By Richard Roe*
Updated17 November 2018 — 12:57am first
published at 12:12am
An
82-year-old writer spends his final years in a retirement home surrounded by
the sick and the sorry – and finds it hard to hold back the tears.
We sit in our allotted places for breakfast. For every meal. Alfredo* is
to my right, Alice eyeballing me from across the table, Theresa on my left. My
mother's stricture, "A place for everything and everything in its
place", comes to mind. The table's not much larger than a card table, so
finding a space for all our plates, jugs, cutlery, cups and glasses, containers
for butter, salt, jams and spreads provokes a silent battle of shifty
placement.
Before I can sit down, Alice moans, "There's not enough milk."
She clutches the plastic jug to her breast and repeats her protest several
times. She does this every meal. The jug holds about a litre of milk. Alice
only uses it in her coffee, a couple of thimblefuls. She seems to have a
lactose problem. After a month of calling the place my home, I realise she
would demand more milk if none of us used it. It's a psychological imperative.
She'd be hollering for milk if a mob of Jersey cows with overflowing udders
filled the dining room.
As Alice protests, Alfredo takes his place. Alfredo is an Italian of my
age who has been in Australia since he was 12, but the Mediterranean runs deep
in his veins. He shakes hands every morning and evening and, sometimes, in
between. He has a shock of white hair and a fervent manner. When the food
arrives he begins saying grace, sometimes silently, sometimes in a low-key
mumble. It can take several minutes and multiple signs of the cross, and he
doesn't miss a beat as he pours his coffee mid-way through. Theresa has now
joined us.
Theresa could break your heart. She's a little
mouse, European, about 50, who has lost her way in the world. Theresa cannot
get through a meal, or anything, without help. She confuses her knife and her
fork. Or her knife and her spoon. She looks lost when one or another of us
guides her through each meal. She says a humble "thank you" after
every helping hand and sometimes, "You are very kind."
Some residents will tell you Theresa is retarded. I
don't think that's the case. She's a woman, I believe, who has suffered some
deep trauma that's closed down her mind. We hang around after we've finished
eating to make sure Theresa doesn't start spooning with a knife again. She
could easily gash her mouth. I go to my room and hold back a tear.
I shouldn't be
crying.
I've just moved into an aged
care home in Sydney. One of the good ones, run by caring people who smile and
laugh a lot. I don't think it is put on, though some of the residents would
demoralise a saint. They sit in the garden, staring into space. They're in some
other world, cut off from communication. Unapproachable, unresponsive, mostly
men. They sit in the lounge room watching television, a row of metal-framed
walkers parked in front of them.
There are some sorry cases among the residents, men
bent over, almost doubling on themselves, women whose legs and feet are so bad
they can barely shuffle along. But it's the silent ones I find disturbing.
I moved in here on an emotional high. It's time, I
told myself. I'm 82 and multiple vital parts of the body are starting to fail.
Parkinson's has slowed my gait, my reactions, my mind. I'm beginning to grasp
for the right word, my voice has softened and often comes out confused. My eyes
are failing through macular degeneration and glaucoma. My hearing has been shot
for years. The doctors have told me of other failings: Barrett's oesophagus,
hiatus hernia, swollen legs and a whole list of conditions I don't understand
and really don't want to.
I'm a cocky old coot. The night I began calling the
home my home, I sent out an email to friends and former colleagues to keep them
in the loop. Forget my former name, I told them, forget the byline I used all
my working life, from now on I wished to be known as the Dalliance Alarma.
Don't be alarmed if you can't reach me, I'll probably be in deep meditation. I
mean no disrespect for the Dalai Lama, whom I admire. I just want my mates to
recognise that I've slipped into another phase, the last of Shakespeare's
seven. I'm going out with a song on my old cracked lips, a spring in my limp.
So, how's it going? I'm at the start of my seventh
week and life is closing in on me. We catch the same creaky lift down to the
dining room, make the same jokes with the same people about it crashing one
day. That's with the people who talk to me. Some residents have remained mute
from day one. After a sustained campaign of hello-ing them cheerfully for four
or five weeks, I've given up. If they want to be miserable, that's their
problem.
