Part 7 Fog Flees the Sundowners!
November 29th 2007 05:30
Once the poor Pymble woman was calmed, Sister McKenny showed me through the rest of their small complex. They all had individual rooms, like everyone else in the retirement home, but these were very small, only a few objects from home, well, I supposed they were, I didn’t want to enquire, in case I received another depressing answer.
I was then shown the lounge room, which was again small, not like the large room old centenarian May had to herself, a room big enough for any imagination, even hers.
No, the entire place was small. It made me wonder whether that was on purpose, probably, as everything else was done with a specific reason, like the combination locks, security gates, bus stop, benches and fences, to stop them wandering away, trying to find home.
So, we had come to the end of our little tour, almost.
Sister McKenny asked me, what I thought about the complex so far. I didn’t have a ready answer; I was in a mental void, just following her, trying to suppress my fears about taking on the enormous responsibility for someone’s most loved parent, even if it was just as a companion for a few hours a day.
I shut that down, and turned my mind to my relationship with Sister McKenny.
I wondered what she thought about me; after speaking to me on the phone, interviewing me in person, watching my reactions and interactions, noting my fears, demeanour, humour. Sister McKenny had acute powers of observation, I was slowly learning, for she interrupted my short lived ponderings before I could answer and said, “We think you have what it takes.”
I was extremely flattered, but also nonplussed.
My anxiety levels had now burst through the top of my head. I had been externally reacting as if I was a programmed automaton; making the expected nods of agreement, mumbled positive affirmations, hoping the self doubt wasn’t so obvious. They weren’t fools. Even so, I still did retain a strong desire to be of some assistance, to help cheer, even for a brief moment, their dulled, contained and predictable lives.
Yet deeper within, emotionally, my brains had been blasted from my skull, hanging useless across my shoulder; as if I was a Kennedy, shocked by the surprise, of a shot from the grassy knoll.
I started to feel myself trembling with unreasonable fear; maybe the result of an unexpected compliment, after too many years of absence? This, combined with the uneasiness I felt in these new surroundings, compounded by a small group of people, so pathetically dependant on others to survive.
I wanted to run!
I wanted to run screaming and fall sobbing and smash my head against the ground till I lost consciousness. I was not capable, I was not worthy of their trust, for I did not reveal my own debilitating problems that made stress, memory, coping mechanisms, and ultimately depression my dangerous foes! Foes that led me to prematurely end my life, only some short years before Sister McKenny and I met.
I did not know how I survived, neither did the hospital. They told my friends I was a vegetable, strapped down, tubed up, and no point for any of them to visit me, ever again. I was the living dead. I was to be left to die, slowly, in a corner bed, with a name tag attached to my body, in readiness, for the inevitable.
There I remained, a zombie, and no one from the hospital contacted my family. A week later I emerged, still in a mental blackout, and walked and talked for three days apparently, until arriving back in our world, while walking down the corridor of the State asylum.
It took me a few moments to work out where I was. An odd sensation, I expect it is what teleportation must be like, but without the foreknowledge of where you were previously and where you were now. After observing room after room, as I gingerly stepped down that long corridor, I could have been in a hotel, yet something was weird; immediately opposite each of these rooms was another room, the doorways slightly angled away from each other, which had only a mattress on the floor, nothing else, except padded walls…the penny gradually slipped back into my now clenching hand.
Whatever raised me from that comatose soul grave, in some way delivered me thirteen years later to Sister McKenny, and there I stood, facing an emotional precipice, a gaping void into which I felt I would fall, never to reach the bottom.
I knew I had to say no, but, not just yet, as Sister McKenny had one last thing she wanted to show me.
I was then shown the lounge room, which was again small, not like the large room old centenarian May had to herself, a room big enough for any imagination, even hers.
No, the entire place was small. It made me wonder whether that was on purpose, probably, as everything else was done with a specific reason, like the combination locks, security gates, bus stop, benches and fences, to stop them wandering away, trying to find home.
So, we had come to the end of our little tour, almost.
Sister McKenny asked me, what I thought about the complex so far. I didn’t have a ready answer; I was in a mental void, just following her, trying to suppress my fears about taking on the enormous responsibility for someone’s most loved parent, even if it was just as a companion for a few hours a day.
I shut that down, and turned my mind to my relationship with Sister McKenny.
I wondered what she thought about me; after speaking to me on the phone, interviewing me in person, watching my reactions and interactions, noting my fears, demeanour, humour. Sister McKenny had acute powers of observation, I was slowly learning, for she interrupted my short lived ponderings before I could answer and said, “We think you have what it takes.”
I was extremely flattered, but also nonplussed.
My anxiety levels had now burst through the top of my head. I had been externally reacting as if I was a programmed automaton; making the expected nods of agreement, mumbled positive affirmations, hoping the self doubt wasn’t so obvious. They weren’t fools. Even so, I still did retain a strong desire to be of some assistance, to help cheer, even for a brief moment, their dulled, contained and predictable lives.
Yet deeper within, emotionally, my brains had been blasted from my skull, hanging useless across my shoulder; as if I was a Kennedy, shocked by the surprise, of a shot from the grassy knoll.
I started to feel myself trembling with unreasonable fear; maybe the result of an unexpected compliment, after too many years of absence? This, combined with the uneasiness I felt in these new surroundings, compounded by a small group of people, so pathetically dependant on others to survive.
I wanted to run!
I wanted to run screaming and fall sobbing and smash my head against the ground till I lost consciousness. I was not capable, I was not worthy of their trust, for I did not reveal my own debilitating problems that made stress, memory, coping mechanisms, and ultimately depression my dangerous foes! Foes that led me to prematurely end my life, only some short years before Sister McKenny and I met.
I did not know how I survived, neither did the hospital. They told my friends I was a vegetable, strapped down, tubed up, and no point for any of them to visit me, ever again. I was the living dead. I was to be left to die, slowly, in a corner bed, with a name tag attached to my body, in readiness, for the inevitable.
There I remained, a zombie, and no one from the hospital contacted my family. A week later I emerged, still in a mental blackout, and walked and talked for three days apparently, until arriving back in our world, while walking down the corridor of the State asylum.
It took me a few moments to work out where I was. An odd sensation, I expect it is what teleportation must be like, but without the foreknowledge of where you were previously and where you were now. After observing room after room, as I gingerly stepped down that long corridor, I could have been in a hotel, yet something was weird; immediately opposite each of these rooms was another room, the doorways slightly angled away from each other, which had only a mattress on the floor, nothing else, except padded walls…the penny gradually slipped back into my now clenching hand.
Whatever raised me from that comatose soul grave, in some way delivered me thirteen years later to Sister McKenny, and there I stood, facing an emotional precipice, a gaping void into which I felt I would fall, never to reach the bottom.
I knew I had to say no, but, not just yet, as Sister McKenny had one last thing she wanted to show me.
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Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
haha! Yes I know what you mean...get the hell outta there before the fall...(particularly since I lived through most of this..excusing a few theatrical literary embellishments!).
However, the story has an ending in sight! One last post...
cheers
fog