Saturday 21 May 2011

old people

i love old people. read it back now. that is the kind of statement that only comes from someone when they have been at least 12 hours out of the company of old people. it's not the old people's fault really, it's a lack of coordination in pace of living. i spent yesterday at seamill hydro hotel in ayrshire. we used to go there each year in october - and subsequently around easter - with the family en masse. and for my family, en masse at its fullest only ever amounted to ten people, and mostly just eight. as my grandad likes to remind me every time we go, they've been attending holidays there since my mum was [hand at knee] high.
this time we only went for one night and i didn't even stay over. one of my aunts and i took my grandparents over in two cars. driving alone because of my cold and a disinclination to put any eighty-one year old person in a sealed capsule with a sicky i considered living in each of the towns we passed through on the way. considered myself and stuart and children there. we drove through places with big sandstone houses with green trimmed hedges, white stones on drives and bay windows. beautiful views of lush meadows and small woods, trees of all variants and a multitude of greens made it seem untouched; it's funny how the sun can do that. and then i would drive for a further thirty seconds to find the obligatory area of scottish social housing, lumped onto the edge of a parish town like a reattached and infected limb. places where the grass is never cut and everything gone to seed; pieces of wood and children's obligatory plastic playthings scattered in the road. i'm all for inclusion but it seems that such efforts at assimilation between both ends of the scale have failed, all they succeeded in doing was placing a pocket of depravity right where it would feel the most disparity.
upon arrival at seamill everyone was desperate to get to their rooms despite it being hours before check in. there was no reason for it yet. grandad was standing upright at the counter disputing the name under which it would be booked with fran. i talked to my gran but she was too preoccupied with five things at once despite capacity for only one at a time. we had lunch in the pladda bar which i still lovingly change to bladder as a gesture to old times with my brother. it's funny with the old, the cauliflower cheese sauce was too runny and spoons required but once received it was delicious. what one would have ordered year after year became forgotten and the lack of alternatives a shock. look grandad, roast beef sandwiches, remember? there's no coronation chicken. oh dear, why not? where's the coronation chicken? they slip from misplaced nostalgia to being put out by lack of understanding so quickly. as is common place for this family food for thought is the theme of the day. how is your cauliflower cheese? what did you order again? how much meat is in those sandwiches? oh your chips look nice! did you have enough? do you want some of mine? helen would you like a chip? no thanks. helen, how about some of my cucumber? i'm ok, i have cucumber with my meal actually. helen, please have some of mine, just try it, take it. i'll take it all then okay (good humoured). confused looks arise. i eat my sandwiches and drink my tea. there was barely enough room on the table.
marjorie and jeer discuss the runniness of the cauliflower cheese again. it's nice isn't it? i'm glad i got the spoon. yes, it is nice, mmm. oh jean, you have some on your shirt. oh do i? yes, it's probably because it's runny, it runs under the spoon. yes, yes. i just wanted to tell you so you could get it out quickly. okay, thank you marjorie. my diary only cost one pound (grandad). yes, well thats all i tend to pay for diaries too (marjorie). fran looks at me with her tense smile and stricken eyes which makes her look simultaneously ecstatic and manic. i smile back. more tea please.
old people are trying. it is hard to slow your brain down enough to not get frustrated. you need to expect everything to be hard to understand and everything you say to be either misheard or mistaken. i always find myself thinking when i sit alone how i love my family, my elder family, and how i think of myself as patient and willing to listen and help and do what they want. they've made it that far, they deserve to do what they want. the only problem is that what they want they can't quite tell and most things you try seem to fail. such thoughts of how brilliant a grandchild you will be when you see them vapourise as soon as you get there as what you expect to go down a treat will always flop and the smallest little thing you didn't think mattered is the most perfect and wonderful delight of the day.
we walked on the beach and i held my gran's arm so she wouldn't fall; she's been known to fall. i realised that i wished someone else was holding her up because my hope and constant advocation that she is better than we think and coddled and underestimated didn't seen so accurate as she neglected to watch where she stood. she stumbled over rocks and walked on sinking sand and only commented on it a long time after we got there. what surprised me was how easy it was to hold her up. we walked for about 500m in total and how tiring that was made me vow to myself to walk every day when i am old. people will always say things like 'best intentions' in tone that conveys mixture of disbelief and a lack of conviction. i will follow through though. i know i will.
i drove home after dinner and thought of them all as the sun set, heading straight to bed with tea. i thought of tomorrow and the next day and the rest of the year. i had talked with fran about having children in the pool earlier and how stuart and i were going a year married already. we worked out that my mum's golden wedding anniversary would coincide with our 20th wedding anniversary, only a month out. we could have a joint party. i remarked that my mum, and fran, would be about 70. we were shocked, a little silent. as i drove home i felt so young by comparison. the idea that they were going to bed each night in a mindset of being at the end of life, that thinking forward was pointless, scared me. the whir of the loose bearing in the car as i coasted downhill was so prounounced as my head was silent, filled only with that dread. i considered then that being my age and imagining old age were meant be clash. i wonder how long it will be before the idea of death does not scare me? people often say that they are not scared of dying, that it is natural and a progression. for me it is naked fear because this is it. for me, this is everything and regardless of your view of what comes after (which i will tell you for me is probably nothing) once you've gone there's no return. the idea that you are barred from doing anything ever again is one of the most scary things i can think about. it's selfish and it's not emotional but to avoid dying it is the ultimate point of living. because that is the end, and that is all there is.

No comments:

Post a Comment