by Ray Whitrod
Then an interesting letter came from Ron Edington in Brisbane. He had been the Queensland Police Union president during my time as Commissioner, and therefore the titular head of the Green Mafia that opposed my reforms so bitterly They had supported my replacement, Terry Lewis who is now about to be discharged from custody. Ron informed me that “most, if not all, of your proposed changes are now in place” and that “most people of any intelligence always respected you”.
These small triumphs from a past era have been especially welcomed by me for they have come at a time of personal crisis. I leave each session with Mavis emotionally exhausted. In Papuan pidgin terms, “I am all buggered up”. I sit alongside her, holding her hand while she strives, with diminishing brain power but a still indomitable will, to remember the correct words she needs to convey her concerns. The Parkinson’s effect has been to make her throat muscles less amenable to control and thus her ability to speak clearly — a relic of her teacher training — is fading. I turn my less deaf ear towards her, but usually it takes two or three repetitions before I grasp what she is trying to say I have to concentrate all the time because there is often background noise from the television set, or from the voices of passers by. I offer her some weak reason why she cannot try to stand up, or go home, or prepare the evening meal, or why Ian hasn’t yet come to drive us home to Fulham. Her severe short-term memory loss means that this conversation is repeated many times during the afternoon. There is another “Mavis” who also sits in the lounge and is sometimes called by the nurses. My “Mavis” picks up the name and hopefully responds, thinking that it might mean a change in her miserable situation. Yet if a passer by inquires, she always politely replies: “I am all right. Thank you.” I cry inwardly, for this was my wonderful wife, loving, caring, articulate and perfect.
In this regard, the need for control over one’s environment has long been viewed by psychologists such as Rodin as a basic human motivation. It has been found to have profound effects on the elderly’s well-being. Presumably, in Mavis’s situation, absence of control may well have a detrimental effect on her well-being, but this may be masked by the presumption that it is a symptom of her Parkinson’s disease. I want to share her distress in the hope that this will lessen its impact on her, but it is difficult to communicate orally. I am usually restricted to just holding her hand. On good days she seems to enjoy being given small chocolates or spoonfuls of yogurt.
After I leave her, promising to return, I have a quick meal in the hostel dining room and go to my room where I take two tablets to dull the pain in my hips. I try to have a short nap to get myself back to what passes for normal these days. I wonder how it is that the staff in the nursing home remain cheerful, so I ask Margi, the clinical sister in charge, how she manages the daily stresses of her job. (Margi always finds time to have a reassuring but jocular exchange with me three or four times a day.) Margi replies that she gets strong family support at home. I ask Sister Heather how she avoids burnout or becoming case-hardened. She says that she is happy in her job and that she has a husband who listens. I observe a smiling younger carer giving help to people in the closed Dementia Unit. Her answer is simply: “They are not my parents.”
I thought about these coping responses and decided that none of them applied in my situation. I review in my mind the choices and options available to men in the final stages of prostate cancer. I decided that we had different agendas — they were desperate to live; I have no great desire to survive without Mavis. Perhaps I should make time to meditate more. It could reduce the tensions under which I exist. I am concerned that I should use these last moments of rational exchange with Mavis to implant an idea that will survive her memory loss. I hoped for an idea that would offer the reassurance that we will be together again some time, somewhere, in happier circumstances, perhaps with Bluedog.
I am a little concerned about Bluedog, our fourth Australian terrier. He was with us for twelve years and, especially during the past four, he became my shadow. Slowly following me from room to room, he gave my feet a friendly lick when I felt distressed. I believe — and there is increasing biological evidence to support this belief— that animals do have feelings. When we were finally leaving our home, I lacked any ability to convey to Bluedog that he and I were parting forever. I hoped he would realise that I would always remember him. I tried to explain that he was going to Canberra to live with Ruth, who would look after him because she was now better able to do this. I understood he would find it difficult to exist with another bigger dog whose territory he would be invading. I was grateful that Ruth was taking him for she would be sensitive to his predicament and give him much love. I think of him often. His photo hangs on my bedroom wall just above my desk. His birthday is in two weeks’ time and I will not be there this year to celebrate it with him. Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems have a better understanding of the spiritual place of non-human animals in the universe God created for all and of which we are but one species.
I have often wondered why there are so few “doggy” people amongst Baptist pastors. Perhaps their migratory lifestyle is a handicap, although one Baptist minister who stayed in his Canberra manse for twenty-one years never had a dog and he was a country-bred boy. Bleak House is a Baptist institution, and perhaps that is the reason why residents must somehow dispose of their animal friends before taking up occupancy. This enforced separation comes at a time when the new residents are suffering from the deprivation of most or all their other possessions. I suppose that instead we can cherish the pets that are provided — two small cages, each containing a solitary budgie. Budgies in their natural state are flock birds. They have been so for many hundreds of thousands of years before Baptists emerged for a short time as progressive Protestants. It might be rewarding to subject serving Baptist pastors to a personality questionnaire just to see if there is any factor that explains this assumption that they do not share the Australian community’s fondness for dogs. I wonder how many of them watch Harry’s Practice or Animal Hospital on television, or devote a few moments to viewing the fascinating sheepdog trials at the local agricultural show. The impact of the animal-loving Saint Francis of Assisi seems to have dimmed over the ages. As far as I know, Baptist clergy have never become involved with the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals or Animal Liberation organisations — perhaps due to their lack of time. However, some manage to join Rotary.
