Visitors (2)

The Second sort of visitor is the semi-regular.

This is the group that comes on a regular basis, but does not stay as long. This is me, for example. I live across the street from the Home. So, each morning, I walk over and see her (and my father) for an hour to ninety minutes.

I'm not the only one, of course. There are others. A brother who comes to see his elder sibling (a stroke, I think, or a fall) at least every other day. Adult children of this or that surviving parent. A nephew.

We come. We do our best. I, for instance, read a lot to my mother. She was fond of mystery stories. On the table beside her now are Tony Hillerman (Hunting Badger), Henning Mankell (The Dogs of Riga), Dorothy L. Sayers (Whose Body?), Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express)…

I read and I read. She seems to listen. Seems to enjoy the sound of my voice. May, indeed, attend to the stories.

Which is good. Though, I think, my other purpose is as important, or more so. That other purpose is my father. When I look and see him in the padded chair beside the bed, and I realize his eyes have closed, and all his enormous burdens have if only for the moment been forgotten, when he sleeps …

I know I have won. I have triumphed. I have achieved something, however small, of genuine virtue.

The Visitors (1)

One last group I shall discuss…my own. The Visitors.

People who come to visit the patients fall, again, into distinct categories. At the top end, the rarest, are the super-regulars. These are individuals who come all the time. They are present every day without fail, and usually for the whole day. They are, as a result, as much a part of the community as the Staff and the patients themselves.

At the particular Home where my mother is there is only one Super, and that's my Dad. He appears inevitably between eight and eight-thirty, goes to her room and waits, speaking to her, reading to her, stroking her hand and her head. He remains there until about one o'clock in the afternoon, then he will go and have lunch and take care of whatever business he needs to transact. After that, very often, depending on circumstances, he will return to the Home in the late afternoon and stay until early evening.

As I say, the Staff is in awe of him. He is their romantic hero, I think. The Man Who Is Always There For Her. The Man Who Never Gives Up. The little man, the frail man, the old man…who is, under it all, under all the illusions of weakness…

Constructed of steel and silver.