You can learn a lot from being in hospital - in any capacity
or incapacity. They’re strange places, housing and concentrating an enormous
spectrum of experiences and emotions. Extremes are common. I want to write
about something quite simple.
Despite her age and her medical problems, Mrs J was
extremely lucid – she was bright-eyed and articulate. She told me about being
in hospital, how it wasn’t much fun. About needles and tubes, taps and drains,
tablets and injections, machines that cleaned her blood. Making friends with
other patients in the ward. The terror of awakening in the middle of the night
and watching CPR being performed on one of her new friends. Watching the bed
wheeled away and the bay left empty until the morning when the bed was wheeled
back with fresh sheets and a new face lying on it.
Despite all this, Mrs J was
cheerful. She told me about her husband – not well himself – coming in every
morning on the bus with fresh flowers and newspapers for her. Her children and
grandchildren visiting her. An outpouring of love. Mrs J had no complaints
about the staff – the doctors or the nurses or the porters or the cleaners.
They were angels she said, she was grateful to them.
Mrs J had recovered well, now she was looking forward to
going home. In a full medical history you are supposed to assess the ability of
a patient to look after themselves on discharge. I asked a little about how she
felt about going home, not having the doctors and nurses around. Coping on her
own. She told me she couldn’t wait.
Then
her eyes sparkled and she told me
something really special. She said she was going to go home and take up
piano
lessons. That she’d put it off long enough. I couldn’t quite believe
it. Taking
up the piano in your late 80s with end-stage renal failure. I was
amazed. I
told her that I’d thought of taking up music lessons but I thought –
there was
no other way of saying it – that it was too late, that I was a bit
old for that
now. Mrs J somehow managed to laugh and be furious and jab me with her finger
all at the same time. Too late?! You’re a child! You don’t have to be
Glenn
Gould you know. You should do things you enjoy! Make the most of your
time.
Make {jab} the {jab} most {jab} of {jab} now {jab}.
Now
is what you’re holding in your hand. A few days after
seeing Mrs J, I bought a Spanish guitar. I am not a natural or
fantastic player. I am no Barrios or
Segovia or Paco de Lucia but I do enjoy playing now
and again and I appreciate
music more.
I’m not even at the beginning of my
career;
I’m at the threshold but even in these few years I feel like I’ve seen
a lot,
in hospitals and out of them. I’ve seen some pretty terrible things and some
wonderful
things. There’s one image I return to, particularly when things are
bad. I see Mrs J
playing the piano, enjoying the moment, enjoying the now.
Sometimes you see things most clearly from an alien
perspective. Looking with the eyes of the very old or the very young or those
of another culture. Saying things in another language. The French word for now
is maintenant - from ‘main’ meaning hand and ‘tenir’ meaning to hold or to
grasp. Now is what you’re holding in your hand. Now is what you grasp.