Respite

There are parallel universes all around us, ones never mentioned by science fiction writers, investigated by journalists, given credence to by alien followers, or any real consideration by most of us, most of the time. However, whenever we use the word, ‘they,’ we are effectively admitting that these universes, ones almost completely beyond our ken, exist. ‘They,’ it seems, can cover a multitude of worlds from which we are barred, ones we may once have belonged to, and ones we would rather forget we were ever part of. ‘They,’ covers any group we are currently not members of. Students, they. Children, they. Teenagers, they!!! And the mere use of the word bankers can sound like an expletive when followed with the word they. Mind you, that can be said of many professions or groups of people. The elderly are one such group, one most of us would rather not be bracketed with.

However, it will be the last separate world, in a world of worlds, that we will all belong to, and that, only if we get lucky. Everyone strives to live forever, without considering what it means. It means being elderly for a very long time. It entails coping with cataracts and prostates, hearing aids and walking sticks, weakness and memory loss. And somewhere along the way, medics start to whisper instead of talk to you and people start to use we when they mean you. Then of course, food doesn’t taste as good as it used to, films aren’t what they once were, and technology is built to confuse rather than to help.

You may feel smug because you can turn an a laptop, but when your hearing deteriorates to the point that Siri’s answers go unheard, that feeling shall shatter like a Waterford crystal vase meeting a ceramic tile, quickly followed by panic greater than that of a vegan failing to persuade a hungry lion to try out the vegetarian option on today’s menu.

Sometimes, no matter how we try to avoid it, we find ourselves, like ET, stranded in a universe we were only vaguely aware existed minutes earlier. In my case, this other universe, one surprisingly close to home, was respite. It took a plumbing crisis to trigger my warp speed journey to this unknown land. Suddenly, pipes which should remain hidden, were overground, like snakes they laid siege to the house, holes abounded in the drive and the only access to the front door was via a temporary bridge made of MDF. Plotting with the plumber to fix the problem, it became obvious that trenches would have to be dug, paths cut into, and walls drilled through. In short, we were talking a level of chaos which no 95-year-old would tolerate. Calls were made, advice sought, and a solution offered. Not that my mother was happy with the solution, but she ultimately agreed when it was confirmed that if she took respite, she could have a glass of Prosecco in the evenings and have wine with her dinner. During the negotiations I felt like a parent offering bribes to persuade a reluctant child walk through the school gates on its first day.

Once the principle had been sold, however, the system kicked in; the whispering form-fillers lined up behind each, like planes waiting to land at Newark, and ordeal by bureaucrat had begun. My mother, aware that any wrong answer might give a wrong impression, that her mind was in a state of collapse, was more than usually helpful. For once she did not lie about her age, unlike last year when we were in a supermarket where she told a woman that she was eighty. Bloody rude of her to ask, she remarked, as we walked away from the inquisitor. Now she told the truth, but sparingly. Date of birth, she would answer. But as for the follow up question of how old she was, she would reply, do the maths. Have you been hospitalized recently? was a dangerous question. It gave Ma reason to vent, taking out a flame thrower to the reputation of a doctor who once sent her to A&E for a better quality of life. I spent 12 hours sitting on a hard chair waiting to see a doctor, when all I needed was a course of antibiotics, she would begin. He asked me why I was there and when I told him he shrugged, and shook his head, and said, ‘GPs,’ as though they were all village idiots. Then he gave me the antibiotics she had refused me. A better quality of life indeed.

No matter how much experience you have, and I have seen my mother asked this question a dozen times, there is no easy way to ask it. In case of emergency, do you wish to be resuscitated? My mother’s reply usually goes like this, I’ll tell you what I told that doctor in A&E last year, I’m happy enough not to be resuscitated, so long as you’re not actively trying to put me down. The reply puts many a health professional on the back foot. This is often the case with the elderly, at some point they get fed up playing other people’s games. I remember an old woman, who when a young doctor came to her bedside to explain what was wrong with her, said to him, young man, don’t tell me how I’m doing, you know nothing about it, while I practically have a degree in dying.

Forms filled in, follow up telephone calls taken, the day finally arrived. It fell to me to guide my mother through the admissions process. No worries there I thought, we had the equivalent of pre-clearance. Not so. What should have been a two-minute process became a two-hour process. First one nurse, then a second questioned my mother’s prescription. We had cleared that hurdle already, or so I thought when the form fillers had done their best to understand my mother’s particular needs. However, it now seemed that the form fillers had not passed on their findings and as a result my mother’s doctor was being accused of malpractice and me of drug pushing. My mother sat on her bed, completely oblivious to the charges against me, because she was not wearing her hearing aids. I kept bating back objections, grateful to my sister, a nurse, for having explained the meds to me in such tedious detail. At one point the nurse read a remark in the doctor’s report, then pointed to the bed and asked, does she know? Ask her, I replied. One thing is certain, my mother knows more than she pretends to, though she does choose to interpret the facts as she would like them to be. Who doesn’t? the nurse didn’t pursue the doctor’s report with my mother, but she did ask her about hospital admissions; a mistake, as she got a lecture about doctors all being afraid of their own shadows, about the quality of life in A&E departments, and about the wonder of antibiotics. As for being resuscitated… She had her response down pat for that question

I eventually escaped, but my mind was troubled as I drove away. Thinking about them, not the elderly, the medics; there was something about the place which reminded me of The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It induced a feeling of mental quicksand; nothing these reassuring professionals half-whispered resonated with the universe I normally inhabit. They seemed obsessed with paperwork and procedures, but no one thought it odd that an assistant wrote blood pressure reading on a piece of kitchen towel, instead of on an actual page, with the patient’s name writ large, in a prominent place. Having said that, everybody was extremely kind, and my mother knows how to hold her own in any get down-and-dirty argument, so I had no real qualms leaving once the paperwork was done.

As the respite was not for me, but my sister, I felt free to drop extra Prosecco supplies behind enemy lines during her stay. On the morning of my visit, I discovered her arguing with a nurse as I rattled into her room. She was explaining to the young woman, as though she was an idiot, that a cough bottle was not a prescription drug, therefore she could take it whenever she chose to, so open the safe and uncork the bottle. The nurse tried explaining the restrictions on usage of an expectorant but was getting nowhere with her elderly patient, who all the while was waving an unlit cigar about as she pressed home her point.

I had once tried explaining that she shouldn’t take the expectorant before going to bed, as she would wind up coughing all night, only to watch her defiantly reach for the bottle. So it was no surprise when the nurse yielded, and a tiny cup of the mixture was poured as precisely as whiskey from an optic, the liquid was drunk by the victor, and we headed for the great outdoors, so that my mother could smoke her cigar. The journey involved a few near hit-and-runs with the walking aid, as the place was infested with students from a nearby school who were getting acquainted with the wrinkled, determined faces bearing the scars of longevity. Ma’s victory was somewhat muted when we hit escape velocity and landed out in a sun-drenched patio area. Her smoking buddy had been taken hostage by the school kids, and she always brought matches to the meeting. She keeps them in her handbag, my mother told me, but she always forgets where they are until I remind her. There are matches in the oratory, she continued, they use them to light the candles.

Puffing out a cloud of smoke, my mother handed back the matches for me to return to the oratory as I left. On my way out, a nurse stopped to chat for a moment. She’d show you how to live, your mother, she whispered in admiration.