Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  The next night she slipped quietly away while I had gone home for dinner and a shower after our whole family had spent the day beside her reminiscing over the old times. We had been talking about the childhoods my children had spent in the loving atmosphere of the family home when we had perforce to leave our own.

  Although she did not open her eyes during this day or reminiscing, she stayed with us for the day, not leaving until she was alone, the very thing I had always wanted to avoid for her. So perhaps it would be false to say that the time came when she was out of reach in every way until the final moments when she breathed her last. I believe she knew what she was doing; that having myself or any of her dear grandchildren present when she died would have been almost more than we could bear so she avoided this anguish by waiting until she was alone.

  Alzheimers does not always run a predictable course as other diseases are inclined to do but in the end the outcome is much the same. They forget the names of those they have loved, but perhaps not the faces until the last stages. Further on they become estranged from those who have been in integral part of their lives, looking at them with blank, expressionless eyes.

  Her fate was sealed from the time the doctor pronounced that she had this horrible disease. In time I knew and accepted with great difficulty that there would be no reversal of this decision and that the only way she would leave the nursing home for any length of time would be in the back of the undertakers’ hearse. She would spend what was left of her life in custodial care, imprisoned for her own safety behind a locked security door.

  They forget their past and the events that have filled their lives with joy and sorrow. Estranged from their own lives, they do not know their history or their loved ones.

  Is life so simple when all is said and done? In those final five and a half years of caring for her at home and six years while she was in the nursing home, during that time of torment I had been gradually letting go. First I said goodbye to her wit and intelligence, then to her vitality and her company until finally I had to part with her body. I had lost everything about her and my mother was leaving me but one essential thing remained: Love.

  Loving is really all there is in life when you look back and count up your experiences and relationships. We should all treasure it for what it’s worth. Not everyone is fortunate to find any type of love at all, nor can everyone take it when it’s offered or hold on to it when one has it already in their hands.

  In the end all I have left of her is the love I gave her and still give to her beyond the grave. My mother was my cornerstone, my touchstone. Always my concept of ‘Home.’ Grief at her passing has never gone away. While she lived it was imperative for me to be in touch with her every day if at all possible. No matter where I went, my internal compass always pointed towards my mother.

  She always told me that after she had passed away she would still be by my side every inch of the way. She sends signs of white feathers to my daughter and I, feathers in places where they could not possibly have made their way under normal circumstances—on my bedside table, inside logs of wood where no bird has ever been, in all different unexpected places. A decade later, I can still feel the touch of her hand in mine.

  There is no one left who loves me enough to care about how I think or feel or what my needs and desires are. I know I can grieve my heart out but in the end I am still where I have been all along and my dearly loved mother is gone. It is as if a part of the richness of the world went with her on the June night in 2005 when she left quietly and without any fuss at all. She slipped away during the time I had gone home to have dinner and a shower before returning to spend the night beside her.

  Precious beyond words. Loved beyond measure. Until we meet again may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

  11. Families, God Love Them

  In the past people realized that the older generation needed a little more help, protection and support as they aged. Not so now. Families hand over care of their elderly or disabled to paid carers while they pursue the a sizable salary in the process of caring for others, giving back to society in a way that will earn them a healthy income. They are relieved of the burden of caring for their own aged, disabled or frail family members while they are well paid for tending to others who are strangers.

  A Homecare worker whom I know says she visits the home of elderly people whose families never come near them. Then they have a fall or break a bone and the family swoops in saying, ‘You have to go into a home.’

  So they do and the family still never comes near them or contacts them by telephone.

  Such is the age we live in.

  I saw a television program recently about people who live on the Greek island of Ikarea. It is not uncommon for the inhabitants to live to be a hundred years old or more. They have a typical Mediterranean diet of fruit and vegetables, olive oil and little meat. Only fish, chicken and goat are available to them on a regular basis. There is no segregation into different age groups. All live, work and play together. Old people are not marginalized, nor do they suffer from depression.

  Such is the isolation of the aged in our society in some cases that, purely as an example, an old man fell over in his own home recently in our city and he lay on the cold floor for two days and two nights. The weather was freezing. Had he fallen outside he would no doubt not have survived the experience. Aged 70, he may have been quite fit and thought of himself as being independent, not needing an alarm around his neck. But where are family, neighbors and friends of the aged, isolated people like this?

  Studies are being done in America, mixing day-care toddlers with aged care residents in nursing homes. Results would appear to be beneficial for both sides. Elderly people whose speech has been incoherent for some time speak plainly in a sentient manner to these little people, while the toddlers thrive on the love and attention given to them by people who would still appear to be carrying memories of how to deal with tiny children while giving abundant love.

  This is not a model for everyone as we all know that neither side is capable of taking adequate care and responsibility for the other. Perhaps, however, a similar arrangement could be a good solution for those who are looking for a way to stimulate older people and teach the giving and receiving of love to toddlers. One way and another, it appears somewhat like the bygone days when several generations lived together and nurtured one another.

