Garden gate to the shore
An old photograph taken in Dendron Church
Visiting Geoffrey before Christmas.
As I bent over Geoffrey to say hello he looked at me carefully and asked, “Who are you?”
And so began another visit of dancing with confusion.
He ate the cake I had taken. (crumbs all over — no table but I had taken paper napkins and the cake in a paper dish.)
He constantly scratched his neck, shoulder, back, and wriggled in the chair to ease his sore and itchy bum. I have written down some of the words he spoke during my visit:
I want to be happy
Lord Jesus help me,
Lord Jesus help me
Lord Jesus help me to bear it
I’m a pig.
I’m a dirty pig
I’m a pig aren’t I?
I’m a filthy pig.
I want to help.
What can I do?
I want to help people.
Where’s Marion?
Is she dead?
Have my parents gone?
I answered his questions, trying to assure him that he was not a pig but rather a man with a distinguished career in the Church and British Library. I then diverted him to years gone by — boyhood, London, and India. I said he must have been a handsome young man in those days. Smiling he said, ‘I suppose so.’
I asked him, “How old are you?”
‘Oh, I don’t know — 70, 80, 100, 150?’
I smiled and said, ‘Well that’s makes me about 140 — do I look 140?’ We both laughed!
Visiting Geoffrey after Christmas — a sad change
I visited Geoffrey two days ago — 29th Dec. He’d had a fall and been in hospital.
He was not in the lounge when I arrived and so I waited for him by a table at the far end of the room. From there I could see outside and note a square of paving and bedding plants between the walls of the nursing home wings. I wondered if residents sat there in summer, certainly not while I had been visiting.
Geoffrey was brought into the lounge in a wheelchair. He was making a lot of noise and shouting at his carer somewhat rudely. He was pushed up close to the table and I immediately started talking to him. I hardly recognized him. He looked thinner and his head shrunken. His face was bruised and his haunted eyes seemed to be deep in their sockets. My heart went out to him. He was weary and not inclined to speak, when he did it was hard to make out what he said. His eyes did not seem to be coordinating and I wondered if he had suffered damage to his brain. Maybe he was sedated?
Most of the time he sat with his head drooping down or scratching hard at his back and his head. I heard the words ‘want to be happy’ and I tried to make light conversation but he had trouble hearing and I had considerable difficulty making out what he was saying.
Before the visit I looked him up on the Internet and found out that he had been ordained when serving as a missionary in South India, by the Bishop of Singapore. I mentioned this to him and he remembered the occasion but an itching back took over his attention.
I had taken a slice of my homemade ginger cake and asked him if he would like to eat it. It took a while for him to consume half of it. I thought his mouth was likely to be dry. Someone produced lemonade and this helped the cake go down.
How I wished I could understand what he was trying to say. And that he could hear my words! Suddenly he asked for his glasses. At least, I was able to make that out. I saw they were tucked into his jumper pocket and so pulled them out for him to put on. My goodness what a mess they were — smeared and bent at odd angles (was he wearing them when he fell?), but somehow I managed to help him get them on. Inevitably they slipped off when he lowered his head and he yelled out. I caught them but did not try to put them back on his bruised nose.
I left the other half of the cake wrapped up, for him to eat later. It had been necessary to feed him with it, just like the first time I visited when I helped him with his egg and chips. Will my next visit find him improved? Clearly the fall had knocked some of the stuffing out of him but is the damage permanent? Bad enough the constantly growing dementia.
Poor Geoffrey, my friend and tutor of years ago: all that was dear to him: his wife, his work, his brilliant mind, his very identity — GONE! To be replaced by what? A blank wall? No, not even that. Walls can be drawn on and so made to be objects of communication. A black hole into which tumbles the known and loved, is nearer the mark.
”Where now your God?”
For me, Geoffrey’s God is there — suffering with him.
Aldingham Nursing Home but Geoffrey's world is locked inside, within his own mind.
JANUARY 5th visit.
A wet and windy day and it was with some trepidation that I visited Geoffrey, so much so that I rang up the nursing home to make sure he was up to having visitors or, indeed, if he was still there and not in hospital. Of course I would have visited him there, especially as I was already going there to see a rather poorly friend.
Geoffrey’s change was such that I entered the lounge and walked right past him! The change from last week was amazing. He was sitting in a wheelchair with his back straight and legs crossed. Indeed, he was looking spruced up and alert and, in spite of the ravages of time, quite handsome for his age (middle or late eighties). Clearly he had got over his fall and the only evidence of his mishap was a pale bruise over his nose area. His speech was clear and crisp: ‘Who are you?’
And so began a much happier visit. He ate and enjoyed the small iced fancy and I told him again about my looking him up on the Internet, not that I think he knew what I was talking about but it gave me a straight lead in to talk about his ordination by the Bishop of Singapore in 1952. This was followed by my talking about his job in London.
He told me he felt he should treat his mother better. I reminded him that his parents had been dead for some time. Then the assistants came to move Geoffrey to a more comfortable armchair and it was time for me to go, pleased that my dear friend had got some of his old dignity back. I told him I was on my way to see a sick friend in hospital. He asked me if there was anything he could do to help. He had asked me earlier if there was anything that he could do, or should be doing. After many highly active years, it must be incredibly boring to sit with his mind in a fog, knowing somehow that it is ‘not his thing’ to be sitting idle. As I was about to go, he said, “Thank you for coming to see me.”
It was the first time he had said that to me since being in that place. I left the nursing home feeling much happier about Geoffrey, and wondering at the human capacity to regain strength of voice and alertness in spite of severe brain meltdown.
Tags: Aldingham, Alzheimers, dementia, loss of being, St Cuthbert's nursing Home, Strength of character