I'm trapped in the minutiae of life. What's coming
up for lunch, what for dinner? Is Alfredo going for a walk today? Will he get
wet? That's of course if it rains. There are various competing opinions expressed
on that possibility.
There are some sorry cases among the residents, men
bent over, women whose legs are bad. But it's the silent ones I find
disturbing.
We have a crucial conversation about the butter.
For weeks it's been on the table in those little wrapped pats you find in
hotel-room fridges. It's cold and hard but there are strategies to soften it,
to make it more spreadable. My tactic is to trap one little pat between the two
pieces of warm toast I always have. There's nothing I can do at the top of the
pile, though; just soldier on, ramming hard butter against soft toast.
Three days ago there was a butter revolution: a
different brand of pat that spreads like water on a flood plain. Our joy is
matched only by the disappointment of today: back to hard butter, not even
wrapped … they're tiny squares hacked from a big lump of the stuff. Hard. And
cold as charity.
I almost lost it
with Alice at lunch today. Went
within a whisker of reaching across the table, grabbing her by her turkey
throat and squeezing the life out of her. Never have I met anyone so
self-absorbed. "Tania," she cries, when the nurse wheels the
medications trolley into the dining room. "Tania, I've finished
eating." As if Tania hasn't enough on her plate, dealing with 50 people
with varied pills, capsules, drops and liquids. "Tania, I've finished
eating."
Alice switches her attack to Stella, who is ladling
out the minestrone. "Stella, I haven't got my soup." And when Stella
responds with a plateful, "I don't eat that soup. I want my soup."
Nearly all of Alice's diet is Alice-specific. Her special soup. And eggs at
almost every meal: pallid scrambled eggs. Sometimes she shovels them all down,
sometimes abandons the task after a spoonful.
I'd like to know more about Alice but I'm wary about
becoming a confidant. She hints of a murky past. She knew Lenny McPherson,
onetime crime king of Sydney, and she speaks of working around the club scene.
She sometimes visits the cemetery where one of her husbands and two of her
infant children were cremated.
Alice has a tragic face, which possibly might once
have been beautiful. To get around she uses a walker, which precludes her from
going out; she's afraid it might take off with her down a slope. She's a smoker
who frequently runs out of cigarettes. In my second week here she asked me to
buy her a single cigarette – that's right, one lonely little fag – from a
supermarket down the road. It hasn't helped that I turned her down.
Today she turns her attention on Matilda, who is
sitting at a neighbouring table in direct line of fire. "Matilda, will you
go and buy me a packet of cigarettes?" Matilda tries to ignore her, but
Alice is relentless. She repeats her request maybe a dozen times before Matilda
capitulates. It makes no difference. Alice continues to nag her even though
Matilda has buckled.
Alice turns on Theresa. That's what almost tips me
over the edge. Alice does help Theresa, there's no denying, but it's the help
you might give to an irritating pet dog.
"Now eat your bread, Theresa." "Put
your cup down." "Not with the knife, Theresa. With the spoon,
Theresa, not the knife." "Tuck your napkin into the top of your
blouse." "Put the glass down, Theresa."
For god's sake, shut up, Alice. Shut up and become
a silent helper like the rest of us. Alice looks at me malevolently across the
dirty dishes. I'm sure she knows what I'm thinking. All of this may be very
unfair to Alice and to the sad-faced silent men who watch me pass every day
without a flicker of recognition. Some of these people have been here for
years, waiting out their time on earth.
How will I be in five years if Parkinson's or some
other stealthy malady hasn't claimed me, if I'm immobilised, bitter and resent
my fate? I wish I could answer that question. I want to remain stoic and
good-humoured no matter what. I'll do my best but there are no guarantees. The
black dog can creep up on you unawares. I think that furtive, depressive animal
is chained permanently to many of the men who lie in the sun on recliner chairs
for hours on end every day. Their lives have become a waiting game. They're not
waiting for friends and relatives to drop in. It's bigger than that. It's their
endgame and they don't wish to be distracted.
