A Room With a View (to Happiness)

1/12/07  

As usual, I spent my Saturday afternoon visiting Dad at the Room With a View (to Happiness) care home. Spencer, who was horribly drunk last night, only emerged from his room minutes before Christine was due to collect us. Our departure was further delayed by at least thirty minutes as he lingered in the toilet. My brother can never go anywhere until he's successfully evacuated his bowel and smeared gel over his inflamed gums. As I waited for him on the landing, I could hear his muted sobbing. "Are you all right, Spencer?" I asked, gently rapping the door. As always, my concern provoked a tantrum. Thrusting his tear streaked face around the door, he accused me of 'lurking'. A lurker, I reasoned, would hardly announce his presence by knocking. We disputed the point for a minute or so until he reached out, grabbed the collar of my jumper with one hand and raised the other as if to strike me. No doubt remembering my expertise in Cung-Coe, he thought better of it and retreated back into the toilet, slamming the door behind him. Fifteen minutes later he joined us in the Chrisine's car. No aplogy was forthcoming. The ten minute journey passed in total silence save for the percolating of Spencer's stomach.

We arrived to find Dad confined to his room. "He's in one of his moods," explained the charge nurse. For some reason, my presence seems to be a particular provocation on these occasions (as, indeed, it was to my Grandfather Coe whose own violent lapses culminated in his pushing me down a flight of stairs.) In the course of the first five minutes of our visit, Dad lashed out with his cane on twelve separate occasions. Not once did he target Christine. While I managed to dodge or deflect most of his swipes, I still received sharp blows to both knees and a prod to the solar plexus. After being winded by the last of these, I left him with Christine (Spencer having wandered off for coffee within minutes of arriving) and circulated the lounge, chatting to some of the other residents.

As a child struggling with the initial symptoms of clairvoyance, I was terrified by the dark, pulsating aura that often surrounds the elderly. After a lifetime spent peering into the abyss, of course, I can wander in the vicinity of death with equanimity. My early years, however, were traumatised by the nightmarish visions prompted by the presence of my various elderly aunts. I particularly remember watching Aunt Meg, virtually transluscent in the August sunshine, cramming birthday cake into her soft, pink maw as indeterminate figures darted around the tight coils of her perm. "What happened to Angus?" I shouted, responding to the shock of revelation which, over time, would become familiar to me. "Let him out!" I can still summon a precise image of Aunt Meg staring back at me, eyes wide with horror, partially masticated cake spilling over her lower lip. On that occasion, Spencer, ever the opportunist, ingratiated himself with our shocked aunt, fetching a fresh slice of cake and perching himself on her lap, oblivious to the devilish faces peering at him from behind her shoulders.

Thirty years on, with the compassion borne of experience, I'm recognised as a friend of the elderly. My brother, on the other hand, habitually uses terms like 'old woman', 'fogey' and 'geriatric' as insults. Today, to his credit, having bolstered his depleted reserves with coffee, he allowed himself to be cajoled into playing something on the keyboard. It would have been even more to his credit if he'd acknowledged the residents' requests and initiated a sing-song. Instead he played a monotonously dreary number that might have been inspired by the death of a puppy. Noticing that some of the residents were becoming distressed by the associations triggered by my brother's ominously descending chords, I rose to my feet and started singing 'For Those Are My Mountains'. Rather than follow my lead and accompany me, though, he writhed in his seat and fixed me with a look of loathing before rising from the keyboard and stalking out of the lounge. For the next twenty minutes, I struggled to dispel the mood he had created, orchestrating a game of 'The Minister's Cat'. By the time Christine appeared I was frazzled by the effort of imposing rules most people would consider perfectly straightforward. The most persistent violators, incidentally, weren't residents, all but the most incapacitated of whom entered into the spirit of the game, but guests.

Home

Glossary

Hamilton Live

Casebook

 

Contact