Open Writing

I had almost forgotten the Therapy Kid, until a friend at the dog park showed me his dog’s certification as a Therapy Dog. He had made his first visit to a hospital the day before and had been astounded at the effect his gentle Weimariner, Sophie, had had on the more than a hundred patients they had visited.

He spoke enthusiastically of how patients that seemed despondent, and who were obviously in critical condition, perked up when Sophie nuzzled their hands and looked into their eyes with her pale blue ones. Patients that seemed to be taking little notice of their surroundings were animated at the approach and interaction they enjoyed with Sophie.

As I listened to his stories, delighting in his telling of them as much as he relished sharing them, I was whisked back in time, in the way memory has of reminding us of a past even whilst hearing another. In a flash, I was back in the cold halls of St Clement’s Hospital in Ipswich forty years ago.

It was a Wednesday, and that meant pay day. When on duty, nurses went in their breaks to the office to collect their pay packets. But, when we were on days off, we either waited until we were back on duty, or else visited to the hospital to collect our salaries. This day I decided not to wait but to ride my motor cycle the few miles to the hospital so that I could pretend to be rich again. Matthew, then in between three and four years old, perched himself on the pillion and reached his hands into my overcoat pocket, and we set off. It took us no more than five or six minutes to get there, and then I parked the bike and took my son by his hand and advanced in the direction of the office.

Collecting my pay was a matter of little interest: it was a quick, easy, and familiar routine. But afterwards, instead of leaving the hospital and riding home, I decided to visit the ward on which I was then assigned. It was a female psycho-geriatric ward, capably managed by a hyper-efficient Dutch sister called Petra, who was not only highly qualified, but also a breath of fresh air in a place given to sorrow, misery, and hopelessness. I cannot recall her last name, but she moved at the speed of light, did everything perfectly, and was a pleasure to work for. We met up soon after my little Matt and I entered the ward. "Meeeester Braaaay!" she said in her usual enthusiastic manner. "How are you here on your days off?"

"I have brought Matthew so that the old ladies can see a little boy. This place is not the world they have been used to. Here there are no cats, no dogs, no budgerigars, and no children, so I have brought Matthew for them to see."

"Zat ees wuuuuuunderful, Meeeester Braaaay. Tank you so much."

With that, she smiled broadly, and then was gone into her office at the speed of light, and Matthew and I went into the dormitory first because that is where the bed-bound ladies spent the last years of their lives.

Like most large mental institutions in the early seventies, it was Victorian, dim, dismal, and hardly therapeutical. I was, I was led to believe, the first male psychiatric nurse to work on a female ward, and I found that it was easy to make a difference in these shuttered lives by simply being my cheerful self, and taking an interest in the ladies themselves, as people, as individuals, rather than as a mere collection of ‘inmates.’

Soon after I started work on the ward, I fished out an old record player from storage. It had not been used for years but was still serviceable. I brought some long playing dance records from home, and each afternoon after the post lunch rest, I ran a dance in the day room, and although I am no Fred Astaire – more of a Stop-and-Stare – the ladies enjoyed dancing. As I was the only man present at these terpsichorean delights, my dance card was always full. When not dancing with me, most of the ladies danced with each other, but everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves, including me.

The most obvious result of my being on the ward and dancing with the ladies was an increased interest in their appearance. Institutionalisation does things to a person’s self-image that are openly destructive. This includes neglecting one’s appearance, hygiene, and self-expression. But these elderly ladies ought to have been living with their families, and not abandoned in their old age to the forbidding anteroom of the grave, as inmates of an asylum.

It was evident that with proper care and associations, the animation and vivacity of their earlier years, before cruel dementia drew its dark veils across the understanding and memory, whilst not fully retrievable, was at least partially recoverable, to the extent that they could once again enjoy life, provided that they were not bored to death by the demands of a system that largely treated them as if they were inanimate chess pieces to be moved hither, and thither, and yon at a whim.

There were about six or seven of my ladies in their beds, either because they were unable to walk unaided, or, as in the case of Mary, unable to move any of her limbs, a present from her husband who gave to her what someone had given him when he was a seafarer.

Matthew went up to every bed and geriatric chair and gave them his Matthew smile and fluttered his long curling eyelashes for them. The effect he had on them, my three year old cherub, was electric. Their dim eyes lit up, they sat up, and they reached out their arms for him. As they embraced him as if he were their own, they stroked his hair, planted kisses on his chubby cheeks, and shed an abundance of smiling tears. Matthew evidently enjoyed it, and spoke nicely to them.

When it was time to leave the dormitory for the day room, some called out to him, "Come and see us again!" Matthew said he would, and extracted a promise from me that we would visit again.

The ladies in the day room were just as surprised as their non-ambulant companions had been. Not being stuck fast in beds and chairs, they rushed to greet him and treated him to more coos, smiles, hugs, and kisses that he had ever had before. They too obtained his promise that he would return. He gave his word that he would.

I figured it all out on the way home with my excited tot. As a member of staff, I hadn’t come to realise the difference between the world I left and the world I entered when I went through the main doors of the hospital. I grasped the awful truth that the world inside the hospital was as unlike the world beyond its walls, as the sun was to the moon. The major reasons are that for chronic patients the hospital becomes their world – their reality.

What is wrong with that reality is that it does not resemble the world with which they are familiar. They no longer traipse to the shops to buy bread, butter, eggs, etc. They never see buses, motor cars, people riding bicycles, or those on horseback. They have no sight of a street where people go about their daily business. Theirs is a world devoid of cats, dogs, budgerigars, brothers, sisters, parents – and babies and youngsters. I tried to imagine how I would feel if I woke the morrow morn and found myself in a world like theirs, devoid of all the familiar things that I loved.

It was a stark realisation, made even starker by the fact that besides being whisked out of their world of familiar objects and friendships, they were also, as it were, whisked from who they were, what they had done, where they had been, who they had loved, and who had loved them.

I was thankful that Matthew had gone with me that Wednesday, and grateful that he had enjoyed the experience, and that he had promised his new friends that he would visit them as often as he could. This we continued to do until we left Ipswich to move back up to Yorkshire.

I play the scenes of Matthew’s visits over and over in my mind, treasuring precious memories of sad old faces returning to life, smiles on lips where there had been none, and excitement at life revived by my beautiful son, Matthew the Therapy Kid.

Copyright © 2008 – Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Read Ronnie's Stories at:

http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray/ [Various Stories]
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html [Story: "The Last of the Summer Fruit"]
http://bonzer.virage.net/?s=bray [Story: "In Death's Dark Vale"]
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/a_shout_from_the_attic/ [Autobiography - like me, a work in process!]