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EXPERIENCES IN MENTAL HEALTH CARING |
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KITH AND KIN (Sixties Press 2004) |
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CONTENTS |
BEYOND OUR REACH, BUT NOT OUR LOVE Living and dying with the consequences of a stroke BRIAN D’ARCY |
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From that sudden warning of mortality with its banshee siren song she could not hear, from the gathering trauma that she could not feel, we watched. Her ninetieth birthday was marked by the launch, at her local library, of her first and, as it was to prove, her last book: Deep are the Roots. To write it, she had in her late eighties learned to use a computer. In spite of her total deafness, she also enrolled on creative writing courses. The book itself was a thinly disguised autobiography in which she reflected on her life. It covered her early years before the First World War, her childhood years during the war itself, and the final horrors of that war which saw her father, who served for almost four years on the Western Front, return home from Passchendaele in October 1918 only to die |
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of his wounds in 1919. She then recalled the years between the wars, her marriage, and the depression of the 1930’s. Her plan was to write a sequel covering the years leading up to the Second World War and the years, both good and bad, beyond a war which saw her husband buried in a foreign field and left her with three small children to raise. Sadly, this was a ‘never to be written’ book as, at a stroke, she was reduced from being active, articulate and proudly independent to a state of almost total, and totally destructive, dependency.
We watched but could not share her losing fight to
keep some fragile contact with the world she knew, a world, that at a stroke, slipped beyond her grasp.
Several more minor strokes followed, each further diminishing her quality of life, though she had recovered enough to recognise us and share moments of clarity and pleasure. There were other moments however when our realities were different, as on the day she looked at me strangely before greeting me with the words: “Hello. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be dead.” I supposed, but have no way of knowing, that she had mistaken me for my father who she always said I resembled but who had been dead for over fifty years.
We watched her world shrink to endless empty days - changeless in a stranger’s place she did not choose - a place where time no longer held a meaning.
Gradually her world became smaller, her needs fewer and her smiles scarcer. Confined to a nursing home now, and with her mobility restricted, she waited to be lifted into a wheelchair and pushed to the dining room, toilet or bathroom at the whim of strangers. She did have a bell-pull in her room to summon help should she need it, but too often her bell, and the bells of others, went unanswered by staff who were either too busy or too uncaring to respond. Her life was becoming a burden she no longer wished to bear.
We watched the blank tablet of oblivion descend with such unwelcome haste and slowly drain away the memories of all she loved.
We watched her unchecked resignation grow as recognition faded from eyes that wandered with unfocused gaze on visions out of place.
Struggling to bring some happiness to her life, and perhaps slow down the degeneration that was taking place, we took albums of her treasured photographs and souvenirs of other days to share with her. Sometimes she would respond and briefly the person she once was would reappear, but generally she seemed to find it easier to let oblivion take its course. And yet in spite of all, there was a new-found gentleness about her – almost as if she knew that events would take their course and that the struggle was now over for her. Whether it was consciously hard for her or not, we don’t know, but it was certainly painful for us to see her gradually letting go of her memories – the time came when she no longer recognised photographs of grandchildren or brothers.
Yet she seemed to hold no anger for a world that held her still, patient and immobilised, falling ever deeper into frailty
But somewhere in her eyes I see the question that, to my shame, I cannot answer - “Tell me, please, my son, why am I waiting here?”
Laurinea Hargreaves D’Arcy died peacefully and, we suspect, gratefully; aged 94 at the midnight hour of February 22nd 2004. Shortly afterwards, I wrote the poem ‘Tell Me’ whose stanzas are given above.
And here is the poem that she wrote as a dedication to her father in the preface to her book:
FLANDERS’ POPPIES
With Flanders’ poppies those summer days were filled On that shell-torn land where too many were killed May every crimson petal shed Fall gently on our glorious dead And may they here in England grow anew Where once in love and peace I walked with you Rest well, dear father, and your comrades slain, Till God, in mercy, bids us meet again.
Note: Laurinea Hargreaves D’Arcy’s Deep are the Roots is published by Bellasis Press, 1999, ISBN: 0 9536266 0 1.
Note on the Contributor: Brian D’Arcy is an Anglo-Irish poet who has written Tha Shein Ukrosh: Indeed the Hunger (Bellasis Press, 2002) and Footsteps in the Dust (Sixties Press, 2003).
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One Carer’s Story - Barry Tebb Schizophrenia - A Carer’s Journal - Mike Schizophrenia – A Mother’s Story – Georgina Wakefield My Journey Of Sadness – Stan Hagon The Voice Of Carers – Amanda Cummin Yemeni Carers’ Stories – Debjani Chaterjee Beyond Our Reach, But Not Our Love – Brian D’arcy Carry On Caring – Emily Machin & Lucy Machin Enigma And Other Poems - Georgina Wakefield Killingbeck Drive – Brenda Williams Searching The Beyond And Other Poems – Daisy Abey Sharp Edge – Daisy Abey The Long Good Bye – Barry Tebb Looking Back – Barry Tebb Nameless In Camden – Brenda Williams Autobiography – Simon Jenner The Sick Image Of My Father Fades – John Horder Are You A Carer? Caring About Carers
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