When I moved in, I asked a staff member about
visiting hours. The question caught her off-guard. "Oh, we don't have
visiting times," she said. "We're not a prison. We welcome visitors
at any time. We love to see them." So do the old folk. All too often they
wait in vain. It's a long, long time since some of them saw a friendly face
from the outside. When they do, it's often a fleeting appearance and a source
of embarrassment for both parties.
Occasionally, a ray
of sunshine breaks through. There's a
little bloke on level three whom I've mentally labelled the Jockey. He never
speaks because he can't. He points to his throat; something's wrong there which
has sentenced him to permanent silence. He grins and waves his arms, c'est la vie. He's the Jockey because he's small, thin
and wiry, strong in the arms, as all jockeys must be.
He reminds me of Mel Schumacher, the audacious
rider I interviewed many years ago. I watched the Jockey in the dining room a
few days ago guiding another resident into his walking frame. The man was huge
and made clumsy by his medical condition. The Jockey patiently stood him up and
fussed over him until he was sure his friend was secure. They stood side by
side for a moment, one towering over the other, David and Goliath united in friendship.
I've reviewed my life many, many times. I've found
that the result of my musings has varied in line with my mood of the moment.
For the moment, I make comparisons with other
oldies and count my blessings. Will I be able to do that when I'm on the wrong
side of the ledger?
I've been thinking about old age, how I will handle
it, for 10 years or more. I guess most people would say I've been in denial;
that starting at 72 I'm already there, now at 82 I'm past it. As former Israeli
prime minister Golda Meir said, "Old age is like flying through a storm:
once you're aboard there's nothing you can do." Many notable, and not so
notable, people have weighed into the debate.
I've come across some of them in my research. Bette
Davis, the tough-talking actor, said: "Old age is no place for
sissies." That quintessential Frenchman Charles de Gaulle seemed to be
agreeing with her when he described old age as "a shipwreck".
American writer Philip Roth was on the same wavelength: "Old age," he
said, "isn't a battle, it's a massacre." Bette's Hollywood
contemporary Marilyn Monroe mused that sometimes she thought "it would be
easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you'd never complete your life,
would you? You'd never wholly know you." As it turned out, she had no
choice in the matter. Leon Trotsky shared Monroe's misfortune. The runaway
Russian revolutionary labelled old age as "the most unexpected of all
things".
He died in Mexico when a sneaky assassin drove an
ice pick though his skull. He was 60. My thoughts on how to handle advanced age
have swung through a wild arc, from the dismal to the absurd. I'd like to think
I could live up to US literary critic Louis Kronenberger's goal "to say or
do at least one outrageous thing every week". On a real high, I see myself
in the same light as science-fantasy writer Roger Zelazny, who explained:
"While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant
was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making
love." Socrates said that an "unexamined life is not worth
living". I don't know that he's right. The old Greek philosopher was a bit
of an elitist. Only male citizens came under his scrutiny. Women and slaves, of
whom there were many, didn't count.
When I look back at the people I have known, those
in amiable, good-humoured relationships seem the most contented. They haven't
necessarily sat around and examined their good fortune. Most of them have taken
their lot as the way it's meant to be.
Self-scrutiny, in any case, can be a chancy
business. I've reviewed my life many, many times. I've found that the result of
my musings has varied in line with my mood of the moment. Like Kronenberger, I've
had times of outstanding stupidity, incidents that have sent my career, or
whatever, into a nosedive. But then, they have been the memorable events of my
life. The bottom line is you can't beat your nature, you can only try to curb
it a little. Socrates in the end took a draught of poison hemlock rather than
be banished from his country. Was it a decision based on an examination of his
life? I wonder what Mrs Socrates had to say about it?
Lately my satisfaction pendulum has been swinging
more often to the bottom of the arc, to Shakespeare's assessment of the
seventh, and last, age of man as "second childishness and mere oblivion,
sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". It's troubling that
Shakespeare was right about so many things.
For the moment, I know I'm in better shape than
Moira, a lifelong friend who has creeping dementia, and knows that the disease
is cannibalising her brain. She's had a good mind which was mostly engaged in
helping other people. She's only 18 months older than me and what she feels
most sharply is mortification. "Who would have thought it would happen to
me?" she says.
* Names have been
changed, including that of the author.
