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.
“I’m going out with a song on my old cracked lips, a spring in my limp.”Credit:Getty Images 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.
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