The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old

by Hendrik Groen

  I’ve borrowed a few chairs for this evening from housekeeping. I didn’t think it was appropriate at our age for some people to have to stand.

  Most residents celebrate their birthday downstairs in the common room. The invited guests sit at the big table and are offered a piece of cake, while the uninvited position themselves as nearby as possible in hopes of some leftover crumbs. A pathetic sight. Not my thing at all.

  I prefer squeezing my guests into my cramped little room; at least we won’t have anyone looking over our shoulders.

  I’ve booked a golf clinic for Friday the 13th, for eight participants. I hope the weather will be as fine as it is today, since that will increase its chances of success. I’m not all that confident that I’ve made the right choice. Golf is a good sport for older people, certainly, but not every old person is a good candidate for golf. It’s too late to change my mind, however, since I’ve already paid for it.

  Friday, 6 September

  I had to wheel a very tipsy Evert back to his place at half-past midnight. I wasn’t too steady on my feet myself. Evert had wanted to stay and spend the night, ‘So that we can have one last little nip before we go beddy-byes.’

  I decided it wasn’t a good idea. Rolling down the corridor, he launched into ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.

  I expect to be told off today for making too much noise.

  But the party was great fun. I’ve got enough leftovers to last me a couple of days, and enough alcohol for two months at least. I’m going to be abstemious for a while in both the eating and drinking department.

  The plan for a longer trip has been on the back burner for a while. I’m going to seriously explore the possibilities for next spring.

  The main thing is to stay alive until June. I am determined not to let death deter me, at least not other people’s deaths. If it turns out that I am dead by then, I want the others to give my urn pride of place on the dashboard.

  ‘He always did like looking out the window.’ It isn’t true but it sounds good.

  Saturday, 7 September

  Old people should take up video gaming. Racing a car on a computer is far better at keeping the ageing brain fit than some tedious parlour game. According to the newspapers, research has shown that video games can teach old brains to multitask again.

  I am going to try to find out about gaming, although the chances of finding someone here to teach me aren’t great. Not having grandchildren is a grave disadvantage.

  I would have loved to have had some. I’d have made an adorable grandpa, even if I say so myself.

  If … yes, if only.

  Actually, grandkids aren’t always fun and games. Edward has a grandson who’s addicted to drugs; Graeme has a granddaughter with anorexia. Comes a time when your children finally amount to something, and you’re faced with your grandchildren’s troubles. Yet another cause of insomnia.

  Maybe I should wait with the video games until the next study comes out; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the first was seriously flawed, or raises all sorts of scientific question marks.

  Sunday, 8 September

  ‘Would anyone care for my old pills?’ Evert asked. ‘They’re still perfectly good. It does depend on what you need them for, of course.’

  Evert was just being his provocative self in response to a newspaper story being discussed at the coffee table. A seventy-year-old man was on trial for having prepared a nice pill cocktail for his ninety-nine-year-old stepmother, who’d declared herself done with living. She was in pain and unable to do much for herself, but the nursing-home physician didn’t consider her suffering unreasonable, and would not approve her for euthanasia. The old lady managed to get a bowl of yogurt containing 150 pills down in one go. Quite a feat. Amateur’s luck, and a hit-or-miss affair.

  Killing yourself isn’t against the law. If you succeed, there’s nothing they can do to punish you for it. And if you fail, you could always ask for the death penalty, I suppose. But helping someone to commit suicide is a felony.

  Evert’s offer of pills was greeted with suspicion.

  Most of the residents don’t need his pills for an overdose anyway; they’ve got plenty of their own. Almost everyone in here has one of those day-of-the-week pill dispensers. Some old codgers take their pillboxes downstairs every morning, plunk them down on the table, shake out huge handfuls of pills and with a great deal of huffing and puffing wash them down with gulps of lukewarm coffee. Sighing about ailments and maladies, misery and death. So if you were hoping to have a good day, best stay out of their way.

