WALLOWING (Nursing Home Life part 6)

We had a pig named Nellie on the farm where, in my childhood, I spent many happy outdoor days. Nellie’s sole purpose in life, from the human perspective, was to produce litters of piglets who could later be repurposed as bacon and pork chops. Nellie’s purpose as a living thing, however, appeared to lie in the art of wallowing. Nellie took the art of wallowing very seriously. If you spilled a trickle of water while filling her trough, if it rained, Nellie would indulge herself in a magnificent wallow. She would dig in her snout, twist her body and roll in the mud, cavorting side to side, grunting a dirty song of ecstasy. My father said she was cooling her skin. Even on cool days, Nellie apparently had hot skin. Wallowing, when pigs do it, is likely a much-admired activity, admired by other pigs. In humans, wallowing is also an art form, though not so much admired by fellow humans. Rarely do we speak of wallowing in joy, or achievement. Humans are said to wallow in self-pity or sadness. The implication is that the wallowing is self-indulgent and should cease as soon as possible, possibly before ever beginning. I have, for most of my life ascribed to this view. I’ve never been one to support wallowing in the sad, self-indulgent sense, so it surprises me to see how much of it I do here at Laurier House. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands, or maybe there isn’t any way to be mostly happy when your primary occupation is the care of a beloved person who is steadily losing every ability except the ability to be aware. I used to think that sadness could be fenced in, contained to a finite period of time and eventually wiped out by generous doses of happiness. I had, in fact, been quite successful in subduing it. My first experience with taking charge of sadness came just before the dawn of my teenhood when I left the farm to attend the Jericho Hill School for the Blind in Vancouver. Shortly after my arrival there, homesickness seized me and shook me by the neck for weeks. Every now and then I would raise my head and notice that other kids seemed to like it fine there. They were laughing at jokes, playing records and gossiping about each other. Having noticed their happiness, I would retreat to my pillow and cry for an hour or so. This went on through September until finally, chapped and exhausted, I set myself a crying schedule in which I planned to cry for a shorter period each day until I would eventually reach a dry-eyed day. With less time allotted for crying, my naturally gregarious and fun-loving self was able to take over. Similar applications of self-discipline prevented prolonged periods of wallowing during stormy days of teenhood, young adulthood, and the onset of middle age. Thus, when I moved with David into Laurier House at the age of 63, I presumed that feelings of sadness and self-pity would be dispatched once I had my bearings. Getting my bearings as a healthy nursing home dweller has been disappointingly complicated. The most positive thing I can say about dealing with sad feelings after nineteen months of living here is that I am learning to live with them, to accommodate their erratic behavior the way I learned to accept the quirks of the various roommates who shared my spaces back in boarding school days. This is a compromise made necessary by the fact that these rogue emotions have resisted my determined efforts to relegate them to obscurity. I have consulted a counsellor and a doctor; affirmed my main purpose at this stage of life; attended exercise classes and taken regular long walks alone and with friends; confided in family members; made adjustments in routine;; compared my circumstances favourably with the hardships faced by tens of millions of humans exiled in refugee camps; established friendships with Laurier House residents and some of the staff; taken a short vacation; enlisted help so that I could go out more; inhaled an extra glass of wine when friends have brought dinner; befriended a visiting cat; told my troubles to an imaginary friend; sent