A life lived.

She’s a people person.  She loves everyone, and everyone loves her.  A devout catholic in a close knit parish although I’d seen her welcome in her local Jehovah’s Witnesses for a cuppa.  They’d call on her for a catch up and a cuppa, such was the person she was; the person she still is.

And now she’s alone, with intermittent spells in hospital.  After four months of bed rest, her legs are not strong and so she keeps falling.  But she’s alone, reliant on visits from friends and loved ones.  Her next of kin have advised the staff she is to stay alone in her room; she is NOT to mix with others in the day room.  This is the same next of kin who threatened her best friend, an 84 year old priest, that if he continues to question, It will bar him from being able to visit her.  The same next of kin who has placed her on the dementia wing of the home, even though she doesn’t have dementia.  This force of evil, this next of kin, has placed her out of sight, waiting for her to die so It can cash in on her.

No one knows where her mementos are.  Her keepsakes, photos, proof of a life lived.  When she was her younger self, beautiful and full of life.  She is of course still beautiful, but now she looks weary, and frail, and old. 

There’s a mixture of despair and melancholy deep within me mixed with the fires of anger and rage.  I veer wildly between nails through the palms fury and despair.  How could anyone treat a human being like this?  Can someone answer this, because I just don’t know. 

For Sale

For Sale.

 

Her house was always full of love and comfort.

She and her house helped me get through depression, the familiar surroundings, the photographs on the wall of her in her younger days, the pictures of the kids, family and friends.  I always felt at home there.

The extensive collection of books that were in her house.  As a kid, I’d stop there over some weekends and voraciously read through all the Dahl books, the Garfield ones, ignoring the classics. You can stick your Jane Eyre, your Oliver Twist.

She always had a welcome for everyone in her house.  She’d make you feel as though it was your own home.  It had been a family home, but she had lived there alone for years now.  As a student, I’d pop by and stop for a few nights, a few glasses of wine, putting the world to rights in her living room.  Every inch of the house was hers; holy pictures were a particular favourite.

The fall had been a shock.  Four months in and out of hospital, then into a nursing home.  I pondered her house, wondering if it missed her as much as I know she missed it.

The house no longer belongs to her, everything that made it hers have vanished.  Possibly into storage, maybe into a skip.  It looks so cold without her, unwelcoming.  It could never be home without her there.  She’s back in hospital and it’s questionable whether she’ll come out.  But the house is now For Sale, definitely not hers anymore. 

 

I wept.