On the Bright Side

by Hendrik Groen

‘We’d never get to the end of it!’ said Evert, and then began wondering out loud whether there might be such a thing as a coffin-decorating workshop ‘for a bright and creative interment.’

  He hasn’t found one yet, although according to Evert, that’s a big gap in the market. He also announced that he’d like us all to dress in loud, colourful clothes at his funeral. Even the coffin bearers. Could we please take care of that?

  There is a new female resident who at teatime this afternoon devoured ten butter biscuits in a row. After about the fourth one, the room slowly grew quiet around her. Half a dozen residents held their breath watching one biscuit after another disappear into her tiny mouth. It was her own packet of biscuits, so the nurse couldn’t really say anything. But when the lady started on her eighth biscuit she could no longer keep it in.

  ‘Mrs Lacroix, is that really sensible?’

  ‘Shht,’ Mrs Lacroix tried to say with a mouthful of crumbs. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

  After her tenth biscuit, she looked round the circle and asked if anyone else would like one.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I am a performance artist,’ she answered.

  ‘Oh, here we go …’ said Mr Bakker.

  ‘What did she say she is?’ asked Mrs Duits.

  I wasn’t actually there – I heard the story first-hand from Edward. He was there, and he loved it.

  I think I want to meet this Mrs Lacroix.

  Sunday, 11 January

  A research study has shown that eighty-year-olds are happier than they were aged forty. Forty is the low point on the happiness scale. At that age you have to worry about both your parents and your kids, and then there’s the stress of your job as well.

  These are the findings of a professor who is eighty years old himself. He knows of what he speaks. But has this professor, a Mr Vaillant, ever visited a care home like ours? If he had, he would know that the faces in here don’t exactly radiate joy. That old people are very good at concealing any happiness they feel.

  Perhaps he should come and give a few lectures here, to explain a thing or two. After all, it’s now or never, as far as happiness is concerned.

  Let me give the weather as an example.

  It has been stormy for nearly a week, and after just a dip down to moderate gale force, the wind is back up to hurricane strength. If you were even just half as happy as the professor maintains, it stands to reason that you wouldn’t let a stiff little breeze get you down. On the contrary: you’d go outside and let the wind whip through your hair.

  But that doesn’t really happen here. One mostly hears whining about ruined hairdos. As if it’s so important for those last remaining hairs to be perfectly coiffed.

  For myself, I have discovered that my mobility scooter is rather sensitive to crosswinds. I nearly capsized this morning when a wind gust sideswiped me, pushing me up against the kerb between two tall buildings. I heard Geert shout with laughter behind me on his scooter. A few hundred metres further on it was my turn to laugh: he got drenched by a car tearing through a puddle alongside him. Two old rascals on a quiet, stormy Sunday morning in North Amsterdam who were simply elated to be out in the wind and weather.

  Monday, 12 January

  The members of the Old-But-Not-Dead Club are no strangers to the travails of the flesh. Not to complain, but just to take into account: Evert is in a wheelchair with diabetes. Antoine and Ria are a classic example of the lame and the blind: he has rheumatism, her eyesight is failing. Edward has had a stroke and his speech is practically unintelligible. Geert has a colostomy and a sleep disorder. Leonie is afflicted with a serious tremor and is incontinent. I am short of breath and have trouble walking, an embarrassing dribble, and the occasional bout of gout. Graeme is the only one who is still in reasonably fine fettle.

  Impressive list of ailments, isn’t it?

  Our Club has clear guidelines about this: there’s to be no whining, but making fun of one’s aches and pains is allowed. That helps tremendously. We laugh a lot about our various miseries. It makes living with the restrictions brought on by the body’s decrepitude a great deal easier.

  A splendid new plan was born during a more or less accidental gathering of the Old-But-Not-Dead Club. We are having a short winter hiatus from our excursion programme until the end of the Christmas holidays, but none of us liked having nothing to look forward to in the interim. At teatime yesterday Ria and Antoine proposed, somewhat hesitantly, an idea for a second kind of activity.