gratitude notes at Thanksgiving and celebrated the presence of bacon at Sunday breakfasts. In addition, I have traded much of the time I might have spent sleeping for time spent reading—thereby consuming a list of books that would strike pride in the heart of any bibliophile. At the end of it all I am left with joy, love, hope, gratitude, sorrow, worry, dread and the unshakable hunch that nothing I do will ever be quite enough. All of this is contained within the boundaries of commitment and loyalty that keep me where I am, living in a nursing home, doing the intimate caring things I do for a partner who used to do things for me. Though I don’t doubt the possibility of a happy future, there is no framework that allows me to plan for it. In this unfamiliar state, I am easy prey for every bad feeling that offers itself up for the taking. If there is a difference between sadnesses of the past and present then it is surely this: emotions in this phase have become inextricably tangled together, so that one emotion cannot be replaced by another. Where once my happiness would have been David’s happiness, now it tends to be his sadness, or at the very least, a great inconvenience. Am I delighted to savour delicious food in a pleasant restaurant? Well, sort of, as long as I don’t remember that David was fed nursing home puree from a spoon while lying in bed. Do I eagerly anticipate a concert performance? Well sort of, except that David always feels vulnerable when I am out. Happiness in greater amounts does not replace sadness the way it used to. In some cases, having more happiness means having more sadness. And what is a person to do with the sadness when your main purpose at the stage is to be with someone you love? Perhaps there has been a time when, above the cacophony of emotions competing for my attention, I have been summoned by a still small voice asking: “What would Nellie do?” The answer to the question is, of course, indisputable. Whether happy or sad, Nellie would wallow—wallow with passion and unbridled determination to cool her skin. But wallowing is not as easy for humans as it is for pigs, especially us gregarious, fun-loving types. Our friends and family find it off-putting. Nobody likes a whiner. That said, there are other ways of wallowing. Back in my counselling days, clients used to tell me that they relieved their misery by crying in sad movies. They selectively attended the movies most likely to elicit tears and sobs. It seemed to fly in the face of the cheering up imperative, but for them it worked. As for me, I’ve opted for music to wallow by. To this end I have shamelessly indulged in hours spent with: Superman song by Crash Test Dummies—a true anthem to those who carry on despite the presence of injustice; Falling Down Blue by Blue Rodeo—an ode to the relentless onslaught of grief; I Guess That’s Why They call It The Blues by Elton John—a nod to ecstasy no longer experienced; Killing Me softly by Roberta Flack—heart twisting lyrics; and my current favourite, Angel by Sarah McLachlan. Sarah McLachlan waits patiently in my iPhone these days. She can be coaxed out through the earbuds anywhere, anytime: while washing dishes, or writing this blog, or even on the bus. How blissful it is to lose track of everything in the lilt of her soaring voice, the mournful anchor of the strings, the simple piano elegance! Here is a song penned from a place of pain. The singer lies in a hotel room, trying to sleep amid the wakefulness of a racing mind. She has declared herself not good enough, longed for a beautiful release, and pleaded to be carried off in the arms of an angel. Then suddenly she is struck with a bolt of wisdom. “It don’t make no difference Escaping one last time. It’s easier to believe In this sweet madness Oh this glorious sadness That brings me to my knees.” What’s that you say, Sarah? Sweet madness! Glorious sadness! Words to wallow by if I ever did hear any. And what do these twisted lyrics bring me but happiness in wallowing, as a human no less. It’s confusing to say the least, but Nellie would likely support that.

