Gearóid was a man with Down Syndrome who I first met during my part time job as a care assistant in an Alzheimer’s hospice. On the evening he first arrived, Gearóid walked in confidently, full of jokes and chatter about his old home in Clonakilty, horses, and his favourite TV sport, World Wrestling Entertainment. I was surprised by how healthy he looked, how ‘with it’ he was compared to the others, many of whom were in advanced states of catatonia. But then, I hadn’t worked there long, and I hadn’t seen any of the others on their first day.
That first evening, Gearóid shook my hand. He squeezed it so hard that his knuckles went white and he cracked wise about being “a strong boyo with a strong handshake”. Before bed, he showed me his collection of vampire movies and wrestling memorabilia, then challenged me to an arm wrestle which he won easily. “I like this guy”, he shouted to one of the nurses. Even though it was work, I suppose it was the start of a friendship.
During the following weeks I was often assigned to go on day trips with Gearóid on account of how well we got along. We’d take the bus together to a leisureplex in Coolock, where depending on his humour we would bowl or take in a film. He was very skillful at bowling and, like the arm wrestling, he could beat me easily. Then one day, two or three months after he arrived at the hospice, he lost the ability to bowl. It was that sudden. He dropped the ball on the ground and stared at it as if it was something else entirely. I encouraged him to pick it up and try again. He managed this successfully a couple of times, but then wandered down one of the lanes after the ball. Before we got back on the bus he had started to cry. “I’m scared”, he said.
The hospice was built in an oval loop so that the patients didn’t get lost as many of them wandered. Gearóid used to watch one of them, Liam, walking around the loop and laugh. “You’re going in circles man” he’d say, creasing himself. The night he forgot how to bowl, Gearóid did not want to go to bed. Instead, he walked around the loop past midnight, pausing sometimes to call out to his deceased mother.
Gearóid had a lot of money he inherited from his parents and the nurse manager helped him plan how to spend some of it to enjoy himself. “I want to go to the horses with Darragh” he said. So we planned a big day out to the races in Ashbourne. First, Gearóid needed a suit. Because he had Down Syndrome, his body was shaped differently around the torso and legs. We took him to a famous tailor in town, Louis Copeland’s, and had him fitted for a suit. It cost a fortune but it looked great on him and the day he first put it on a glittering light came into his little dark eyes. He spent most of the morning in front of the mirror with a tub of brylcreem and one of those old metal combs.
Then he did something voluntarily for the first time in months. He took his shower bag into the bathroom and began to shave. He did this with great coordination and precision. I thought of him only the morning before, how he stood with two of us trying to steady him, and how he fell against our every movement with the tears streaming silently over his cheeks.
In spite of it raining in torrents, the racing day was a success. We found a spot near the finish line and watched the horses thunder past so closely that clots of dirt landed near us. Gearóid introduced himself to every single woman he met, making bawdy comments that sometimes made me laugh but other times made me uncomfortable enough to ask him to rein it in. It was hard to deny him his delight though. He made a few small bets and lost, but had forgotten about them by then. It was the independence to do it that mattered. He was being his own man.
That night as soon as he took off the suit, he seemed to change permanently. When I helped him undress I was shocked by how much less of him there was. He needed more help than usual too. I encouraged him to hold on to the front of his bed to steady himself. “Help me” he said. So I did. It took a long time. For part of it he was as cooperative as a toddler going through smoothly practiced motions. But for part of it he was stubborn and resisting, shifting his weight with the expertise of a wrestler while he stared blankly at me.
There was then a gap of two months when I didn’t work at the hospice. The night I was called back I became very upset when I saw Gearóid. He was curled into a small shape on his bed and whimpering. His beakish nose and small black eyes had become more pronounced in his thin face and he reminded me of a baby bird. We tried gently to help him relax his body in order to bathe and change before bed. He resisted fiercely - the final stages of his illness were characterised by this resistance to almost every task. Every movement applied to his body resulted in a counter movement. Again, I thought of the wrestling he loved so much. “There, there” I said to him, “it’s okay”, and other consoling things that I later realised were my mother’s voice speaking through me. His eyes burned fiercely, and he grasped my wrist with a strength completely at odds with his atrophied body. “Hands off. NOT FAIR. LEAVE ME ALONE”.
One of the hospice’s core therapies was reminiscence therapy. The idea was that music, photographs and movies from the patients’ pasts would stimulate happy memories and help them through the later stages of the disease. It worked well for many of the patients, but I sometimes wondered if all of them wanted to remember their past? The history of treatment of people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland is a mixed bag, and some of the more elderly have sad personal stories. Gearóid had many happy memories but he had one tragic memory that I knew of, his parents’ death in a car crash. As his other memories faded, this memory increasingly seemed to be all Gearóid had left. The lighthouse by which he steered through a sea of black confusion was the most upsetting thing that ever happened to him.