  ‘Something to do with food, we were thinking.’

  ‘Golly, what a surprise,’ said Edward.

  ‘We thought it might be fun to go out to dinner together once a month, taking turns to choose a different ethnic restaurant to visit each time.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Evert, ‘and you thought that would be fun?’

  Ria and Antoine both looked a bit taken aback. ‘It’s just a suggestion.’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, I think it’s a great plan,’ said Evert with a broad grin. ‘Only, maybe it should be more frequent than once a month.’

  And so it is decided: once every three weeks, we’ll have dinner out at a restaurant of a different nationality, with the members of the Club taking turns to choose the venue. Only, no Chinese or Italian – too predictable. This project won’t replace our soon-to-be-revived regular excursion programme, but will continue alongside it.

  Tuesday, 13 January

  The first Dutch celebrity death of the year is Frans Molenaar. Tumbled down the stairs and never recovered. A lovely but peculiar man from the lovely but peculiar world of haute couture fashion. A world that’s quite divorced from reality.

  ‘They only make clothes you’d wear to a carnival. No one would go out wearing that,’ Mrs Van Diemen decided.

  ‘A hat like that would make a handy umbrella,’ her neighbour remarked when she saw a medium-sized UFO on one model’s head.

  ‘And they’re always faggots, and always surrounded by the most beautiful women,’ said Mr Dickhout disapprovingly.

  ‘Only if you like skeletons, nothing but skin and bone. Not a speck of meat,’ said the fellow seated next to him.

  Frans Molenaar would have thumbed his pedantic nose at their point of view.

  Here in the home we are not that fashion-conscious any more. Only our droopy trousers, crotch at the knees, and floppy braces put us in the ‘with-it’ bracket, as those also happen to be fashionable with hip youngsters in the ‘real’ world. You might even say that we were trendsetters in that regard.

  Yesterday Evert came round for a drink before dinner because he’d run out of supplies, and didn’t feel like braving wind and rain to go to the off-licence.

  Evert has asked the director time and again why our mini-mart can’t carry alcoholic beverages. ‘No, impossible, for licensing reasons.’

  ‘When I die I expect Gall & Gall to send a lovely wreath,’ Evert told me, ‘because I’ve remained such a loyal customer, despite my diabetes. A shining example of stubborn tenacity.’

  Miracle of miracles, my best mate was spared any further amputations or related indignities this past year. He actually looks the picture of health in his wheelchair. Sharp as a tack.

  It is imperative that he doesn’t die before I do. The drinks I pour for him are therefore rather stingy. Evert has rigged up a bottle-holder on his wheelchair, but I insist on putting the jenever bottle back in the fridge every time. ‘Not that I have any intention of saving you from yourself, my friend.’

  ‘Ah, go jump in the lake, Groen.’

  Wednesday, 14 January

  A mystifying series of events is keeping the residents all agog.

  For the fifth time this week an apple was found in a bizarre location. A few days ago the first apple turned up in the lift, then someone discovered one by the front door, two were found in different hallways, and this morning a Granny Smith was seen floating in the aquarium. Fortunately no fish were harmed. Since for want of more pressing matters molehill
s tend to grow into mountains around here, the fact that someone is leaving apples ‘all over the place’ becomes the topic of the day.

  Honesty compels me to add that the fifth apple was originally lying next to the fish tank. I dropped it in. It was almost a reflex. There was no one else in the corridor to see me do it. To be clear: I am not the apple-spreader. I hope that it has thrown the real culprit for a loop, now that an apple has turned up in the aquarium.

  According to Mrs Schaap, five apples can hardly be a coincidence. Well done, Sherlock Schaap.

  People have begun inspecting each other’s fruit bowls.

  Took my scooter out in the wind and rain and saw the first daffodils in full bloom on a strip of grass at the end of Kamperfoelie Way. I had already spotted a few snowdrops last week; it isn’t all that unusual to see those, but daffodils blooming in January – they must be a bit confused, honestly.

