In the british tradition one must not speak ill of the dead. One line of thinking is fear that the dead may come back to defend their honour. Another is respect for those not present to defend themselves.
In other traditions one must take care to speak the truth of the dead, to satisfy them that they have been well-understood and that they have left their own mark.
Mark has been conscientious in his account.
Mark is in Holland for his annual visit. Saturday he visited his mother. She had been in an assisted-living facility where she needed just a little more care than they could offer. They took away her call button because she used it too much, so when she had a heart attack they didn’t find her until it was almost too late. That was last year; she wasn’t expected to make it then, so Mark flew to Holland to see her in the hospital. She did make it though, and was discharged to a sort of intermediate holding-pen until she could be placed in an extended-care facility.
So, this Saturday Margrit was still in the intermediate facility, no place in an extended-care facility that could meet her needs having been found in the intervening year. She was oriented, clearly not demented but not particularly alert either, speaking only when spoken to. Mark thought it was the effect of all the medication she is on to relieve the pain in her leg. Strokes have paralyzed her on one side. She wears diapers not because she’s incontinent but because there aren’t enough staff to transfer her to the toilet regularly, and she’s heavy enough and paralyzed enough that transfers are difficult. When Mark was there, staff got her out of bed at noon and transferred her to her wheelchair. She has pressure sores from inadequate movement and cushioning. (After the pressure sores developed they ordered her a fancy air mattress that inflates in different spots every ten seconds, but once pressure sores have developed they never really heal. They also ordered her a special foam cushion for her wheelchair but it hasn’t arrived yet.) She eats mush and breathes supplementary oxygen.
Sunday night Mark got a call that she was having more trouble breathing so the facility was “pulling the plug” (? she wasn’t on life support to begin with) and putting her on increased morphine and that the family should gather round. Mark rushed over to discover that his mother was still getting oxygen and that she didn’t have the famous morphine drip, just that her oral morphine prescription had been increased. On the other hand all her other medications have apparently been discontinued, meaning that she was much more alert than Mark has seen her in years. We aren’t quite sure what to think. If the problem is heart failure leading to her lungs filling up with fluid (we don’t know that, there was no doctor at the facility to talk to when Mark was there) then presumably they are withdrawing heart stimulants and her lungs will fill up quickly today.
Or not. This is the third time Mark has been called to a final bedside vigil. The difference this time is that the other two times she went to the hospital. This time she refused to go.
I don’t want to spend the last years of my life oriented but too drugged to have a conversation, continent but shitting my diapers because there’s nobody to help me to the can, my heart problems treated with medication but allowed to develop pressure sores. I just don’t.
Margrit doesn’t either. She doesn’t seem bitter, fortunately.
(I asked Mark to steal the medication in her room while he’s there but he says there isn’t any. They say ODing on blood pressure medication will do it, which shouldn’t be too hard to come by when I need it.)
In the meantime, Mark has gone back to Rotterdam to collect his stuff so he can spend the next few days with his mother and family.
This is so hard.
Amendment: Since speaking with Mark again I have updated the second paragraph to reflect that Margrit does have her own, fitted wheelchair and that once she developed pressure sores she got a really cool air mattress. Also the fourth to add that Margrit was the one to say she didn’t want to go to the hospital this time.
These are the pictures Patrick took on the tour into the countryside he mentioned in the last letter I posted here.
*** *** ***
Dear Family and Friends,
A few pictures from a quick trip through some of the Sidr-affected areas. Not much to say. None of these are untypical. If you see a picture of a damaged school, multiply this by thousands. Houses flattened — multiply by tens of thousands. The boat in the forest was a considerable distance from the sea. There were clothes high in the trees, illustrating why some people survived by hanging on in the tops of trees. Whole business strips destroyed, washed into ponds and canals. I enjoyed seeing the man taking tea and waiting for normalcy to return to the bits of his home he had managed to retrieve to build a perimeter to live in. Beli’s sister and family have been patching their house back together. They will be able to make major repairs using some contributions we brought from family. There is a picture of Beli in the gate of an ancient and beautiful mosque — built in a day, according to legend. A mammoth tree fell across a wall of the mosque, but no damage at all to the mosque itself.
Good and bad developments. The good: The school-based teacher development strategy I have been proposing and promoting has taken hold with the bureaucracy and we are moving ahead with implementation. The bad: They want to do it right away and I more or less have to be involved, meaning that the two-month winter holiday I have been looking forward to has been reduced to one month.
The ‘cold’ season is kicking in with fresh vegetables being hawked on every street and market. It’s a good season for eating. Beli has started two hours a day with a tutor and is reading everything in sight. People are starting to think about their new clothes for the upcoming Eid and life is feeling festive. Even as two former prime ministers are in jail and at least a third of the last parliament is either in jail or facing prosecution.
Affectionately,
P.
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