The People at the End of the Road

by Admin · January 20, 2020

Once they were members of society, today they exist in the margins of the world. CECIL CULLEN describes his visit to a home for people with dementia.

The room is long and relatively narrow, with tables and chairs down both long sides, created by the enclosing of the space between two adjacent buildings, covered with a translucent fibreglass pitched roof.

This is the second dining-room-cum-lounge for the patients in the dementia-related section of the retirement home.

It is mid-afternoon, and there are about 12 people sitting around — tea-time is near. Not that most leave after either breakfast or lunch; they move from the set tables, and the chairs in which they were seated are rearranged along the walls by the staff.

The population is shifting, but presently there are 21 patients who utilise this area, of them 17 women. Of the women, two are black, the rest white. Not that this is of any importance here; all are accepted among themselves as just people, and seemingly by the staff as well.

The most common feature here is the almost unbroken silence. They sit with vacant expressions, for the most part, except for those who have lapsed into sleep, a very popular activity.

This silence is broken by the men, by a tall bushy-headed chap of possibly Dutch extraction, who makes unintelligible sounds in varying volumes from time to time, occasionally increasing them to a frightening roar.

Then there is the tall, spare Afrikaner who is wont to patrol the whole area in his wheelchair, including the halls and the bedrooms. He becomes quite belligerent when his path is obstructed by objects or people.

For the past two days he has been chair-bound. I suspect that they have impounded his wheelchair, and this is causing him great frustration.

He constantly calls for assistance and is largely ignored. Not that the staff ignore requests for help, but they know him and his real needs.

The third man is Pieter, who sits quietly at his lunch-table, reading (?) a book. On occasion, he bellows that someone should cut his toenails, or asks whether he will be allowed to walk today. This morning he carried on for seemingly hours, demanding that the book he had left in his bedroom be fetched.

Intelligent conversation with most of these people is not possible; they are incapable of coherent thought or speech. They might and they do ramble on to any nearby person, but quite unintelligibly. And some don’t utter a word.

Feeding habits are not for the fastidious, but one accepts that there is no malice intended, even when a neighbour pokes his or her finger in another’s plate of food.

Visitors are few — it seems as if the patients, for patients they are, have been left here to finish their lives.

They are no longer capable of being accommodated in normal society. And yet they all were fellow members of that society: bread-winners, mothers, homemakers. One can only wonder at the cruelty of life which brings them to this situation.

But perhaps we should consider that these might be the fortunate ones, those who have the means to be cared for.

What about those who cannot come here, who are forced to be kept in domestic homes where constant care is not available, where a fallen invalid has to wait perhaps for hours for help, where the administration of medicine is not overseen?

In their old age, most of these people have perhaps deserved more from their families than they are getting.

One must trust in the wisdom of God, but to us humans this dementia problem is a puzzle. We cannot know what goes on in the minds of people with any form of dementia. Do they see the world as we do, is there just a vague understanding of happenings around them?

Where have the memories gone—the triumphs, the joys, the children, the grandchildren, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, perhaps mothers and fathers?

I’ve heard it said that they have had their lives, but what seeming cruelty has condemned them to this twilight existence, this total dependence on others for the most basic of functions.

We might be in a similar situation, in a year or so, or maybe later in life. It bears thinking about.