  I would like to see a sturdy layer of ice on the ponds, thick enough to bear the weight of the scooter. It would allow me to venture out on the ice again for the first time in years. Provided I can find a good spot to get on and off. It would be capital, to scoot from Volendam across the Gouwzee to Marken, for example. Geert has promised to come with me on his Ferrari-mobile.

  Thursday, 15 January

  Today someone found a tangerine in the lift.

  ‘We were just getting used to the apples, and now this,’ Mrs Schaap sighed.

  The fruit whodunnit is the top topic of conversation over tea and coffee. It’s turning some of the residents into Nervous Nellies. They think it’s an omen that something terrible is going to happen.

  ‘It’s only a tangerine, dears. Not a bomb,’ one of the nurses reassured them.

  I have a running bet with Evert. I think it is a staff member who’s secretly strewing fruit about; Evert is convinced one of the residents is responsible. The stake: a book of the winner’s choice. Evert had to solemnly swear to me that he wasn’t the fruit sneak himself. At first we wanted to bet on the kind of fruit that would pop up next, but I don’t trust him an inch, and vice versa. Had he predicted, for example, that the next find would be a banana, you could bet that a banana would turn up in a planter somewhere within the next fifteen minutes.

  Meanwhile Stelwagen has ordered the staff to keep its eyes peeled. I gathered as much from Mrs Morales, who recently started working here as a carer. A Spanish chatterbox with a soft spot for yours truly. She invariably starts her sentences with ‘Don’t tell anyone, but …’ Think of her saying it with a charming Spanish accent.

  In her I may have found a useful new ‘well-informed source’ on the inside again. That role used to be filled by my good friend Anja Appelboom, the long-time administrative secretary in Stelwagen’s office, who would occasionally provide me with information not meant for residents’ ears, but a year and a half ago Anja was put out to pasture by Stelwagen on early retirement.

  When it comes to keeping the residents informed, our esteemed director’s motto is: ignorance is bliss. I have the feeling that Stelwagen honestly thinks you shouldn’t saddle the inmates with information that would only make them anxious. She doesn’t really think of old people as competent human beings, and she isn’t the only one. I often have to agree with her. If you keep treating people like little children, in the long run most of them will start acting like little children too.

  Friday, 16 January

  The vigour of the residents hasn’t improved this past year, sadly. The weakest and oldest have left us, and instead of hale and hearty seventy-year-olds taking their place, we’ve welcomed into the fold several old crocks well into their late eighties.

  The record for the shortest stay is held by a lady whose name we never even came to know. A day and a half after arriving through the front door in a wheelchair, she departed again through the back door in a coffin. Perhaps the excitement of the move was too much for her.

  ‘She drank one cup of tea, one!’ Mrs Duits must have said at least four times.

  ‘Yes, and so what?’ asked Bakker. At least four times as well.

  Someone wondered if the deceased would have to pay the whole month’s rent anyway.

  According to the new directives, people may only move to a care home if they are incapable of looking after themselves, and therefore need a great deal of care. Upon arrival, the new residents are only a short step away from either the grave or the nursing ward.

  Healthy residents are in the minority. The average age is creeping up to ninety and the turnover rate keeps accelerating. It doesn’t make for a very jolly atmosphere.

  A pineapple was found in our ‘gym’, an unoccupied office space. The culprit seems to have moved on to the larger species of fruit.

  It’s funny how something as inane as an unclaimed piece of fruit can cause such a brouhaha. Normally our residents have no trouble coming up with the most outlandish conspiracy theories, but in this case they’ve been left flummoxed. They don’t know what to make of it. It’s just too weird.

  ‘I don’t get it. Who would do such a thing?’ is the most common reaction.

  It would enhance the mystery if the fruit caper stopped without the instigator ever being found out. It would be a pity about our bet, however.

  Saturday, 17 January

  The stricter criteria for care home admission will inevitably lead to vacancies. By 2020, 800 of the 2,000 care homes will have to close. That is forty per cent. Which also means that within the next five years a considerable number of residents will have to move to another home, since no board of directors will wait to close an institution until the very last occupant is obliging enough to kick the bucket.

