Tony Clayton-Lea’s Big Regret: ‘I didn’t visit my mother enough before she died’

As each April passes, I regret more and more what I didn’t do but should have. The past doesn’t necessarily come back and haunt you, but it certainly has a way of tapping you on the shoulder with an admonishing finger. My mother died on April 16, 2009, and the previous 18 months of her life were pitiful. From 2006 onwards, her mobility had slowly diminished from walking with the aid of a stick to walking with a Zimmer frame, to being wheelchair-bound to being bed-bound. Her hands and fingers that once sprightly toiled in her beloved garden, or sewn on buttons to old blouses, had, over a two-year period, curled in on themselves, pointing awkwardly like a scarecrow’s.

During this time, my elder brother increasingly took on the role of carer because I – well, I had things to do, didn’t I? I was married and had two teenagers to get through school and college. I had a negative equity house in the country, with big gardens and a huge mortgage, and so I needed to work all the hours in any given day/week/month in order to make sure bills were paid and bailiffs rebuffed. And so I willingly let my brother look after everything connected with the gradual fading of my mother’s life: contacting various departments of the HSE, arranging appointments with geriatricians, making sure she was as pain-free and comfortable as anyone in her position could be.

I visited her about once a week, and can’t recall that I stayed in her bedroom for much longer than 30 minutes each time. Looking back, particularly on the last 12 months of her life, I feel so ashamed of myself that I didn’t visit her more often, that I didn’t alleviate some of the burden my brother so uncomplainingly shouldered. Saying sorry now just isn’t good enough.