A memory made sweeter by it.

This piece is in memory of my uncle Keith, and was inspired by a prompt of "Music" and learning of others that never got the pain relief they desperately needed for years.

It was always a struggle to know what to get uncle Keith for Christmas.  He had been in poor health for many years and the pleasures of whiskey and blue cheese were denied him by a cruel duo of cancer and diabetes. There was also arthritis, but that wouldn’t kill him, it would just hurt like hell.

I hadn’t seen him for ages, but would phone him twice a year, and when I did, I would always roll up the sleeves of my ears in readiness for a one-sided conversation about his battles with the NHS and the latest online cat food bargains.

“So what can I get you for Christmas, Keith?”

“Well the bloody doctors tell me I can’t drink because of me diabetes, and after the cancer, me stomach’s not been right. I can’t make it up the stairs sometimes. I love the cheese, but I can’t eat it no more.  They should of let me die of the cancer. I told them. I told them, I don’t want no chemo if you’re not going to do nothing about the pain. What’s the point?  ‘You’ll get addicted. We can’t give ‘em to ya.’  That’s what they says down the pain clinic. I’m dying of bleedin’ cancer! I can’t get out me chair to exercise ‘cos of the pain; keeps me up at night, screamin’ sometimes. If they gave me the morphine patches, at least I could sit in comfort. It’s a fackin’ disgrace.”

In the background I heard the sounds of an opera singer, and then Keith, a sudden softness in his voice, talking to Sarah, his large, black and very hairy cat.  I always thought it was hilarious that Keith’s tangle-matted, feral beast of a pet had such a gentle name. But that was Keith.

“Is that Sarah, Keith? How is she?”

“Oh she’s alright. She’ll see me out, she will.  ‘Ere! There’s a special deal on at Zooplus, but I’ve worked out if you get the 3 for 2 AND the bulk buy, you get 128 pouches of gourmet gold for 32p a pouch it works out at. They’ve messed up there! I’ve put in a triple order; it don’t go off.”

“Can I get you any Opera CDs then?” I asked.

“Nah, not really. I’ve got all me favourites. Just get me the whiskey,  it won’t kill me no quicker than the rest of what I got.”

That was our last conversation, and more or less the same as those before it. I can still hear his voice and our phone calls if I think back.

Keith was a Londoner, I should have said, but for years he’d lived in a tiny stone cottage in the Dales, just a mile or so across the valley from Askrigg.  My fiancée and I happened to be staying in Askrigg for a long weekend.  I hadn’t seen Keith for perhaps eight years; I lived nearly 80 miles away, and his house…his house was a challenge to endure.  I rang mum and asked if Keith would welcome a visit. It would have been wrong to be so close and not go to see him.

“Give him a call tonight and tell him you’ll drop by in the morning? He won’t answer the door, so just go in.  His house is such a state, I can’t tell you. There’s not even anywhere you can sit.”  Mum would go and see her little brother at least twice a year making a long round trip from Scotland.

My fiancée and I went for our hike and walked past Keith’s front door, planning to pop in on the way home the next day.    That evening we were having pub meal and I’d planned to call Keith afterwards, but unexpectedly my phone rang while we ate. It was a woman called Lynn.

“Is this Nick? she asked “I’m Keith’s neighbour.  I’ve just been going through numbers in his address book. I’m afraid it looks like he’s had a stroke,” she said. “We found him at the bottom of his stairs earlier. He’s taken a nasty tumble. He’s at hospital but he’s going to the stroke unit tomorrow.”

I had walked right past his door.  Such a bitter coincidence, this.  To have been so close to him on the very day - that single day out of thousands that I had not been to see him? It seemed too much coincidence to understand.  Surely, after the fates conspired to bring me here at all, it should have been written that I would be the one to find him, get to him in time to help?   Incomprehensibly, I was instead to pass by while the stroke wrote another story for him.  I still cannot fathom this out.

The next morning, we met Lynn and her husband Phil at Keith’s house, to thank them and understand better what had happened. The state of Keith’s house was worse than words can describe, but one thing that stood out in the chaos was his vast collection of CDs, most of which were opera.  

Lynn pointed out that on each step of the narrow stairs was a large box of cat food.  Keith had possibly tripped on one and tumbled, snapping his bannisters and landing in a heap on top of various tools, and crushed up against the garden door.  That was how they had found him, mumbling and bruised and a little bloodied.  Somehow the two of them had got him up and cleared enough space amongst the piles of clutter for the ambulance crew to bring in a stretcher.  Imagining the scene, I could only shake my head.

“I can’t believe we were just here, and we went for a walk instead of knocking on his door.  He could have been there for hours.”

“You weren’t to know,” said Lynn.

I went to the kitchen to see about making some tea and saw the bottle of whiskey I’d sent to Keith for Christmas. It was empty and sat in a dusty line with several others.   I smiled because, knowing Keith, he had probably finished it off by Boxing Day. When I returned to the living room, Sarah had emerged through the cat flap at the sound of our voices. She mewed and prowled around her empty bowls, buffing against our legs.  

When we got to the hospital later that day, Keith looked quite chipper and pleased to see me, but he kept staring in confusion at my fiancée, whom he’d never met before.  It brought home just how long it was since I’d last seen him.

We were full of questions, but it soon became clear that the stroke had left Keith unable to speak properly or write anything. It was hard to know what he could understand or what he was trying to say.  Later, after several scans, a specialist said the stroke had been extremely damaging and Keith would not recover. He would likely fade quickly and couldn’t possibly go home, even if his house had been in a fit state for him.

Keith became visibly withdrawn after the first few times I went to see him. The sparkle left his eyes replaced by frustration.  One of the last legible things he said to me was “I can’t…I can’t… I can’t DO anything.” 

What little comfort I could bring him was music. Maria Callas was his favourite opera singer.  I’d gently take out his hearing aids and put earphones in, so he could listen to her on my phone.   After an hour or so, he would either be asleep or seem to be restless. “Go on then, piss off,” he would say. Swearing was one power he kept.

When he eventually left the hospital, it was to be taken to a hospice, and that’s when he understood that he would never be going home.  He always said he would rather take all his tablets and a bottle of scotch than end up in such a place.  But he was dying, and there was nowhere else he could go that could give the medical care he would need.

It had that smell about it, when we got there, and Keith’s face was a silent picture of bitterness.  He glared at me, jaws working, breathing through his nose in short, hard indignant breaths, not speaking, not able to, but telling me exactly what he thought as I left him.

The last time I saw him, a few days before he died, we listened to Lascia ch’io pianga. If you asked me do I like opera, I would say, not as a rule, but that piece?  How could anybody not love it.  I don’t know if it was tears from the music in his eyes or from silent rage at me for letting them put him in that hospice. 

Keith had very good neighbours, which me and mum - the family -  really knew very little about until Keith’s stroke. Alyson lived next door and coming to understand the friendship she had had with Keith for many years was a wonderful comfort.  Alyson built a little “house” for Sarah in her back garden. It had a flagpole and whenever Sarah had been bad and caught a mouse or bird, Alyson would raise a skull and crossbones to half-mast.   Sarah succumbed to old age not long after Keith died, and she is buried at the top of the pasture behind Keith’s house, where we gathered to scatter his ashes a year to the day, more or less.

When I think of Keith now, I like to see him in his saggy recliner.  He’s listening to that soaring, sweetly powerful voice, stroking Sarah, sipping malt whiskey and puffing on his pipe.  The state of his house never bothered him “It’s only me that lives here, and I don’t care,” he would say “I don’t even notice.”  So I think of him there, closing his eyes and only hearing beauty.