  Monday, 9 September

  There’s a new resident here, Mr De Klerk, who is trying to convert his fellow inmates to ‘the Reformed Church’. I don’t know which reformed church exactly, but it’s one of the more orthodox ones. It’s a good thing no one in here still has to be vaccinated against the measles, because ‘interfering in God’s plan for us is stepping into God’s shoes, and those shoes don’t fit us’, says De Klerk.

  His attempt to win over Protestant souls is creating rather a furore among the Catholics. I can see an old-time religious war coming, and can’t wait for the first heretics to be burned at the stake.

  Mr De Klerk waxed eloquent when I informed him yesterday that I had some doubts about God’s good works. ‘The Lord hath not revealed Himself for us to question Him, but so that we may bow before Him.’

  Fortunately, eloquent words don’t necessarily speak the truth. These weren’t De Klerk’s own words, in fact, but came from the evangelical magazine Friend of the Truth. One of the residents, an erstwhile Communist Party member, mistook it for his old party newspaper, risen from the ashes. Claims to own the truth can come from many quarters.

  I left De Klerk with two questions. The first was whether proselytizing was considered work, and if you were allowed to do it on Sundays, and the second, whether his God could create a rock that was so heavy that even He couldn’t lift it. (I’d read it somewhere.)

  I detected some bafflement.

  ‘Well, you’ll let me know, won’t you,’ I said as I walked away.

  Tuesday, 10 September

  This morning I went to the geriatrician. I asked him about the pep pill for the elderly. And also about its polar opposite: Drion’s suicide pill.

  ‘Both pills are problematic,’ said the doctor. ‘The stimulants you mean are illegal. Their effect on the aged is not well known. Although it’s quite possible cocaine could provide some old people with a nice buzz.’

  I asked if he had ever tried it himself. Yes, he had.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Too nice. Dangerously nice. I could see myself being unable to do without.’

  The only thing he could do for me at this time, he said, was to prescribe a mild anti-depressant, ‘although you don’t seem depressed to me’. The downside was that it might make me a bit groggy.

  I said I needed pills to perk me up instead.

  He would give it some thought.

  As for the hypothetical suicide pill, that was a great deal more complicated. The doctor understood that for some people it must be a reassuring idea to have one of those pills in their medicine cabinet ‘just in case’, but the reality was quite another story.

  An elderly person who wishes to die has to go to an ‘End of Life Care Counsellor’, and will need to convince him or her of a genuine desire to die, to be done with life. You are required to sit through a minimum of two thorough, probing ‘intake’ interviews with the counsellor. If the counsellor decides to help you, a second qualified provider must be found to agree as well. Next a physician has to prescribe the necessary drugs, to be taken under a doctor’s supervision. What a rigmarole – enough to make you wish even more that you were dead.

  ‘However, it seems to me that you are far from being a candidate yet.’

  ‘You may be right, but I find myself growing a bit unsteady on my feet. Isn’t starting to lose your balance often the beginning of the end? Once the balance goes, that’s usually the point of no ret
urn.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Can’t this conversation be considered the first “intake”?’ I asked.

  It could.

  Wednesday, 11 September

  Today most television stations will be showing the aeroplanes crashing into the Twin Towers over and over and over again: 2,996 dead. The direct catalyst for the War on Terror: at least 200,000 more deaths, including 6,000 American soldiers; over 350,000 injured, and an estimated price tag of $1 trillion and rising.

  At teatime yesterday I threw out a few of those numbers (I know them by heart), but the cost of this war didn’t seem all that unreasonable to most people there. Several of my friends excepted, luckily.

  Cripes, just think of all the great things you could have done with those billions! The Americans could have made themselves quite popular in some quarters while they were at it, instead of being hated.

  And after Iraq, and after all those Arab revolutions wind up devouring their own children, Islamic fundamentalism will only emerge more powerful than before.

  I understand only too well that the Americans have no interest in diving headlong into another adventure in Syria, one that will be of no benefit to them. Other recent ill-advised adventures are still too fresh in their minds.

