I Am Not Equal to this Challenge

Even life on the periphery can be complicated. I am still living in Nobby’s flat. I had a disturbed night’s sleep. I awoke, suddenly afraid but unable to identify the source of the fear. Upon fully waking up I felt empty. The world seemed cloudless, desolate. A watercolour in the drabbest colours you can find.

A voice in my head whispers, ‘Some thing’s going to happen today.’ A sense of vague dread had metamorphosed into stomach churning terror. And later that day his daughter died.

I turned to Nobby. ‘Will you stay with me? I mean, forever. Even when you know….’
‘Vacate my body? I’ll always be beside you. Even if its not in this form.’

I was sobbing. I felt like my heart was being squeezed by some giant fist. I needed to keep telling myself that it would subside and,finally, it did but a tiny shred of fear remained.

I went to the doctor’s to collect my prescription. When I returned to Nobby’s flat I was confronted by an entanglement of aunts, sisters, brothers, granddaughters and great granddaughters.

‘Granddad,’ the oldest grandchild said. ‘We’ve some really bad news for you.’ Then they all turned to me. I mentally slap my forehead : it’s a family conference and I am not ‘family’.

I gathered up my belongings said a brief goodbye and walked out the door. I walked across the green to my own flat. It was so cold and unfamiliar. Dust motes danced in a sunlit window. I didn’t feel at home. I hugged the walls, wondering what could be happening to Nobby., head in hands, saying ‘Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Then I scolded myself ‘You stupid, stupid, stupid girl.’

I am so afraid
I am not to be depended upon
I am an untermensch
Someone of no consequence

Rage, Rage, Rage

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, Dylan Thomas

Nobby is stoical.  He is stubborn and he can sometimes be downright awkward but he is my friend, my companion.  An unusual friendship perhaps for he his ninety two and I am in my early thirties.  I am not friends with Nobby because he is old and frail and dependent upon me for everyday care.  I am not his carer.  I am his friend. And I am not his friend because I pity him.  He is still lucid and fully in control. Some might say he is too independent for his own good.  Nobby is endlessly fascinating.  He has a bottomless pit of stories to tell.   His boyhood in the ‘thirties. His wartime experiences.  The hardship he experienced after the war.

The elderly have something to offer too.  They are living, breathing, walking history. In a society obsessed with youth it is easy to forget this. People make assumptions about the elderly.  They are ‘past it’. They have lived their lives and have no more to give.  We are wasting what could be a valuable resource and we may one day come to regret it.  Because the way in which we treat the elderly now sets a precedent for the way we will be treated in the future.  And if the way the elderly are treated now is anything to go by we should be afraid. Very afraid.  And there are two certainties in life: you either die or you grow old.  Remember that.

Topical too. Who woulda thunk it?

Fading

These two creatures – one human, one feline, are probably the only living beings keeping me tethered to the world at the moment.  And one of them is fading from view and fast.  Last Monday I met Nobby at his front door. He stumbled towards me into my arms. I could not support him.  He was too heavy.  I held him while he fell as gently as possible to the floor then I turned him over into what I vaguely remembered was the recovery position. He lay there barely conscious as I ran across the sitting room and, with trembling hands dialled 999.  I was speaking to the operator  when Nobby made his ‘miraculous’ recovery’.  He staggered in.  He was weak and pallid but he pulled the receiver from my hands and spoke to the operator himself.  He told her that he was not ill (even though he very clearly was) and that he did not need an ambulance (even though he very clearly did). He put the ‘phone down and leaned back into his chair, all colour drained from his face.

I was besieged by a mixture of emotions.  I had hesitated.  I had not known what to do.  Had I overreacted?  Would the staff at the ambulance station right there and then be having a laugh at the melodramatic, hysterical timewaster they’d just been forced to devote valuable time to.  How should I have responded?  I have had (admittedly very limited) first aid training and I never envisaged myself behaving as I did when faced with the situation I had just been confronted with.  You imagine yourself to be cool, calm, focused, but I simply panicked.  ‘Get help, get help,’ said the voice in my head.  And so, acting purely on instinct, I called an ambulance.  I surrendered to my own hysteria.  I acted like a drama queen, or like one of those time-wasters so despised by members of the emergency services everywhere.

I am so angry with myself.

Nobby is 92, btw

He is holding on and is a million times more courageous than me.