I notice that I have been thinking a lot about ageing: How will I age? And the people I love? I notice this is confronting, uncomfortable, but I value it, as one of the lessons of this work.
I worry about being more settled after my second visit to the care home. If I am less sad for A and G and M and the woman who seems to be always sleeping in her wheelchair with her head resting on her shoulders, does this mean I am less engaged? Susanna suggests perhaps I am reassured by the care that is given to them, and by seeing the people who love them and come to visit them.
When I was there, A had a visitor. He is about my age, a colleague or student of A’s husband – not her son, which is how it looks. He comes regularly and is so good with her… perhaps that slight remove, that she is not his mother, enables him to not have expectations of her, to accept her as she is. He is extraordinarily kind and I am grateful. When I greet A, she doesn’t recognise me but she recognises the book once I show her the words inside. I feel a pang of something… sadness that our relationship is temporary for her, and feel pleasure that she is so drawn to the book. She wants to hold the book, to read her words – though my writing is rushed and hard to read. She keeps asking, ‘can I have it please, can you give it to me?’, and I tell her I will put all her words in another book that she can read clearly and keep, with her name on the cover. She so wants the book, she wants to speak her words herself.
I also met T, who I’d asked to work with. From our first visits to the care home, I’d noticed her: her eyes were the brightest eyes in the room. She’d talked to us in …Filipino/Tagalog, I think. I hoped she might also speak Spanish, which would give us a common language, but it turns out she doesn’t, and she’s unwell at the moment. I was disappointed that I can’t work with her if she only has a few words in english which she repeats. Susanna reassures me I can find a way to work with her if I want to try, if she’s well enough. As I sat with T and held her hand, she seemed to curl into herself, as if willing herself to disappear, for pain or sadness or something else. She repeated ‘no good, no good’ shaking her head, and I could only stroke her hand and say how I sorry I was not to understand her. I repeated after her, ‘no good, no good’, and she agreed with a half-smile, her face wet with tears.
I want very much to go back to T with the book, and to write her words. Perhaps those few english words are full of meaning for her. I think so. I hope she will be OK. We don’t have much time.
Shazea Quraishi