Pop 89: Nature calls
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
For the last ten days, my sister and I have been tending to our father, who suffered a severe attack of sepsis and requires 24/7 care. We’ve been sleeping on his living room floor at his retirement home. We watch over him while he sleeps and when he wakes, hover while he insists on dressing in button-up shirt and dress pants, (keys in back left pocket, billfold in right), guide him across the room to the bathroom to pee, shave and put in his teeth, then shuffle at breakneck pace to his kitchen table to eat his breakfast of cornflakes with half a banana, slice of white toast cut in half with crust cut off, two glasses of water, one with ice, one without, then shepherd him back to his bed for a rest. Until he needs to pee again.
About the peeing. Nature calls. And she becomes more insistent as we age. Some of us joke about this among ourselves. We know from firsthand experience that ageing is just another word for living, and, though we don’t like it, we are willing to adapt. I’ve considered aloud to all siblings that adult diapers may not be a bad idea for long road trips. I am, after all, fortunate to still enjoy driving long hauls, and so am willing to do whatever keeps me driving.
I remember the first time I had to pee without a washroom in sight. I was walking along a Kelowna beach and turned to head home when Nature made a sudden call. By the time I made it home, my pants and socks were soaked. While I felt humiliated, I also knew that to feel shame for growing up and old was neither healthy nor helpful. It made - and makes - no sense.
Nature calls us all. And sometimes, as we age, her calls come more often and become more urgent. She calls my father at 8 pm, 10 pm, 1 am, 4 am, 6 am, and 8 am. And those late-night maneuverings can prove treacherous. He has devised a way of getting from bed to bathroom involving a kind of wall braille. But still, he can fall so easily. And, as I and millions before me have learned, those falls often mark the beginning of the end of a life of relative freedom and quality.
So, we should all be talking about this. Because let’s not kid ourselves, if we are lucky to live a long life and not die suddenly, we will all need to find the best and safest way to answer Nature when she calls. And we can no longer allow a culture consumed with appearing young and terrified of exposing vulnerability to lead the conversation. We need to discuss the inevitable and inescapable fact of a hundred other natural impulses beyond the much-touted sex drive.
The world is ageing. It is full of elders with an intimate relationship with Nature and her many calls – calls to play, wonder, walk, run, love, fight, devoir, void, howl, yawn, gasp, grasp, spit-up, speed, up, slow down and yes, pee our pants. We seasoned veterans of life need to converse with each other about this time in our lives with its unique challenges, insights and frustrations, a time Sharon Butala describes as the “season of fury and wonder.” If we don’t take over the conversation, we will leave age to the theorists whose knowledge is based not on reality but supposition, and whose rhetoric is far too-often the patronizing “poor dear” variety or the ridiculing variety of stand-up comics who, worse than any absent-minded oldster, seem incapable of grasping the fact that they too will be old one day.
But then, I’m learning, especially through this time with my father, people ridicule or patronize out of fear. It’s a distancing technique. Nothing is more piercing to the heart than witnessing someone you love in their most vulnerable state. It takes years of witnessing struggle, loss and all the necessary humiliations of life to get humble enough to realize that we are none of us invulnerable. It takes a seasoned soldier to show up and suit up every day, whether in uniform or button-up shirt and pants. I see those soldiers every night at Missionwood retirement home. When dad, a man who played hockey and skied downhill and raised daughters to play football, walked down to supper with a walker, his fellow soldiers saluted him in their fashion. A peck on the check from the women, a thumbs up from the men, a wave and a grin from those for whom getting out of their chairs was a bit too much. For them, each day was a gift, even when those days were spent in the trenches.
As I walk down the long hallway to my father’s room, I spot a favourite prayer on a plaque outside one of the residences: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can. And wisdom to know the difference.” I recall something a friend said about how life isn’t about getting to a place where we have no storms. It’s about learning how to get serene in the midst of a storm. Surely, we learn serenity by being present to others in their vulnerability and allowing love to pierce our hearts. Not by worrying how their vulnerability might be a bummer for us.
Reinforcements are coming. Two more sisters are on their way. A friend texts to say: “That’s great, you can brainstorm on what to do next. Oh wait, we can’t say brainstorm anymore. It might trigger people with brain injuries.” His comment reminds me of the Buddhist saying: “It is easier to put on a pair of shoes than to cover the world with leather.” I want to say to those who feel we owe them a trigger-free life that instead of being pre-occupied with perceived slights and life’s unavoidable triggers, you might want to put on some shoes and walk down to the nearest retirement home. Listen and learn and train yourself to be an elder rather than a whiner. Because if you think it’s bad now, wait until Nature calls you six times a night. Old age is trigger happy, honey.