  Instead, in today’s world people spend their productive years working and paying for their children to be cared for. Then when their elderly parents can’t care for themselves any longer they must go into care and pay for their upkeep by giving most of their pension or a sizeable part of their invested income. Many of their children who would once have taken responsibility for their welfare are now too busy working for agencies who pay substantial wages to them when caring for other people’s frail aged or disabled.

  Thus large amounts of money are paid out at both ends of the scale of life, first to have babies and toddlers nurtured and cared for. And at the final period when family members are unable to care for themselves and their relatives no longer feel a responsibility to do so.

  The nurturing and mutual affection that can be shared by all parties by mixing small children with the elderly is well worth a second thought. Although not a solution, it is an interesting concept that could benefit people at either end of the spectrum if conducted in a proper, well supervised way.

  A group of ever-young almost-old ladies in their seventies and in various states of health and mobility sat around a table near the picture window of the Dawson RSL Club. It was a late autumn day, a dazzling blue and golden morning when the sun shone warmly and everything about the seaside scene as they viewed to beach through the picture window seemed waiting, fixed in time.

  They were gathered at their favorite table from where they could forget their troubles and admire the ocean and the boats at anchor in the inlet, rocking gently with the tidal swell. The sun reflected gloriously on the water, the bowl of sea
and sky so blue that it seemed impossible to imagine the winter setting into the seaside town. Mothers with their small children played in the sand, building castles and moats as youngsters have done for generations. The older children, the watchers guessed, would have been at school.

  ‘I’ve a young soul trapped in a decrepit old body,’ said Robyn, smiling thinly. She was a short, stoutish woman in her seventies with startling black hair and scanty gray eyebrows. ‘That’s all that’s seen, just this wobbly old body and gnarled old hands. My body is fully a lifetime older than my soul. Inside I am young and vibrant, ready to meet the world head on. Pass the scones, please, Chrissie. Been looking forward to this for a fortnight.’

  She sat having morning tea with her friends Veronica, Carmel, Annette, Paula, Claudia and Christine in Dawson, a picturesque village on the south coast of Victoria.

  ‘I know,’ said Veronica, her blunt-cut gray hair tending to drop forward across her lined cheeks. ‘I still feel the same as I did when I was a girl.’ Her face was flushed and hazel eyes very bright. ‘I have exactly the same hopes and dreams even though I know they will never be realized now. That’s it’s too late in the day for me to fulfill my modest ambitions that I nursed when I was young.’

  She smiled around at her friends, a smile still tender with the affection of a fifty year friendship. They each felt a rush of love for her, they who had traveled down the same road through the same hills and dry gullies into old age.

  Christine, whose pink and white face was weathering from spending long hours in her garden, leaned across the small space between them and gave her friend a brief, hard hug. They loved one another with a whole and comfortable love that took in everything and questioned nothing about the other members of the group.

  They all tucked into another scone topped with jam and cream, the treat the friends favored on Pension Day each fortnight. Sitting in the lounge of the club in the seaside town, the poker machines trilled out a merry tune behind them. Intense players concentrated on the magical and enticing sounds the machines brought forth, ringing gaily at a win or rattling dollar coins into a tray, an exciting prospect indeed.

  ‘Outside I look as if I’ve lived forever. My skin is wrinkled, hair is gray underneath the black rinse, as you would all know. Despite all that I think like I did when I was twenty but no-one would give me credit for that. And if they did they wouldn’t care,’ replied Robyn, spreading jam carefully on her next scone. As a young woman she had been blue-eyed with honey-brown hair. Her eyes were faded now and sunken into dark hollows but she retained her cheerful grin and optimistic outlook as much as possible.

  A cropped-haired man with a battered air about him wandered past their table, heading for the bar and his share of forgetfulness in a glass. The friends looked up briefly to watch his long, storklike body with knobbly knee and saggy arms shamble by. There was something fragile and incapable-looking about him, as though he sorely needed someone to tend to him and give him a purpose in life apart from trying to beat the poker machines one day each fortnight. This prospect never brought him much joy after the initial thrill of having a few drops of money into the coin tray.

  ‘There goes old Stewart Henderson, poor lonely old blighter,’ remarked Annette sadly. Her strands of hair were so scanty that parts of her scalp showed through and that was why she always wore a hat, summer and winter. ‘Uses most of his pension up every Pension Day and has to live on the smell of an oily rag for the rest of the fortnight.’

  They all clucked their tongues in sympathy but none of them knew how to help Stewart remedy his way of life. For one thing, they were too busy trying to take care of themselves in their old age. All were aware that he would drink until the bar attendant called a taxi for him in the late evening. By then he would have made such a severe dent in his pension check that he would suffer for the rest of the fortnight, living on two minute noodles and handouts from the local charity barn.