  Here in our home the alarm was raised a year and a half ago, when we were informed about ‘renovation’ plans. Everyone gave a sigh of relief when the plan was called off. But our relief may well be premature. My own instinct tells me that if this old building isn’t going to be renovated, it could well be because it has been moved over to the ‘slated for demolition’ column.

  I intend to accost Mrs Stelwagen in the near future to apprise her of my concerns.

  We may like to complain about all the niggling no-nos we have to put up with here, but it could always be worse. The Algemeen Dagblad reports that Sientje van der Lee (91) has been told to remove her houseplants from her sheltered housing windowsill because the window washer, who comes twice a year, complains they’re in his way. And also because the plants sometimes shed a few of their leaves. Sientje was a farmer all her life. She protests, ‘I need to have some green about,’ and has taken defiant action: she’s hung out a banner that says ‘KEEP YOUR MITTS OFF MY PLANTS’. Problems such as these put all the uproar about the terrorist attacks in Paris and Belgium in the shade.

  Sunday, 18 January

  We are having an Old-But-Not-Dead Club meeting tomorrow evening. On the agenda: drawing up the restaurant plan and the new excursion schedule.

  The hibernation has lasted long enough. It’s time for action. We are meeting at Geert’s, who, in his words, is ‘engaged in making exhaustive preparations’.

  Besides being a way to save money, turning over eldercare from state to local authorities was meant to bring control closer to home for those on the receiving end.

  The money-saving aspect has been reasonably successful, but decentralizing seems to be misfiring on many cylinders. Lots of the councils that were put in charge, you see, have decided to decentralize again. To cut expenses, dozens of local authorities have joined hands, working together to drive down the cost of eldercare even further.

  So instead of a single minister or secretary of state, the ‘care sector’ now has to deal with – count them – thirty-seven aldermen from thirty-seven towns and villages. These are overseen not by 150 members of parliament, but 500 local councillors, ones who have only the best interests of, let’s say, Lutjebroek at heart. I can’t wait to see what that will mean for us.

  My friend Edward was wondering why, exactly, the prophet Muhammed can’t be depicted.
A good question, to which no one knew the answer. Evert’s suggestion, ‘Maybe the prophet was as cross-eyed as a melon,’ was politely discounted when he had no retort to the counter-question, ‘How can you tell if a melon is cross-eyed?’

  Which brings me in a subtle segue back to the fruit affair: yesterday a banana was found in the pantry. There are rumours of a staff posse out on the hunt for the culprit. To no avail, for now. The director has appealed to the residents to remain calm. Such appeals tend to backfire, surely Stelwagen ought to know that by now.

  Monday, 19 January

  The National Bird Count Days took place this past weekend. It made me think of my late friend Eefje, who would spend an hour at her window patiently and devotedly counting tits and sparrows.

  She never let me help her. ‘Only serious birders are allowed to participate, Henk. You’re just a novice, you’ll only distract me. You can come back in an hour.’ And then she’d give me a radiant smile. I’d melt completely. I miss her. Love seldom knows a happy ending.

  I heard from Mrs Morales that our director is considering forbidding the use of mobiles in the dining room at mealtimes. Not that many people do make calls, but when someone does, the entire room has the pleasure of listening in.

  ‘WHERE ARE YOU? … AT DINNER … ENDIVE AND MEATBALLS … OH, FINE … NO, DREADFUL, NOT A WINK … WITH THIS WEATHER DEFINITELY … ARE YOU EVER COMING TO SEE ME?’

  And so on.

  Old people and modern telephone technology don’t get along very well. All those confusing bells and whistles make them nervous. They’d much prefer to drag along a cordless Bakelite phone that would allow them to dial the old way. All those little keys and knobs now inevitably get the number wrong the first time. ‘WHO IS THIS?’

  A mere slip of a phone that can contain an entire telephone directory – oh, my! Even the extra-large keys meant for aged eyes and trembling fingers don’t really do the trick.