In the Midst of Life

she went rapidly downhill in the nursing home. She would not eat or drink, she made no effort to move, but lay inert in her bed. Her time, at long last, had come, and Mrs Doherty died five days later.

 
     
    A man
    half bent over on the sofa, eyes down, asleep or awake.
    An assistant puts a mug of tea in his hand
    but he can’t hold it or isn’t ready, she puts it gently
    on the sideboard next to him, With the cup shakily
    in his hand now (I am watching) he raises it slowly
    to his .. . But where to go? The cup goes to his glasses,
    almost touches them, then slowly down again, up again,
    this time halfway to his mouth. The cup (I am watching)
    is on the sideboard again. A biscuit has been put
    into his hand. Using both hands shaking, and with
    tiny movements he tries (I am watching) to break
    the biscuit. With a small piece of it he tries to find
    his mouth. He fails and lowers his hand again
    very slowly. His left hand holds the biscuit half away.
    His right hand has gone right down past his knees.
    It comes up again. He achieves breaking the biscuit
    again and with his right hand reaches his mouth
    with a tiny piece (I am watching) and gets it in.
    Now he has found the cup of tea on the sideboard
    and holding it in his right hand he is drinking from it
    very slowly, all the while his head down .. .
    He tries to stand
    and very slowly turns and is soon
    heaped about the end
    of the sofa, his weight greater than his power to shift it.
    Two assistants help him up and sit him back on the sofa.
    One says ‘Stay there’. But he wants to move, so they
    help him up and he walks or is walked across the room
    and into an armchair. One of the assistants pulls out
    thefootrest which tips the chair back. (I find myself
    swaying). She puts the stool under the footrest
    to support it. She adjusts the head rest, pats his chest
    and says, ‘There,
    have a rest.
    He closes his eyes
    and is still.
    —
David Hart
     
    This poem and that on page 145 by David Hart were written when he was Poet in Residence at the South Birmingham Mental Health Trust, 2000—01.
A man half bent over
was originally written in an Older Adults Assessment Ward as it occurred, very very slowly, the version here being newly made. At the annual conference of the Royal College of Psychiatrists at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, a Van Gogh self-portrait reproduced as a poster for PR purposes by a drug company led to the writing of
Poor Van Gogh.
The whole sequence of residency poems with commentary was included in David Hart’s
Running Out
(Five Seasons Press, 2006).

DEMENTIA
     
    The reality of an ageing population is that many of us will end up in residential care in our final years. Taking only the figures for dementia, one in four people over the age of eighty now suffers from progressive dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, and from ninety onwards that figure rises to one in three. At the time of writing, there are more people over sixty-five in the UK than there are children under sixteen. This is recognised as one of the most serious social problems of the twenty-first century. Who is going to look after these hosts of demented old people? Who will be there when we die?
    Dementia is probably the one thing that people over the age of sixty-five dread more than anything else. It must first be said that to see this progressive decline is almost always worse for the immediate family than for the sufferer, who is usually unaware of what is happening.
    There are many types of dementia; Alzheimer’s is the most common, but there are others. Confusion mimics dementia, and misdiagnosis is often made. Confusion can arise from all sorts of things – the death of a spouse or a partner, or of close relatives or friends; new surroundings, new faces – we can all suffer, at any age, from confusion. It is not confined to the elderly by any means.
    Seventy per cent of all people in care homes are confused, probably because the life they have known for seventy or eighty years has come to an end, and now they are surrounded by strangers. On top of this, depression may be part of the trouble, arising from being in a care home in the first place. Often the person is grappling with the grief of bereavement, and loneliness, and the feelings of being useless and worthless contribute. The treatment is friendship, love, care, sympathy, understanding – all the qualities thatgenerosity of the human spirit can give, and little else. Drugs and other medications