day, it started to make sense. 

"The Heimlich didn't work either. She went limp in my arms and I knew she'd stopped breathing so I dropped her to the floor and tried to resuscitate her like I'd been shown. I tried doing chest compressions but she went into convulsions. Her arms and legs were flailing around and I couldn't keep her still. And then you started pulling at my arm and screaming at me to stop. I pushed you away but you kept getting in the way so I yelled at you to go to your room. I carried on for what seemed like hours but, in the end, I knew she was gone."

I looked at my father. He was staring down at his shaking hands resting on the picnic table. He seemed to have aged several years in the last few minutes, his face was pale and deeply lined.

"Why didn't you call an ambulance straight away?" I mumbled, as the reality of my lifelong misconception began to hit home.

"I knew they could never get there in time to save her. When it was over, I phoned for an ambulance, but there was nothing they could do except take her away."

"Did they find out what choked her?" I asked.

"Yes, they did an autopsy. They found a grape lodged in her trachea."

"A grape? A fucking grape killed my mother?" I gasped, and then in a gutwrenching flashback I remembered Mum taking me to a supermarket and asking me what I would like for party snacks. Besides the usual sandwiches, sausage rolls and cake, I had asked for grapes.

It wasn't my father who had killed my mother. He wasn't the Jekyll and Hyde character I'd imagined. Her death was my fault.

And then I broke down and, for the first time in my adult life, cried like a baby. I cried for my mother, but mostly I cried for my father. For all the years we'd lost because I'd been too stubborn to listen to him.

I wept pitifully for several minutes and when I eventually managed to pull myself together I discovered we were hugging each other.

"Dad, I'm so ... so sorry," I sobbed.

"You were just a little kid. You couldn't possibly have understood what was happening."

"But when I was older I should have let you explain. You tried but I wouldn't let you."

"We can't change the past, son. I'm just thankful we've had the chance to straighten it all out before I die. Losing Clara broke my heart but, in a way, losing you was even worse. For the last thirty years, I've felt as if my soul was shattered into tiny pieces, but now I feel like it's whole again."