To a psychologist, entry as a participant-observer into this closed culture of the elderly sick ought to be a stimulating opportunity — although, it is obviously, one that is tempered by the psychologist’s own level of fitness. Up until now I have been so obsessed with my responsibilities to my wife that I have not looked professionally at my milieu. The few thoughts that I have had so far are doubts gathered from a little reading, observations at Bleak House and personal experience. These relate to the claim that there is an inevitability about social and emotional disengagement by elderly folk. In the past, public interest in the lifestyles of the very elderly was limited and consequently comparatively fewer resources were allocated to researching this area. Now, however, the Australian population is becoming an aged one and this change has many social ramifications.
Research into the lifestyles of elderly individuals is beginning to attract the attention of scholars in the same way that the behaviour of infants and juveniles has done in the past. And there is some scholarly interest in elderly individuals confined to institutions, just as there is interest in the lives of convicts. Not so long ago, a Flinders University professor received a substantial grant to study how sick children feel about the possibility of early death. I suspect many of the residents at Bleak House are concerned about dying, but there doesn’t seem to be much research data available. We are all facing a fate, not far off now, which we are powerless to change.
However, I have found some interesting data. One survey considers a group of elderly Americans who responded to a 1995 questionnaire that asked: “If there is one thing in your l
ife you could change, what would it be?” The most frequent response expressed their wish for “the return of their dead spouse”. The next obvious question (which was not asked) was, “if your spouse cannot join you, have you thought about joining your spouse?” Truthful replies, if these could be obtained, might help provide some understanding on a number of important social phenomena. These could include single and joint suicides, murder-suicides and deaths from a “broken-heart”. Other replies in the same questionnaire showed that the majority of widowed elderly felt that their former spouse was not replaceable. I noted, with some ambivalence, one result from the same survey that suggested the more someone believes in God, the happier he or she is.
Meanwhile, I am not getting any better. The advent of the electric wheelchair coincided with my decision to reduce walking to an absolute minimum for not only was it painful but I kept remembering my bone man’s prognosis. He said that if I kept using the damaged hips they would shortly become quite useless. Mavis picked up that I was now more mobile because of the electric wheelchair and she asked me questions about its battery and range. She spoke somewhat wistfully, I thought, for she said it must be wonderful not having to rely upon someone else to move you around. She remains the stoic as always. She has not been outside in the fresh air for two months, and she was a person who loved gardening in all of its forms. Today she was lucid all day despite being confined to her bedroom for the morning because the lounge floor was being cleaned. The bedroom is a depressing place, lacking any form of stimulus. It is isolated, and it is a place in which she must spend long hours alone. I told Mavis that it was the first of September and the Royal Show had opened. We talked about jonquils and daffodils, and how our church was filled with daffodils when we were married sixty two years ago next week. We mentioned her two bridesmaids, Gert and Jean, two lifelong friends now both dead, although neither of us referred to that. Jean, who was Mavis’s younger sister, was a much-loved Brown Owl. After she retired she spent seven years bedridden at Bleak House as the result of a stroke. After her retirement, Gert, a friend from secondary school and teachers’ college, spent nearly as long being shunted around various nursing homes. She suffered from dementia. It seems that humanity is paying a substantial price for assuming that a longer life means a happier life. My own research showed that individuals — at least men with prostate cancer — preferred “quality of life” to “quantity of life”. Perhaps the time has come when some of the resources now being used to increase life expectancy should be used to improve the quality of the added years. As I know from my own although this is difficult to do. Margi has advised me that soon Mavis will have to be fed through a tube. If Mavis becomes aware of this seeming indignity, I know she will be mortified. Our family made much of having enjoyable meals together. She was the best cook of lambs’ fry and bacon; she produced the tastiest cornish pasties, and the weekend roast with fresh mint sauce stimulated the weakest of appetites. Our meals were happy family occasions. If she is able to remember these and think about her present situation she will be in despair. I am frustrated that I will be unable to change anything.