  Overdoing the wise-old-man thing a bit, aren’t you, Hendrik? Maybe it’s the blustery autumn weather, after such a long, beautiful summer. This afternoon I am going out to buy a roomy rain poncho to wear on my scooter, so that I can clear my head no matter the forecast.

  Thursday, 12 September

  I heard that, on the heels of hospital clowns for sick children, special clowns are being deployed to cheer up lonely OAPs. I don’t know what they’re called or where they come from, but I should like to warn them in advance: if any clown arrives to brighten my day, so help me God, I’ll use my last ounce of strength to bash his jovial skull in with a frying pan.

  A week ago the temperature was still close to 30 degrees. Now the central heating is up full blast. It’s cold and rainy much of the time. Tomorrow we’re off to play golf. It doesn’t look as if the weather will improve, and I don’t have a backup plan. I’ve been checking the weather report hourly, but it doesn’t help. The minibus is coming to pick us up tomorrow at one o’clock.

  I’m a nervous wreck.

  Friday, 13 September

  There was a resident who made a habit of staying in bed all day on Friday the 13th, just to make sure nothing bad would happen to her. Preparing to have a bite to eat in bed, she poured herself a cup of tea. The handle of the teapot broke, drenching her in boiling-hot liquid, and she had to spend the rest of that Friday the 13th in hospital.

  Evert came over yesterday with a belated birthday present: a sheepskin for the seat of my scooter. I should get it washed first, he said, he hadn’t had time to take care of it. The poor lamb came from the charity shop.

  ‘Who knows what the previous owners might have been up to, rolling round on it in front of the fireplace. It’s got some funny stains on it,’ he said with a wicked smirk.

  I take no notice of his dirty innuendos. I brought the thing to the laundry and it’s already been returned, washed and dried. All clean.

  Only: if I do use it on my motorized chair, and it starts to rain when I’ve parked it outside somewhere, I’ll be sitting on a soaking-wet sponge on the way back. As long as I’m still able to hobble, I’ll never take my scooter indoors. And I don’t really see myself toting a sheepskin round the supermarket when it’s raining or snowing outside.

  ‘There’s that funny old geezer again lugging his sheepskin,’ I can already hear them whispering by the grapefruit display.

  Saturday, 14 September

  The golf outing was the first flop of the series.

  It started out reasonably well. Coffee and cake in the clubhouse, and a friendly, rather pompous instructor, who explained the rudiments of the game to us. But just as we stepped outside to put into practice what we had just learned, it began to rain. And it was cold. And it was also a bit ambitious for us, to tell the truth; we were barely able to hit the ball. To give you an idea: Eefje whacked her own ankle, and Graeme’s club flew out of his hands, missing the instructor’s head by a hair. Only Evert, in his wheelchair, was a sensation: he drove a couple of shots at least a hundred metres.

  After half an hour we all felt that was enough for a first try, though we’d only used up half of our time.

  We tossed back a glass of wine in an otherwise deserted bar, and then I had the minibus pick us up an hour earlier than we’d planned.

  They were all nice about it, assuring me that it had been a great idea, but that the weather and our advanced ages had failed to cooperate. Nonetheless, I am still, a day later, feeling rather let down. I am childishly bad at dealing with disappointment.

  Sunday, 15 September

  I was still fretting about the failed golf outing when Evert stopped by for a visit. After five minutes, he threatened to leave if I didn’t stop moping at once.

  ‘I can’t stand having to listen to an old fogey whinging about a trivial little disappointment.’

  That snapped me out of it.

  Besides, Evert was bringing me a piece of good news: the Happy Birthday Squad for lonely oldies had been disbanded for want of volunteers.

  A gang of complete strangers arriving to serenade you and then help themselves to your birthday cake is enough jollity to make you long for a spate of loneliness. I confess: last year I didn’t have the guts to tell them not to come in. Evert did. They went ahead with a rendition of ‘Long May He Live’ outside his door anyway.

