Once a week I go to the
nursing home and spend an hour with my Nana. I’ll probably blog a bit about it
one day – it’s a very special time for me.
We went past a bed out in
the corridor, the room obviously being stripped and cleaned out in preparation
for a new resident.
“Yes,” said Mrs D,
indicating the bed “Bert isn’t with us anymore.”
“That’s a shame,” I said,
thinking Bert must have died and wondering why the home hadn’t lowered the flag to
half mast like they normally do when a resident dies.
“He’s up there you know,” said
Mrs D, indicating with a vague wave of her hand.
“Oh, right,” I replied, a
bit lost for words because I’m starting to get really puzzled about the
euphemisms – generally when they’re giving me the gossip they just said “So-and-so
passed away yesterday.”
Mrs D went on “He doesn’t
like it up there much, but he kept running about the carpark and the staff had
to do something with him and it was the only solution.”
By this time I was starting
to wonder which of us had gone insane and I was really, really hoping like mad
that poor Bert wasn’t dead after all because it seems to be a very drastic way
for the staff to solve his running about the carpark problem.
It turns out that Bert is
now in the locked ward “up there” at the other end of the retirement home
complex. It’s sad he doesn’t like it there, but thankfully he’s no longer
running about the carpark at risk of being hit by a car.
It was a funny conversation
and I’d totally misunderstood and we had a good old giggle about it afterwards.
It did give me some food for thought.
I’ve lost a few people over
the years and explaining those deaths to my kids wasn’t (still isn’t) an easy
thing. I’ve tried hard to avoid the “going to sleep” phrase just in case it
makes the kids terrified of bedtime. Other than that I talk about the way life
has a beginning and an ending and the living is the bit in the middle.
Sometimes a body is so broken or so tired it just can’t keep working anymore.
Death is a weird thing. People
struggle to understand death and I suppose it’s easier to hide the subject rather than keep struggling. We avoid
talking about death, we avoid thinking about death, and when death shoves
itself into our faces and we can’t avoid it anymore, we use a plethora of clichés,
euphemisms and hedge words in the hope that we can somehow disguise death.
Then so many of us go and
watch explosive shoot-em-up movies on tv without a second thought.
In the cause (curse?) of
insatiable curiosity I have decided to start a list of words and phrases that
people use to avoid talking about death directly. Enquiring minds want to know.
If you hear any weird ones, feel free to send them through.
