Nursing Home

MOTHER- NURSING HOME- I saw you, as usual, last Sunday. It was later than usual for my weekly visit. You were awake in your large reclining chair in that spot next to the curtained window, next door to where father died. You looked much the same. Tired, worried, but with a smile for me, and J, and the boy. It never seems to be too much of an effort for you. You do genuinely love these visits. You often talk of being grateful because some residents never see anyone from the outside world. It was nearing lunch time, 12 o’clock. It is always 12 o’clock. That’s what happens when you return to a regimented process such as your earlier days. You give up the privilege of waking up, or eating, or sleeping whenever you want. We placed you in your wheelchair- or rather, the help did, quite perfunctorily. Of course, that is your lot now, this inability to walk. But it is not this loss of a function that troubled me all of Sunday. It was your sight, or rather, lack of it. You took your place at the usual table of four or five other people, all men. Brian is the one that is always next to you. He is kind and seems younger, or at least much more capable…alas, than you are. Sadly, the others look listless, bored, regrettably taciturn. J took the boy for a walk so I sat next to you. Because we arrived so late, it meant that I sat with you throughout your lunch. We held hands a little and chatted and then I did something that struck me as a role reversal from another time. I cut up your food and fed you. In a sense it was heartbreaking for me to do. They plunged large rounded pieces of beef on your plate topped with gravy, and medium-sized roast potatoes. For some reason you were not given the carrots and other vegetables the others received. I could see quickly that you needed your meal to be cut up. I sensed your inability to slice meat with a knife and fork. Even the potatoes were a bit too big. I thought this would do. I watched you, sadly, as you began to try and lift food with your fork to your mouth. This would not do, so you requested a spoon. Then the shock. You tried to lodge some meat and potato onto your spoon, and lifted the spoon slowly and gently to your mouth, your lips expectant. But there was nothing on the spoon. You missed, and couldn’t see to see this. You are so blind. That’s when I began feeding you. A bit of cut up beef, a sliced in half roast potato. After a while you said you had had enough. Then, finished, grateful, you began to talk to nobody in particular (or perhaps it was Brian), about me and how I am your ‘baby.’ You said it several times, laughing, and then saying sentences that were confused or garbled. They did not make much sense. Again, references to being your baby. It left me feeling hollow and so, so sad for you. To see you in this state. Blind, confused, laughing…at what? My mind flashes back to you sitting on a beach chair in the backyard at Reservoir, looking cool with a summer dress, sunglasses on, and a cocktail in your hand. You are smiling, confident and young, your hair lit up red or golden. As I walked out after that to go home, I began wondering ‘is there someone there on other meal days, cutting up your lunch and dinners, and feeding you, and making you feel comforted and secure? Or do you dread the hours, trying your best to disguise your blindness, chirping meaninglessly but merrily to hide your disabilities?’ Your inability to walk and your blindness make life so much harder for you. And I know it is going to happen to me as well. Perhaps someday S or A will write something like this about me.