My father, Robert James Logan died on this day in 1990.
Thursday 2 June 2016
ruby
In the summer of 1990 I worked in a nursing home for a couple of months before heading off to university. My father had died in the June and I left home for Derby in September.
My father spent the last months of his life in hospital, dying on the morning of June 2nd. Watching him slowly fade, gaunt, with bedsores and towards the end his oxygen starved brain leading to confusion, I was a teenager with a larger than most experience of ageing, and a teenager in deep, profound distress. Working in a care home was a strange choice looking back, like prising my eyes open with matchsticks and forcing myself to gaze unblinking at suffering, failing bodies, death. Was I numb? Did I feel some duty? I do not know.
There was a woman in the home who was dreadfully confused, behaving as a toddler. If left on the toilet for too long she would smear herself, her thighs, walking stick with excrement. I remember being on my hands and knees washing her, verbally scolding her. In some part of her brain she knew she had done wrong and whimpered a little. In her room was a black and white photograph taken in the 1930's of a stylish, smiling young woman with beautifully waved dark hair, she had on pencil pleat shorts, gorgeous legs and was perched on the back of a motorbike. Young, at ease, carefree, loved, our reality and the image at odds, and I've never forgotten that moment. She was a girl just like me.
Just once I went into Rudy's room, the curtains were drawn and in the dim light I could make out a naked figure on the bed, she lay on her back and was so thin, I recall my shock at seeing the outline of her spine through her stomach. The room smelt of urine, and Ruby was conscious, eyes open, uncomfortable, my memories are vague, that we turned her, bed sores being present in many... Outside, I felt a shiver of enjoyment from a staff member who regarded my reaction, probably assuming that was my first encounter with death, having no understanding of my own recent trauma.
Death was in that room, and I hope it came soon. Over the years I've thought about Ruby, never forgetting her name, never seeing her girl self photograph. I also think of the other woman, the one who's name escapes me, but her image does not, the young creature, radiant at the beginning of her womanhood. Its been almost 26 years since these experiences, their families do not know they are with me, that I sing for their bones.
Around this time I remember sitting at a bus stop, an old woman glancing at me turned to her friend and said loud enough for me to hear, Young people today don't know their born, depressed, newly bereaved, working in a care home I vowed never to be that unseeing woman.
My father spent the last months of his life in hospital, dying on the morning of June 2nd. Watching him slowly fade, gaunt, with bedsores and towards the end his oxygen starved brain leading to confusion, I was a teenager with a larger than most experience of ageing, and a teenager in deep, profound distress. Working in a care home was a strange choice looking back, like prising my eyes open with matchsticks and forcing myself to gaze unblinking at suffering, failing bodies, death. Was I numb? Did I feel some duty? I do not know.
There was a woman in the home who was dreadfully confused, behaving as a toddler. If left on the toilet for too long she would smear herself, her thighs, walking stick with excrement. I remember being on my hands and knees washing her, verbally scolding her. In some part of her brain she knew she had done wrong and whimpered a little. In her room was a black and white photograph taken in the 1930's of a stylish, smiling young woman with beautifully waved dark hair, she had on pencil pleat shorts, gorgeous legs and was perched on the back of a motorbike. Young, at ease, carefree, loved, our reality and the image at odds, and I've never forgotten that moment. She was a girl just like me.
Just once I went into Rudy's room, the curtains were drawn and in the dim light I could make out a naked figure on the bed, she lay on her back and was so thin, I recall my shock at seeing the outline of her spine through her stomach. The room smelt of urine, and Ruby was conscious, eyes open, uncomfortable, my memories are vague, that we turned her, bed sores being present in many... Outside, I felt a shiver of enjoyment from a staff member who regarded my reaction, probably assuming that was my first encounter with death, having no understanding of my own recent trauma.
Death was in that room, and I hope it came soon. Over the years I've thought about Ruby, never forgetting her name, never seeing her girl self photograph. I also think of the other woman, the one who's name escapes me, but her image does not, the young creature, radiant at the beginning of her womanhood. Its been almost 26 years since these experiences, their families do not know they are with me, that I sing for their bones.
Around this time I remember sitting at a bus stop, an old woman glancing at me turned to her friend and said loud enough for me to hear, Young people today don't know their born, depressed, newly bereaved, working in a care home I vowed never to be that unseeing woman.
Wednesday 1 June 2016
an alien thing
I'm always surprised that people have both parents, that people my age have grandparents, or knew them in adulthood. It baffles me, the experience of intergenerations, of a living past. A woman of 49 can still call her father, that this woman could ask for help, be helped. It is the most alien thing to me.
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