OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016
Mummy’s boy waits, pondering
nine decades of wrinkles
By PATRICK WEBB
For The Daily Astorian
Q
ueen Elizabeth II is 90. English
theaters have received instructions
on how to make the announcement if her
death occurs during a performance.
Mum is the same vintage as Great Britain’s
longest-serving monarch, born in a rather
less -afÀ uent /ondon neighborhood eight
months earlier.
There will be no 21-gun salute when Mum
dies. Mourning will be limited to a younger gen-
eration; no contemporaries survive.
What a life she has had.
The el¿ n daughter of an of¿ ce cleaner
and a crane operator was so underweight she
wasn’t expected to sur-
vive her youth. Rough-
housing around her was
forbidden. Instead, she
emerged unscathed from
Hitler’s blitzkrieg, then
endured postwar auster-
ity, the Swinging ’60s,
the Falklands War and
the Thatcher Years as a
wife, mother, housewife,
dressmaker and sports-
Patrick
woman. Once her boys
Webb
had grown, she worked in
the complaints department of the Ronson’s cig-
arette lighter factory, and later as an assistant in
a betting shop.
Nine decades have passed. She has outlasted
them all: her parents, obviously, but also hus-
band, sister, brother, in-laws, indeed all relatives.
In the last few years, friends’ funerals occurred
almost weekly.
Now she is the last survivor of her generation.
But the last one standing is wobbly.
Indestructible. Until now.
Care staff from the county social services
department visit her brick duplex south of /on-
don three times daily, assessing if she can fend
for herself after a mini-stroke and other woes
that torture her bony frame. They attend to her
washing, pill-taking and unmentionable practical
tasks with a studied detachment.
Though all are reasonably cheerful, most are
minimalists, one spending just seven minutes at
Mum’s bedside before scribbling arcane details
in the log book and driving off in a tiny hatch-
back. Another, Pom-Pom, whose Thai accent is
straight out of central casting, behaves as if she
were tending to her own beloved mother. She
regularly exceeds her allotted half hour, chatting
constantly, but always on task. As this kindly vis-
itor departs, Mum beams with À eeting happi-
ness, despite the pain of an aching back that dou-
bles her over.
At 90, there is no single ailment, instead a
catalog . Macular degeneration has devastated
her eyes; she can no longer read, her favorite TV
quiz shows appear blurred, and she scribbles her
signature on checks, allowing a trusted friend to
¿ ll in the details.
Mother and son looking cool in their sunglasses in the 1960s at a beach on England’s blustery east coast. Characteristically, Pat-
rick is wearing his sweater despite the heat.
May Webb now is 90, having outlived all
her contemporaries.
I
have come to help for a month.
It is not long before I realize my role is lim-
ited. I wake to fetch weak Yorkshire brand tea
and two slices of toast, dutifully cutting off the
crusts and tossing them onto the back lawn for
the birds. As inactive days drag, I brew end-
less cups of tea, fashion reasonably creative hot
meals at lunchtime, and drive off to replenish
the pantry from expensive Tesco and Sainsbury
store shelves.
I arrange the Maribel Sweet Marmalade jars
in the pantry, aligning their labels perfectly. I
cope with what goes in the pots and pans then
wash them up afterward; but I cannot cope with
my thoughts. I cannot make Mum better.
As a kid, my weak lungs gasped ¿ tfully amid
asthma, pneumonia, and health troubles galore. I
sampled every pill our village chemist stocked.
In my tiny, box-shaped upstairs bedroom, a spe-
cially shortened bed became my nest; I endured
and eventually À ourished, a world atlas in one
hand and a teddy bear in another. Is it any won-
der I revere both? I dreamed of traveling the
globe and I cuddled my bear tightly. Stroking his
fur soothed me; it still does. Together, they saved
my life.
As did my nurse.
I
grew up a Mummy’s Boy, distant from a
rather plain Dad, a cavernous four years
younger than my lone brother, living in a com-
muter subdivision attached to a village in rural
south England.
Fast-forward 50-plus years. For me, two
countries, ¿ ve states. One happy marriage. One
career. Eight newspapers; three lost jobs. Sports
memories, mostly with a whistle. A À ooded
house. And, more recently, a life-changing opera-
tion that went wrong and forced early retirement.
/ike Mum before me, this cheeky weakling
survived childhood. For me it was study, work,
study, work, succeed, work, go bald, work, love,
work, marry, work, prosper, work, work, work,
ail, struggle and retire.
Now I ¿ nd myself at my mother’s side,
dreading the inevitable, trying to be strong.
I am still a Mummy’s Boy.
May Webb was always a keen sportswoman, playing tennis and badminton then learn-
ing lawn bowls when she was older.
Submitted Photos
During the 2000s, May Webb and son Pat-
rick enjoy a vacation in Devon, the coun-
ty in the west of England where May and
Bill Webb honeymooned on a tandem bi-
cycle in 1946.
Except today, I am waiting for Mum to die.
I have never written those words before,
barely thought them. As I type them here for the
¿ rst time, a knot in my core tightens. Of course, I
have known her 58 years.
Without her, will I still be the same person?
She nurtured me and gave me the greatest gift
of all: the love of reading. I thanked her once and
she replied, “Don’t be daft, Pat.” (My English
family does not put gratitude, praise or love into
words.)
Trained as a dressmaker by Norman Hartnell,
who would later ¿ nd fame creating 4ueen Eliz-
abeth’s wedding and coronation gowns, it was
ironic that Mum bore no daughters. Instead, two
sons swung through the ’60s and ’70s in every
shade of purple, hand made bell -bottom pants,
shirts with rufÀ es and pointy collars, leather
waistcoats and suede jackets. No kid in our vil-
lage dressed so ¿ ne. “Exclusive” was the word
Mum used for her designs; had she gone pro, we
would have lived richly. She never did.
I’d like to think we appreciated her then.
She nagged: no male of any age left our
house without wearing his undershirt and carry-
ing a hanky. She warned: there is no convert so
zealous as a reformed cigarette smoker. Imagine
the tone of the conversation she had with an asth-
matic son! As Dad bowed 40 years to the grind-
stone of the power company, whose revenue he
tallied, Mum was at home, cooking-cleaning,
cooking-cleaning, cooking-cleaning, caring in
her own way, never demonstrative, always avail-
able to peel open a Band-Aid and press it on a
scraped knee.
hen 4ueen Elizabeth shufÀ es off her mor-
tal coil, they will dim the lights at the 44
W
theaters in the West End, /ondon’s equivalent of
Broadway. The British papers will print Extras,
celebrating the reign of the hardest-working
woman of her generation, an anachronism for
sure, but the Briton whose singular life of service
has formed the enduring backbone of an island
nation grappling with its lost Empire.
There is no such hoopla in store for Mum,
whose life has paralleled her queen with less
majesty, but equal dignity, until irreversible
decline became daily reality.
Every hard year that has passed since 1925
is etched on Mum’s face; her skin has barely
room for another wrinkle.
It cannot be long now.
Back on the North Coast, I wait. When
that phone rings, and my brother breaks the
news, this Mummy’s Boy will hug his bear
tightly, hoist an already packed suitcase, and
À y halfway around the world to something
unimaginable.
English-born Patrick Webb is the retired
managing editor of The Daily Astorian.
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher • LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
• CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
• DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Founded in 1873