  Mrs Aupers has taken to walking backwards of late, because she thinks it makes her have to pee less often. I am going to nominate her for the Ig Nobel Prize, which this year went to a number of exceptional researchers. To Brian Crandall, for his study of his own excrement after eating boiled shrew. To a Japanese and Chinese team that investigated the effect of opera on the life expectancy of mice after open-heart surgery. And one more for the road: Gustano Pizzo was given a posthumous award for inventing a cockpit trapdoor to thwart hijackers, dropping them into a capsule the pilots can then jettison by parachute. Some people here thought the parachute was an unnecessary luxury.

  Monday, 16 September

  Mr Schipper has asked that everyone save their used matches for him. He is planning to use them to build a scale replica of our care home. He’s hoping it will make it into Het Parool. Stelwagen sits on the paper’s advisory board.

  Someone once made a replica of St Peter’s with seven million matches. This kind of project always makes me think: Arson! Twenty-five years of work going up in smoke within three minutes. I have a destructive trait lurking deep within my soul.

  A week and a half ago it was 28 degrees outside, and summer. Now it’s 14 degrees and autumn. I don’t like autumn. Yes of course, the colours are nice, but they’re the colours of necrosis. In the late autumn of my life I am already confronted often enough with death and decay, I don’t need dying leaf debris to remind me. Autumn smells like a nursing home. Give me spring, a new beginning, to compensate.

  I also hate the short, cold days; and St Nicholas and Christmas don’t exactly make me jump for joy.

  If I sound like an old grump, isn’t that what this diary is for? It lets me gripe and moan from time to time, and it doesn’t bother anyone.

  Tuesday, 17 September

  Jealousy in old age sometimes goes to ridiculous lengths. Owing to the over-abundance of women here, the married ladies do not like to let their husbands out of their sight. Mrs Daalder never strays more than one metre from Mr Daalder’s side. She growls like a vicious guard dog at any female who dares to pay the slightest attention to her man. Even if the unsuspecting table-mate is just asking him to pass the sugar.

  ‘Can’t you reach it yourself? Don’t give it to her, Wim.’

  Wim is thoroughly depressed because he can no longer have a decent conversation with anyone. And no woman wants Wim anyway, because he
’s ugly as sin; and yet he has to tolerate his jealous wife’s watchdog surveillance. I sometimes detect in Wim’s eyes a great longing for death.

  What put me in mind of this is that about three weeks ago a certain Mr Timmerman came to live here, and Mr Timmerman seems to have his eye on Eefje, which I can perfectly well understand. He hasn’t got a chance, however; Eefje will have nothing to do with him because he’s a big show-off, and also because he stinks.

  That may sound like jealousy on the part of Hendrik Groen, but envy in this case is quite redundant. Eefje has already very kindly asked Timmerman several times to please go and sit somewhere else.

  That has stoked Timmerman’s envy of me, since I always sit next to Eefje, to our mutual contentment.

  Wednesday, 18 September

  Yesterday was Prince’s Day, the opening of Parliament.

  ‘Look, that red line, the longest one, that’s us, the pensioners,’ Mr Ellroy says, trying to explain to Mrs Blokker the intricacies of the charts showing the cutbacks. ‘We’re the ones having to tighten our belts the most!’

  Mrs Blokker nods.

  The anxiety grows. Are they even going to let us have a measly ginger snap with our coffee?

  Henk Krol of the 50Plus Party is calling on all OAPs to join the fray and come to Sunday’s demonstration in Amsterdam. I’m thinking of going, if the weather cooperates. It could be a lark. I’ve never demonstrated in my life, but what’s stopping me from marching at the age of eighty-four? Not that I can get all that excited about a possible 2 per cent income cut; but I think the wide expanse of Museum Square teeming with rollators, mobility scooters and Cantas could be a fascinating sight. I hope there’ll be shouts of ‘Rutte, murderer!’ and scuffles, and the riot police charging a tough gang of over-eighties tossing bricks as if it’s a game of boules.