  He was destined to go home to loneliness and to a dreary fortnight, thanks to his pension day spree, which seemed to him his sole reason for a little joy in his life. Stewart was a widower whose sons and their families lived out of town and rarely visited him. Carried away by his burden of isolation and loneliness, these mild fortnightly sprees were the high point of his mundane life and he cheerfully suffered for his gambling day for the rest of the two long weeks.

  Of all the friends Paula sat quietly for a while, deep in thought, very preoccupied, her sweet, snub-nosed little face withdrawn in reverie. Her eyes were warm and friendly, her nose still a little freckled from a lifetime of outdoor work on the farm that she and her husband, Harold, had owned. Retired now and living in the town, she was widowed, as were three of her friends.

  ‘If I have learned anything from this present sojourn in life it is not to love so hard, or care so much,’ she mused thoughtfully. ‘I loved my family to distraction, especially when they were young, before they grew up and taught me my place. The children and grandchildren who you’ve loved and adored every hair on their heads grow up hardly acknowledge your shared past. Nor are they overly keen to have you in their present or future. I almost have to beg for the normal amount of affection given to ageing parents as their right. Is it a right or is it a privilege to have my family care about me and my welfare?’

  ‘I have my own home but I’m always alone. My children don’t come. Only one rings. Only one grandchild ever emails or texts me of his own volition and that seems to be over now, too. Can’t recall when it last happened,’ Annette told her friends, looking out from behind her thick spectacles. Her eyes were softened by heavy make-up around them and by the shortsightedness from which she suffered.

  ‘If and when I do see my children I have to do all the hard yards in the conversation or silence reigns. I ask them a question, they answer briefly. Then there’s silence until I can think of another question to ask to try to keep the conversation going. It’s hard yakka, let me tell you.’ Annette stared off into the distance, mulling over in her mind the points that she had mentioned. Into her soft eyes came an added depth of confusion over what she had done wrong to be forgotten.

  ‘My children’s spouses all give support to their own parents and my children often accompany them in their efforts to see to them but no one seems to think I need any family support,’ Chrissie told her friends. ‘An hour and a cup of coffee every week or two is the extent of my interaction with my family, in the main. Perhaps my children have so much love already that they don’t feel the need for mine. It must be dispensable to them.’

  ‘I have two grandchildren that are married. I did large bridal tapestries for both of them. Each one of them took me six months of my spare time to complete and I really enjoyed doing them, thinking the recipients would love them too. The first one said she wasn’t allowed to hang anything in their rented house so hers went in the blanket box in our garage,’ Paula chimed in.

  ‘I had hoped that they could at least accept it and place it on top of a bookcase or something rather than have it locked away out of sight. Perhaps they’ll never want it. The second told me they really loved it so I felt grateful about that as it had taken so much work. Glad that it’s appreciated. But you never know whether they like things or not as you never see many of the things you give them again.’

  ‘It’s the weekends that are the worst,’ said Carmel. Pink stained her fair skin as she found the words to express her emotions, ‘That’s when I feel the loneliest and hope some of them will contact me, even by telephone. Each and every attempt to see them is stonewalled more often than not. They’re all so busy with their own lives that they never bother.

  ‘And if I ring them you can tell it’s somewhat of an imposition and they don’t really want to talk to me. I feel that for some reason I have been tried and found wanting but I don’t know what crime I’ve committed except to grow old. It’s a hard place to be—“Old”—when everyone has drifted away from you one by one.’

  Veronica had been silent for a while,
staring into the distance rather vacantly. She smiled sadly and told her friends, ‘I’ve come to the identical conclusion about technology as you all have like we were saying last fortnight, unfortunately. I learned to email and send texts on my mobile phone so that I could keep up with modern trends but most of the time the family doesn’t respond although this is their way of communicating with one another.

  ‘But mostly they ignore me and my messages, all except two or three of them. And there are many more than those that I try to keep in touch with. Mostly given up now, out of disappointment, though. It’s easier to give up in the end than check your emails and phone all the time and get disappointed twenty or thirty times a day.

  ‘I’ve learned not to expect too much on the weekends, either. Sunday is a very lonely time when you live alone,’ Claudia said sadly. In her mind’s eye she could see the days when her children were around her and she at least felt she was needed.

  ‘I would ring my daughter and ask her to come over for a visit but I know she wouldn’t come. There are other activities she prefers doing,’ said Christine, voicing her inner confusion and dismay. ‘The time comes when you have to make up a family of your own out of people you know who love you and will give you some interest and some comfort. ‘Strangers who care when the majority of your family have let you down.’ Her voice was vibrant with the disappointment she was suffering during these lonely years.

  Carmel, too, had reached the stage where she needed a wheelie-walker to get around. Glancing from one face to another, she felt as though it was her turn to be heard. Small and bent, she folded her paper napkin carefully beside her plate and drew a deep sigh. Her hands shook slightly with the early signs of Parkinson’s Disease.