Visiting hours
Even outside in the corridor, I could hear him wheezing and gasping for breath. I remember entering the ward with my father behind me. The nurses had warned me about his condition. They had said that he probably would not last the night and to expect the worst – and yet I was still not prepared for seeing him. His face was so pale and his eyes, sunken deep into their sockets and half closed, were lifeless. In fact, if it had not been for the wheezing sound that came from his lips, I would not known that he was alive. He looked up at me and our eyes met but I didn’t know what to say.
My shock gave way to a relieving numbness. I could not believe that this man was my ‘grandpa’, my vibrant, healthy grandpa whom I had accompanied on weekly walks along Muizenberg beach only months before, when he had been so fit that I had struggled to keep up with him.
I remembered how much he had despised illness and physical frailty, and all that was connected with it. When my grandmother had fallen and broken her hip, he had even hated the crutches that she had been forced to use.
Then he contracted Parkinson’s disease. I watched how his body began to betray him and he grew weaker and weaker. He had always been a reserved person and he now bottled up his feelings and frustration and refused to accept what was happening to him. Soon, almost unable to walk, his illness imprisoned him in the confinements of his tiny flat; only his mind was allowed to wander.
Stubbornness became his only weapon. Although he and my grandmother were totally incapable of being by themselves, he refused to leave his flat. I remember only too clearly how we all lived in constant fear of the telephone. Every time it rang, it was my hysterical grandmother to say that her husband had had another fall.
The day came when, after a particularly bad accident, they were forced to leave their flat for an old age home. And so it was that Grandpa entered an institution that he had despised all his life, an institution which to him was the very symbol of frailty. By staying here, he was, for the first time ever, acknowledging his weakness.
I remember the home well though I would rather forget it. The rooms were dark and small and the stench of urine and disinfectant which pervaded them, still haunts me. Although the nurses tried hard, it was a place where depression reigned, spirits sagged and hopes were lost.
After my grandmother died, my grandfather’s health declined even more rapidly than before. Soon he was unable to do anything. To make matters worse, his disease weakened his bladder and he soiled everything he wore – and so he lost the only thing he had left – his dignity.
My grandfather had never been a personal man. He loved his family but had always been too embarrassed to show it through any form of physical emotion. But now he let down some of the walls that he had built throughout his life and he began to show great joy in all my visits. However, although we loved each other, we still did not express it openly.
When he had gone into hospital. His throat had become encrusted with phlegm and the doctors frantically set about prolonging his life another week or two. Why they hadn’t left him in peace to escape his suffering, I will never know. They pumped him with drugs but it was to no avail. It was during his stay that he had taken a dramatic change for the worse.
I remember looking down at the wheezing, suffering man below me and wondering if it was all real. Here, in front of me was a man who was dying – a man whom I had known and loved all my life. But then our eyes met and I knew at once that it was – and the realisation hit me like a physical blow. Tears sprung to my eyes. I was suddenly filled with a desire to lean over him, to enfold him – but I had never done it before and so how could I do it now? My father stood beside me, as ill at ease as I was. We just stood watching, helpless, while he gasped for breath.
We left after a while with heavy hearts and had almost reached the car when I turned round I felt myself running frantically along the corridor and I was back in the ward. I sank down and for the first time in my life, I whispered into his ear “I love you, grandpa.” The smallest trace of a smile seemed to appear on the old man’s lips and he opened his mouth as if to say something – but a choking spell enveloped him and his words were lost.
I left the ward.
The phone rang early the next morning. It was the doctor to say that my grandfather had died during the night.
