Before I Sleep (29 page)

Luckily, John Myrde, the principal librarian at the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra, e-mailed me to say that he was pleased that my memoirs were about to be published. He stated that he would circularise his fellow librarians around the world recommending they purchase the book. He added that he had shown a draft to Professor Terry Birtles who told John that it was my going to Cambridge that had encouraged Terry to follow in my footsteps.

There were a few other “sunbeams” breaking through. The other day, a staff member of Bleak House approached me with a document requiring my signature. She explained that Mavis was unable to sign so she needed my signature to authorise a treatment. It turned out that she was employed at Bleak House as an aromatherapist, and she proposed “treating” Mavis. I asked what she did and she replied that she helped patients become calmer by meditating while incense candles were burnt. I explained that Mavis had long ago lost her sense of smell, so she then suggested she could massage Mavis's lower legs where the circulation is poor. As well, another staff member asked me to sign an authorisation form so that side rails could be put around Mavis's bed. I was puzzled at this and she explained that side rails were a form of restraint and therefore needed approval by the patient's guardian.

Why I regarded these two small matters as sufficiently significant to temporarily change “the Blackness” to a mere “Dark Grayness” stems from an earlier encounter with the administration of Bleak House, who were apparently ignoring my responsibilities under the South Australian
Guardianship Act.
This required me, as Mavis's guardian, to approve or disapprove all forms of medical, dental or surgical treatment. If I abused or neglected these responsibilities, I was liable to criminal prosecution. I was told that the requirements were widely ignored because they were impractical. However, I persisted, pointing out that it was the law in this state and that for forty years I had been enforcing the law. We finally reached agreement and I now certify as “approved” all new forms of Mavis's treatment. Incidentally, when I approached the relevant authority for support for my stand, I was told that I was legally correct but that “in exceptional circumstances unofficial arrangements are acceptable”. No wonder that the requirements are widely ignored!

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 life 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.