Fem Speak

Don't Get Old

My neighbour had a fall today. I wasn’t there.

A friend called me at work to say that she had been passing by and saw police, paramedics and a gaggle of passers-by gathered around his front door. The door was locked, but my neighbour, Rennie, could clearly be seen through the window walking up and down agitatedly, covered in blood.

Maybe it just looked like a lot of blood, I said. A thimbleful of blood goes a long way. Maybe he wasn’t too badly hurt. A nose-bleed. My friend stopped me. Believe me, she said, he was covered in blood. Dried blood and fresh blood, pumping from a gash in his head. Like some horror movie. Not only that, but he was too confused to open the door. They were calling to him through the window to stop moving around, to wait for help, but he either could not hear them or he could not understand.

Yesterday I was talking to Rennie across the low fence between our gardens. He admired the runner beans and tomatoes I was picking, but refused to accept any for himself. I asked how he was keeping, and he shook his head and replied, "Don’t get old. There’s nothing good in it." He patted my dog and told me again about how he missed having a dog about the place. He mentioned the fact that his daughter had gone on holiday to the Caribbean, he wasn’t sure how long for but thought it would be quite a long time. Later in the evening, though, I saw her car and knew she was visiting him.

Two nights ago when I took the dog for her bedtime stroll, I noticed that Rennie’s front door was wide open, with every light in his house blazing. I stepped inside and called his name, and when there was no reply I searched through the house for him, fearing at every moment that I would find him injured or unwell. There was no-one home. I called on another neighbour, and together we drove around the area for half an hour until we finally saw him, walking slowly but steadily in the direction of home, leaning on his stick. We drew up alongside him to ask if he was ok but he seemed not to see us, so we just followed at a distance until we were sure he was safely inside. We asked each other how long it would be before he had some kind of accident, and wondered what to do for the best.

Two weeks ago, Rennie told me that he was going home soon. Then he caught himself and said that of course, he was at home. This was his home. He had agreed to sell the house where he had lived for 60 years, because it was too remote and had more land than he could cope with. This was his home now. He would get used to it in time. He knew he was getting very forgetful, and was waiting to see a specialist doctor about it. "Don’t get old," he said. "There’s nothing good in it."

Six months ago, I first met Rennie when he came to live in the house next door. He was a sweet-natured old gentleman of about 85 with a shock of white hair. His daughter had arranged the move for him. Another neighbour had told me that she thought we would need to keep an eye on him as he seemed rather frail. When I talked to him he was full of wistfulness about the wife he had lost, the little dog and the beloved house and garden he had left behind. He was no longer able to drive but was keen to keep his independence and felt in spite of everything that his new little cottage would be a good step forward. We had many interesting chats about gardening, and about the church – he had been a stalwart member for all his life, although he hadn’t managed to get along there in recent months. I noticed as the weeks went by that no-one from the church ever seemed to visit. Maybe they came while I was out.

Tonight, everything is dark and quiet next door. I hope Rennie is ok wherever he is. I realise now that I don’t even know his surname, so I can’t phone the hospital and ask after him. I don’t know his daughter’s telephone number. I know so little about him other than his sweetness and frailty. And that for him, there is nothing good in being old.

Sandie McVeigh

The Comfort of Small Things

I don't know when I learned to take comfort in small things;  I think I must have been quite small myself at the time.  Call it a stratagem, a coping mechanism, or maybe a mental quirk - it's just something that has accompanied me through my life, and it has become my friend through many times of difficulty and sadness. 

In order to take comfort in something small, all you have to do is to focus your senses on that one small thing, and to allow yourself a moment to appreciate it.  In that moment of simple appreciation, stress and anxiety fold themselves back down to a manageable size, and a sense of the deep goodness of life wells up instead. 

Take the scent of apples as an example.  Many years ago when I was a university student I got the blues as students often will when faced with life away from home, money troubles, essay deadlines, and tangled love-lives.  I used to ride a bicycle to and from lectures, and I kept that bicycle in my landlady's shed, which happened to be the place where she also stored boxes of apples through the winter.  I used to cycle home each day with a doom-laden heart, push the bicycle into the shed, and then pause in the cobwebby gloom.  For just a moment I would consciously focus on the delicious scent of the apples, and slowly, strangely, the world would seem a friendlier place.

The world of nature may seem an obvious place to look for sources of comfort - who after all can fail to be captivated by the glittering dart of a dragonfly, moonlight on a lake, sunset in the desert?  My point is that these things are not necessarily easy to come by in our daily routine.  We do well to learn to see the normal beauty around us, and not only in those spectacular things that have the power to break into our thoughts and take them captive.  I've spent a lot of time in my garden this summer, and every day I have strolled through it admiring the obvious beauty of the flowers, and congratulating myself on the fruit of my labours.  One day, though, I stopped and lifted just one bloom on a towering spike of foxglove.  For a few moments I appreciated the intricate delicacy of the inner parts of the flower, seeing the speckles and striations that lead the bee to the pollen like runway lights.  In that moment I contend that I understood more about beauty than I had in a hundred half-distracted walks up the garden path.

Sometimes it's good to take a moment to appreciate things within ourselves.  I remember focusing a few years ago for just a moment on the snug feeling of my securely-fastened ankle-boots as I walked away from a sad graveside funeral service.  What made me aware of such a seemingly trivial thing?  I can't be sure, but I remember how my awareness of the comfortable feeling around my ankle spread into a more general awareness of the fact that no part of my body was in pain.  Not only did that moment of awareness fill me with a sense of life's goodness, but it also comforts me today in some strange way, now that rheumatoid arthritis means that being pain-free really is just a memory.  I'm pleased to think that I took the time to be glad about my wellness while I had it, just for a moment.

Medieval mystic Mother Julian of Norwich was way ahead of me, of course.  She meditated on a hazelnut, and understood the littleness and fragility of the whole world cradled in God's hand.  Taking comfort in small things means understanding our own littleness, and at the same time it means understanding the importance of little things.  It means getting a right perspective on life. 

And in the words of Mother Julian, "All shall be well."

Sandie McVeigh