Read more poems and stories: carersuk.org/creative
Catherine Graham won our Jo Cox Poetry Prize for her poem,
The Washing Machine. Here she tells us how sometimes it’s not
only the carer that can experience feelings of loneliness
In her day my mam, Doris,
was the life and soul of
any get together. We were
inseparable and I adored
her. She was 90 when she
passed away last November.
I was mum’s carer for
ten years, eventually she
became housebound and I
did everything for her. It was
a privilege to care for her –
you only get one mum.
Seeing mum struggling to
be her loving, gentle self
was hard. The love was still
there but she was getting
so weary. She would get
cross with me and it would
break her heart. Sometimes
I would cry buckets, but I
didn’t cry in front of her.
At times my full-of-joy mam
was still there. I would put
her favourite music on and
we would sing or dance a
slow waltz.
The thing that irritated mum
the most was the washing
machine. The poem is my
daily experience of caring
for her. She’d say, ‘I don’t
care if the washing gets
piled high, I just want your
company Catherine, I’m
lonely.’
You don’t have to be alone
to feel lonely. Looking on
the Carers UK website
was comforting. Knowing
other people were feeling
the same was a kind of
@carersuk
/carersuk
companionship in itself.
Mum has inspired many
of my poems. Whenever I
read her a new poem she
would say, ‘Aye, if you like
it Catherine, but it doesn’t
rhyme.’
It’s almost a year since my
mam passed away and
I can imagine what she
would say, ‘You won, I hope
this one rhymes.’
The washing machine
Catherine Graham
1 st
PRIZE
She dislikes the sound of the washing machine
so I sing as it starts to spin, willing it to stop
before she calls for me from the bathroom.
She used to love hanging the washing out,
proud to peg ‘the whitest sheets in the street’
and watch them as they billowed on the line.
Sometimes, they’d be bone dry but she’d
leave them out, on show to Mrs. Ridley.
I remember how Mrs. Ridley and my mother
would stand, arms folded, like bookends
in headscarves and slippers exchanging the latest
chinwag. I remember the pleasure Mam took
in folding the bedclothes with me, how
she’d do that little dance towards me until
our fingers met; her fingers gentle and plump.
‘Where are you?’ she shouts from the bathroom,
‘I’ve sat here two hours!’ It’s been two minutes.
I hurry along the passage, still singing ‘our’ song.
Keeping her face to the wall, Mam joins in:
‘My my my, Delilah! Why why why, Delilah?’
We sing our hearts out, each of us as lonely as the other.
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