caring

In the corridor he takes my hand. Not a very auspicious situation for a star-like meaningful moment. The smell vaguely bodily and the peeping attention-seeking needing needing needing someone, ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ imperative and desperate. Un-ignorable but somehow utterly pointless, too. Nurse may come. ‘Help me! Help me!’ wails from another room. A nurse may come. Someone may help. But that’s not what you’re talking about is it? That’s not the help you need. I mean, you do need help, can’t walk to the toilet, if that’s what you need, can’t pop next door for the warmth of a smile and a hug that reassures, ‘I can’t help you right now but I do love you.’  The kind of contact you’d have given, to your children (where are they now? Far flung. Running away from being in the next room with a welcoming smile, attention that’s always available, a reassuring cuddle that tells you, ‘I can’t come right now, but I love you’)

Help me, help me, is not getting you closer to the heart of the home. It’s not bringing a pair of twinkling eyes, peeping round the door frame – ‘Did you call?’ Smiling. I’m just in the middle of something but I’ll be with you shortly. Oh, let me just brush your cheek with an affectionate kiss before I go. Back soon! That kind of attention isn’t what comes, is it? The greater the need, the less generous the response. Run, run as far as you can. Someone is trying to make me responsible. Someone needs me.

We are walking through the corridors. Carrying all our things. Everyone’s much taller than me, but I’m short so it’s hardly surprising. The others attract a particularly clichéd reaction. Multiple times. I think because they are men. I think because they are tall men. I think I could be ten feet tall and I wouldn’t attract ‘What’s the weather like up there?’ Hahaha, a tiny wheezy warped woman can barely raise her head to see how near the ceiling his head actually is. Silver grey hair, squashed and slept on, (hairdresser this week, then, Tilda), fingernails scarlet and clutching claw-like to the light frame with which she is squeaking slowly along. These men bend benediction to her. I stand my roundy bulk into a doorway, unnoticed. We all walk on to the next encounter which will be similar.

This is the end of our series. We won’t be back for a while. Not everyone we pass has been part or it either. And Andy will not be joining us any more. Around us this goodbye drops a tiny pebble that rings out around and around and around. Ever increasing ripples. ‘Nurse! Nurse! Help me! Help! What’s the weather like up there? Can you see over to France? I have to pick the children up from school. He’ll be here in a minute. My son’s coming. Help me! Aaaah! I want to die.’ And on and on, wordless repetitions recycling endless distress, discomfort, confusion. Who is there to see me? I need to command help. That’s all I must ask you. Help. Your help. Your care? What do you see? My nightdress gaping  an unseemly stretch of hollow purplish chest. The smell of my old body that is shedding its control over itself and requiring you to ‘Help! Help me! I want to die!’ and on and on. I bet you do.

And through the corridor we go. Heavy hearted. All this need and the fact that we’ll be diminished after today without Andy. He’s walking close by – there’s safety and protection in the nearness of healthy, vital life. Radiance from inside, while the outside greens vaguely in the strip-lighting and greasy grey-green flower prints on the wall. How do they choose these? That’ll brighten the place up a bit. Yeah right. Flowers on the wall and no one will notice how they’ve been packed away into a small square that cruelly suggests that just next door, so close you could reach them, if you could still stretch your arms out fully, just there behind the partition wall, is the warmth of belonging – the connection, comfort, companionship, the cuddles and smiles that you crave. (No, they’re not coming today, but look, a repeating pattern of clever curls, ivy tendrils, woven in the colour of Spring). No wonder you cry out all day.

We drift closer together, the longing for love creeps through any spaces we leave. Over-extended and vulnerable from our improvised musical connections, hopelessness slinks between us and we need to get out.

From way up there, where the sun is shining above the cloud, he smiles sadly down at me. It’s the right decision, I know, and one must preserve that small warm hopeful heart. But that can make the straw that breaks, the Achilles heal of our efforts today. ‘Help! Help me! I want to die!’

His smile reaches me, just. And then to make sure, he takes my hand in companionship, and the possibility of returning flickers into life again. Even without him we must go on. That warm touch, offered in friendliness and the instinct to care, to shore up hopelessness wherever possible. That is what these ageing souls are crying out for.

January 12 2023