It requires effort to remain in contact with old friends. I have not yet made it across the road to the home opposite Bleak House where one of my friends, Dr Donald Beard, lives. Nor have I ventured just up George Street where a school and RAAF friend, Dr Dennis Shortridge, has his home. I did make it to The Parade once but found it a fairly stressful experience. The choice to go or not is mine, but Mavis cannot take the initiative. She must wait for people to visit her. A few do, and the knowledgeable ones, like Claire Withers, bring fresh fruit and yogurt, which Mavis enjoys. My regular visitors include Gordon Barrett, an Adelaide barrister, who arrives on Friday evenings with a supper of fish and chips and the latest issue of The Adelaide Review, Max Dawson, a scouting colleague for seventy years with homemade biscuits, and Rory Barnes, with two or more stubbies of Coopers’ Light Ale. Rory is one of my former Canberra scout patrol leaders, vintage 1960s, a professional writer now living in Adelaide. If these memoirs ever get published it will be because of his skill in knocking my raw material into readable shape. I remember our last combined scout and guide campfire on the Murrumbidgee at which Mavis and Rory were present. It had been a happy week in the bush and we would be leaving in the morning. We would have finished the evening by all singing together that well-known campfire song which in part goes:
Adieu, adieu good friends. Adieu adieu,
I can no longer stay with you, stay with you,
I’ll hang my harp on a weeping willow tree,
and may the world go well with thee, well with thee.
And the Guides would have sung their version of “Taps”, that traditional bugle call played at nightfall in all Army barracks, which goes:
Day is done, gone the sun, from the sea, from the hills, from the sky, All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
The campfire embers burn low, the warm cocoa is all gone, and now is the time to retire, TO SLEEP. Good readers, I’ll also say, “Adieu, adieu.”
Later on you might have an opportunity to sing the second verse which goes like this:
Dig a grave both wide and deep, wide and deep,
Put headstones at its head and feet, head and feet,
Inscribe on it a turtle dove, turtle dove,
And say he died of love, died of love.
Diary entry: Sunday, 25 March 2001
Mavis had a rough night according to the night sister who gave her morphine.
At 10.10 a.m., Mavis left Ruthie and I to go to “heaven”. When she arrives there I expect her to start a Residents’ Committee and personally organise some overdue consumers’ input. Over the years she has always respected and where necessary fought for the recognition of everybody’s inalienable rights. She firmly believed that these are based on the universal principles of democracy and not on those emanating from a celestial theocracy. For far too long the Triumvirate have been impervious to repeated criticism from intelligent humans that their creation had been imperfectly planned. The outcome of that production is that in this world Happiness is at least matched by Misery. In many cases the Misery is quite undeserved. Mavis is a good example. All of her life she has given first consideration to the needs of others. During the many years we were “best friends” to each other, I never knew her to be other than the Perfect Girl Guide — trusty, loyal and helpful, sisterly, courteous, kind, obedient (to God’s laws), smiling, thrifty, pure as the rustling wind. As proof, our loving and responsible children reflect that credo.
Her ageing years deserved, in Australian terms, “a fair go”. Yet one consequence of the imperfect planning has been that for nearly four years she had been aware that parts of her brain were wasting away. It is true that from time to time odd flashes of her former clear-thinking mind broke through, but her once happy face was eventually replaced by a heart-breaking grimace. It was the very best that her damaged mind and weakened muscles could produce. It became obvious to me as I held her hand that she was struggling to get messages through to me. Twice I was able to make sense of them. She was asking me: “How are you?” To the very end she was more concerned about my well-being. In these last few days she could not drink or eat. She became emaciated and the nursing staff asked if the family wanted her to be force-fed. I thought that this was an indignity that she would not want to suffer, and the family agreed with me. I spent my last hours with Mavis reminding her of our happier times. I felt sure she could hear what I was saying for occasionally she would twitch her eyelid. It was ironic that we were communicating in this way. Ironic because for the past year her eyes have given her very poor service. With one completely artificial eye, only ten per cent vision in the other and an inability in recent months to sit up, her sensory deprivation was considerable. This must have caused her much frustration. But she hung on — a remarkably resilient lady who gave out Happiness to others all of her lifetime and was then rewarded with such Misery.
Wherever you are, Mavis,
please understand that not only I, but also your family and all of your many friends, were greatly saddened by your illness. Yet I know we are inspired by your courageous example of how to face unjustified adversity. May we be as strong as you to withstand the blows of this imperfect world and, like you, continue to strive for the betterment of our fellow beings. Please, please, do not completely leave us. In my memory I can see you in a thousand happy situations: swimming with me at Henley Beach, dancing with me in the Scout Hall at Black Forest, standing alongside me at Flinders Street Church when we undertook to be with each other for the rest of our lives, my visiting you at the Memorial Hospital with our three babies, Andrew, then Ian, and later Ruth. I recall your encouragement to me at the Adelaide Railway Station when I left you and the boys for four long years. I remember clearly at a later time how you stood, for a further seven long years, shoulder to shoulder with me in Queensland when, under media and other attacks, we were ignored by most of our church fellowship and abandoned by a goodly number of fair-weather friends.
I only wish I had your confident hope that we will meet again, somewhere, somehow, some time, and that once more, we will hold hands and be together again to face the future, whatever it may be. Your face smiles down upon me from the photographs on my bedroom wall. I shall sleep better tonight knowing that you have at least been freed of all your suffering. Tomorrow will bring its usual challenges and I promise that I will do my best to face them in the way you would expect of me. I will always be forever grateful for the happiness you first brought me when I was seventeen. A happiness that only gained in intensity in the next sixty-nine years. Shalom, my dear wife.