BEING PRIVATE (Nursing Home Life part 5)

The first thing I lost when I moved to Laurier House was my privacy. Funny, but this came as a bit of a shock. We hadn’t been here more than a couple of hours when privacy first reported itself missing. I needed the bathroom, which was in David’s bedroom, segregated by a sliding door. I went into the bedroom, entered the bathroom, slid the door closed and searched for the lock. Not finding it, I searched again. There was no lock. “Of course there is no lock, you idiot,” said a small clear voice in my head. “This is a nursing home! Staff have to have access in order to help the patients. Staff need access in order to wash their hands. Prepare yourself to live without locking the bathroom door.” Learning to live that way put a whole new meaning on the idea of hurry. It was important to always be on guard. Lingering on the toilet became a luxury I could not afford. I refined the process of rapid elimination, and I never failed to listen carefully when I went. Bathing was an occupation I carefully scheduled by setting my alarm after observing the staff activities and projecting the times when they were least likely to pay us a visit. Before I continue, I must stop to explain that nobody who works at Laurier House ever enters a suite without knocking. There is respect for privacy, in an institutional sort of way. They knock, tap tap, and then they enter. It is the same for all of them, RN’s, LPN’s care givers, housekeepers, managers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dieticians and even doctors knock, tap tap, and then they enter. If they don’t see you in the living room, they look for you. The knock is not a request for permission, but merely a warning. One second you are alone, and the next second you have company. How do you tell the difference between a visitor and a Laurier House staff member? Visitors wait for permission to enter. In a place where very few residents can get up to open the door, this is the way it has to be. I live at Laurier House, but technically I am not a resident. In institutional terms I am a companion to David who is a resident. In life terms, I am a wife. We have a kitchenette, a living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom that has no lock. Staff come in and go out when we are playing bridge, celebrating a grandchild’s birthday or watching a movie. I can’t say that this time in an institution hasn’t changed me. Clearly it has. Now that we’ve been here for nineteen months, my memory of what it means to have privacy has dimmed a bit. My passion for playfulness has also dimmed. Still there are times when my old silly self surfaces. On nights when the impulse to spontaneity overwhelms me, I wait until the staff have repositioned David, give them a few minutes grace in case they want to return for some item they left behind, then make a mad dash out of my bedroom, through the living room, into David’s bedroom and into the bathroom with more skin showing than I would want anyone other than David to see. I leave the sliding door open, just to prove to myself that I have the power. Then I relish the victory once I’m back in bed. Like all people who gradually become accustomed to institutional life, I lose track of the ways in which I have accommodated to its peculiarities. The other day, when one of the nurses asked me if I get tired of having so many people come in all day long, I had to think for a moment in order to understand his meaning. Was he suggesting that I wouldn’t want to see him? Of course I wanted him there. He was helping to look after David. But then it occurred to me that he was wondering if I felt invaded. “Privacy was the first thing to go when I came to Laurier House,” I told him. “I just try to keep my clothes on.” He laughed. I laughed. It seemed like a laughing matter. Laughing about this comes easily now. But I can’t say it always did. In the first few months of our time here the lack of privacy irritated me, simmering just below the surface. The simmer reached the boil the day after David’s first health crisis at Laurier House. As simmering feelings so often do, it boiled over on an unsuspecting victim. The health crisis developed about three months after we moved in. It was late in the evening, so we didn’t consult the physician who regularly visited David on Friday afternoons. The nurse followed a protocol and we left in an ambulance. I returned to Laurier House late the following evening. David’s fever remained high, and he was still in excruciating pain, but he was finally moving from the Emergency room into a bed on a ward. His brother had come to stay with him so that I could go home and get some sleep. It felt strange to be spending a night in a nursing home without David, but my clothes were there along with most possessions that were important to me. Home is where your stuff is. As I walked down the vacant hallway, stilled with the sounds of night, pausing only to let the staff know I had returned, a tantalizing thought seized my exhausted mind. “David is gone. Tonight I am an ordinary person at home. I will have complete privacy,” I said to myself. “I will take a bath without worrying that somebody will come in. I will even leave the bathroom door open just to prove that I can.” And so it came to pass that I ran the bath, turned off the water, and was just about to step into the tub when I heard a friendly “Hello!” It was not coming from the outer suite door. With the water running I had missed that first one. It was right at David’s bedroom door, and it was not one of the nurses, but rather David’s doctor, our regular Friday afternoon visitor. He had done what he always did, knocked and entered. What choice had I but to scramble into clothes at lightning speed and meet him in the kitchen? There was, at that point, an opportunity for me to respond in kind to a gesture of genuine concern, for it was only concern that had brought him through the door. He had come to Laurier House for some other reason and had taken an extra moment to ask me about David. But the conversation we might have had was doomed from the start. For I was angry, the way you are angry when you have been robbed, perhaps not solely of a peaceful bath, but of so many other things you thought would be yours. And I was tired, too tired to hide it. He, to his credit, despite the lateness of the hour, was able to see past that.