Home and Away
Home and Away
Monday September 13th 2010. Shirley Priest is at home in Newbury, Berkshire. Her friend Sylvia, looking exhausted, is sitting at the kitchen table, bringing Shirley up to date.
“I don’t know how we are going to cope, Shirley. Mike’s father Bert – do you remember he was widowed two years ago – well he was in The Hedges, quite good as dementia homes go, but a couple of weeks ago it just closed, no warning, nothing. There was nowhere for Bert or the other residents to go. We had a call to pick him up, we had to bring him to our house but you know it’s only a tiny cottage now, and it’s driving us mad, however sympathetic we ought to feel. We have to lock the door because he wanders off, he doesn’t understand why he’s moved. He won’t wash, he wakes up in the early hours and makes such a racket that we wake up too. We’ve been on the phone constantly trying to find another place for him, but there’s nowhere.”
“Why did The Hedges close?” asked Shirley.
“The company running it has gone bust, the bank insisted on cutting their overdraft apparently, and Golden Sunset Homes Ltd, I think that was the name, ran out of cash. Suddenly 15 old folk with dementia were evicted from The Hedges.
“I’ll come in a day a week to give you some time off,” offered Shirley, who thought her friend looked haggard. She remembered reading in the newspapers the previous week about a new campaign to legalise assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness. What exactly is terminal illness, she wondered. Life itself is terminal. Dementia, the gradual death of intelligence, was no more terminal than any other degenerative disease. Also dementia sufferers were, by definition, no longer of sound enough mind to decide if death were preferable to life.
Sylvia was talking again. “I’m worried that I’m going to end up hating Bert, I have to keep telling myself that it’s not his fault. I blame Social Services. Bert was paying for himself, he could afford to after selling the house, but I think 11 of the residents were funded by Social Services, and they wouldn’t pay enough for the home to be run properly.”
Shirley thought that the financial dilemmas afflicting social services departments, and their parent local authorities, were only the ordinary household’s situation, magnified. Investments yielding scarcely anything, big tax rises coming in a few weeks, something had to give.
A shrill noise was coming from Sylvia’s handbag. “My mobile phone,” she said. “It’s Mike….Hello….Oh dear….Yes I’ll be right back…”
“Bert’s wandered off again,” sighed Sylvia, getting up and leaving a half-drunk cup of revitalizing coffee. “Got to go.”
Background information
Meet the Halls, my mythical family: Rob Hall, born on January 2nd 1970; his wife Janie (February 25th 1972); their children Emily (March 5th 2002) and Joshua (May 4th 1999). Rob’s parents are Tim (November 12th 1937) and Beryl (April 20th 1940). Janie’s parents are Shirley (April 22nd 1946) and Bill Priest (October 17th 1944).