BOOKENDS
Jan Coleman

Dad and I were sitting back-to-back on his bedroom floor, chatting casually about his day and mine. The ambulance was on its way. Our need had been ascertained as non-urgent, so it would be a short while yet. It was 3.00 am. Our quiet voices and the solemn ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall were the only sounds in the still night.

This was the third call my family had received in the small hours. And this time too, my father had triggered the emergency button on his neck pendant, setting the alarm procedure. I had driven over to his unit alone, following the recent advice of his visiting nurse to call an ambulance if he fell again. They would be able to check him for injury or concussion and lift him off the floor more professionally than the two or three of us had managed before.

There he was, indeed—on the floor but half-propped against the bedroom door where he’d slowly manoeuvred himself.

‘I don’t know how it happened’, he said, ‘I just got up to go to the bathroom and … Bob’s your uncle, next thing, I was down!’ He suffered the joint and back stiffness that comes to all in their late 80s, so no more movement until the experts arrived. Meanwhile the best support for his back seemed to be my own.

And so we became bookends, propping up a bit of life together.

Dad had been living alone by choice since my mother had died the year before. We all respected his determination, concerned though we were. There was domiciliary help aplenty during the day and he used a walk-frame—but not, apparently, for night trips to the bathroom.

‘I don’t know what I would have done without this alarm button around my neck’, he said, ‘but it still took so long to get anyone moving, that’s the trouble. Must have been more than an hour!’

‘Oh, not really, Dad. They call us straight away and I was here in fifteen minutes; quiet roads out there tonight!’

‘Ah, well, I couldn’t see the clock, I suppose. It did seem like a good hour! It’s a shame for you—but these things happen, unfortunately. Let’s see, now ….’ He tried his more conversational tone, ‘What’s news with you? Did you play tennis today?’

‘Hooray! Thanks, Dad—just when I thought you were never going to ask! Yes, I did—and would you like to know the scores and bits of news about my tennis friends, too?’

Yes, my word he would—which stopped my sarcasm and put me on the spot to remember the 6-4s and 3-6s and who’d said what to whom. It all filled in a bit more time, as did the conversation about a TV program, what his beloved grandchildren were doing and the pre-dinner drink he enjoyed with his neighbour across the hall.

‘That poor man’, he said. ‘He has nothing much going in his life, you know—almost permanently on that oxygen mask; just sits there all day; very sad. He has a great faith, though.’

Sounds of muted voices at the open front door.

‘In here!’ my father called, ever in charge, though his voice was rather thin from his ordeal. A young man and woman walked into the softly-lit room carrying their medical kits. They showed no surprise at the sight of us both sitting there, backs welded together. Tactful? Probably just used to more bizarre sights than this in the dead of night.

‘Hello there’, they said cheerily, like a greeting in the street. ‘What can we do for you?’

With that, they did plenty. Deft, caring, cracking the odd joke, they examined and tested him thoroughly and it was only after both had satisfied themselves that he was fit enough did they agree to his wish that he stay there, in his own home, in his own bed.

‘Ok, John, I’m confident that you can manage here for the rest of the night until your carer arrives at breakfast time. But it would be no problem to take you to hospital—or you could go to your family’s home …’

‘No, thanks. I’m as good as gold, and I’ll be off to sleep again before you get back into your ambulance.’

He thanked them again for their excellence and kindness and shut his eyes. I saw them to the door.

‘No problem at all’, Jim said. ‘He’s a pretty perky guy. And you can rest assured your dad’s will be the simplest case we’ll have all night!’

This happened a while ago and that dear man died about a year later. But he only ceased to struggle against the dying of the light when his body could no longer cope and began to drag his mind down with it into the frail world of living and partly living. He kept himself afloat until the end by having long chats with all his charming and charmed nursing people and enquiring of all the family and friends who came to visit him about their lives, hopes, opinions. He traded divers memories and great times. Some of his church friends would bring the Eucharist to him and stay on occasionally for a cup of tea and chat about parish news. Right up to his last days he answered enquiries about his health with his old tried-and-true, ‘I’m as good as gold, thanks’.

I’ve been thinking lately about that night of the back-to-back bookends. It was quite symbolic, really, of the strength he gave to me and to all of us, all the days of his life.