The hospice was built in an oval loop so that the patients didn’t get lost as many of them wandered. Gearóid used to watch one of them, Liam, walking around the loop and laugh. “You’re going in circles man” he’d say, creasing himself. The night he forgot how to bowl, Gearóid did not want to go to bed. Instead, he walked around the loop past midnight, pausing sometimes to call out to his deceased mother.
Gearóid had a lot of money he inherited from his parents and the nurse manager helped him plan how to spend some of it to enjoy himself. “I want to go to the horses with Darragh” he said. So we planned a big day out to the races in Ashbourne. First, Gearóid needed a suit. Because he had Down Syndrome, his body was shaped differently around the torso and legs. We took him to a famous tailor in town, Louis Copeland’s, and had him fitted for a suit. It cost a fortune but it looked great on him and the day he first put it on a glittering light came into his little dark eyes. He spent most of the morning in front of the mirror with a tub of brylcreem and one of those old metal combs.
Then he did something voluntarily for the first time in months. He took his shower bag into the bathroom and began to shave. He did this with great coordination and precision. I thought of him only the morning before, how he stood with two of us trying to steady him, and how he fell against our every movement with the tears streaming silently over his cheeks.
In spite of it raining in torrents, the racing day was a success. We found a spot near the finish line and watched the horses thunder past so closely that clots of dirt landed near us. Gearóid introduced himself to every single woman he met, making bawdy comments that sometimes made me laugh but other times made me uncomfortable enough to ask him to rein it in. It was hard to deny him his delight though. He made a few small bets and lost, but had forgotten about them by then. It was the independence to do it that mattered. He was being his own man.
That night as soon as he took off the suit, he seemed to change permanently. When I helped him undress I was shocked by how much less of him there was. He needed more help than usual too. I encouraged him to hold on to the front of his bed to steady himself. “Help me” he said. So I did. It took a long time. For part of it he was as cooperative as a toddler going through smoothly practiced motions. But for part of it he was stubborn and resisting, shifting his weight with the expertise of a wrestler while he stared blankly at me.
There was then a gap of two months when I didn’t work at the hospice. The night I was called back I became very upset when I saw Gearóid. He was curled into a small shape on his bed and whimpering. His beakish nose and small black eyes had become more pronounced in his thin face and he reminded me of a baby bird. We tried gently to help him relax his body in order to bathe and change before bed. He resisted fiercely - the final stages of his illness were characterised by this resistance to almost every task. Every movement applied to his body resulted in a counter movement. Again, I thought of the wrestling he loved so much. “There, there” I said to him, “it’s okay”, and other consoling things that I later realised were my mother’s voice speaking through me. His eyes burned fiercely, and he grasped my wrist with a strength completely at odds with his atrophied body. “Hands off. NOT FAIR. LEAVE ME ALONE”.
One of the hospice’s core therapies was reminiscence therapy. The idea was that music, photographs and movies from the patients’ pasts would stimulate happy memories and help them through the later stages of the disease. It worked well for many of the patients, but I sometimes wondered if all of them wanted to remember their past? The history of treatment of people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland is a mixed bag, and some of the more elderly have sad personal stories. Gearóid had many happy memories but he had one tragic memory that I knew of, his parents’ death in a car crash. As his other memories faded, this memory increasingly seemed to be all Gearóid had left. The lighthouse by which he steered through a sea of black confusion was the most upsetting thing that ever happened to him.
The last night I worked with him, I spent much of the night in his room rubbing his back and telling him things were going to be okay. He stood at the end of his bed, with his fists clenched tightly by either side. “Mammy, Mammy, come back. Mammy come back”, he shouted as the night turned to grey dawn. I couldn’t get through to him. But he got through to me. I broke into sweats. “Is this all there is left when the magnetic tape of memory flakes away?” I thought. “Is this the only consolation prize for a good man’s life? A naked scream for Mammy in the dark?”.
That morning when I arrived home, I phoned the nurse manager. I told her I would have to switch to a different unit, that the Alzheimer’s unit was too difficult. She was very understanding about it and within a week I began work in a sheltered employment facility. In spite of promises made to myself, I never saw Gearóid again. The night my phone bleeped to tell me of his passing I beat myself up over this quite a bit. But then I thought how likely it would have been that he wouldn’t recognise me. In all honesty, the function of any such visit would have been more to quiet something in myself than to help him in any meaningful way. I’m not religious, but Gearóid was, and I hope that before he passed, that memory, that horrible memory, gave way to something better. I hope his mother answered his cry.
MP3: The Flaming Lips-Do You Realize
(Gearóid's name was changed as well as some small details about the setting. This is for anonymity)
(Gearóid's name was changed as well as some small details about the setting. This is for anonymity)
6 comments:
Post a Comment