My parents both died at ninety and within ten days of each other. Unfortunate (or careless) enough to lose both parents in ten days, I had an intense insight into old age and dying in a small country town.
They had something I am unlikely to have, in that their final care and rites were delivered by people who knew them. Ageing and dying in a country town is experienced in community, in a network of relationships that cushions both the person and their family from the isolation so often experienced in larger places. To be known and ‘seen’ by the institutions of old age is a privilege afforded to few.
There were few strangers involved at any stage of their final months; community nurses, hospital staff, and the carers in the nursing home were more likely than not to have known them for years. Fellow nursing home residents were old friends or acquaintances. With the network of relationships surrounding them largely intact, their move into care was less of a rupture than a move to a more suitable location.
It is comforting when the person caring for your frail parents shares your history and theirs; someone you went to school with, or whose parents or grandparents were friends of theirs. My father’s progressive vascular dementia and deep depression made him withdrawn and at times resistant, but because many of the staff caring for him had known the man he had been, they retained their affection and respect.
My mother’s time in residential care was only a few weeks, and she quite enjoyed it. Dad was in the same building, she had friends in adjoining rooms and even became reacquainted after seventy-five years with a girlhood friend from a neighbouring farm in the isolated upper reaches of the valley. Like many of the old women living there, she relished the luxury of having everything done for her – no meals to cook, no washing to do, no beds to make.
The sense of being enveloped in community did not end with their deaths. When I rang the funeral director the morning after my father died, the manager Ken, a local boy and former neighbour of theirs, said simply, “We know. We already have him with us.” Tina, who came to the house help my brother and me with the funeral arrangements, was the daughter of man I’d known my whole life. Their funeral notices were posted in the windows of two key shops in town – the newsagent and Dougie’s Takeaway – vital elements of the local informal information distribution network. Their shared grave, in which Dad’s ashes were interred, was dug by my brother’s childhood friend.
Choosing the headstone was another step in a journey among the familiar. The options were displayed not in anonymous mock-ups, but in an album of photos of local graves, some of people I had known. When I stated my preferences for stone and design, Ken said, “I know what you’re after. You want what Mickey’s got.” Present tense, as if Mickey were still around. And ‘what Mickey’s got’ was exactly what I had in mind.
A year to the day after my father’s death, the funeral director delivered a floral arrangement to my door, with a printed card that said: Just a note to let you know we are thinking of you on the anniversary of your loved one’s passing. Kind wishes. Ten days later, another for my mother.
Unexpected but, on reflection, not surprising at all.
