The worst start to anything, but still. A start.

Driving to Fitzroy through North Richmond has always been the strangest exercise. The traffic there is crazy - Victoria Street at any time of night, let alone a Friday. People were out in lots despite the cold — and it has been cold, compared to the thirty degree heat of the previous days. I picture it and just want to stay in bed.

Recently I made a decision, the consequences of which I am currently trying to process. I think I lost a lot of people’s respect on this day - possibly a little of my own for being so weak. Too weak to save someone some serious grief, one could argue. Too weak to distinguish my own wants and needs from someone else’s superimposed, like always.

Possibly too weak to love someone and walk away because (at the end of the day) I know life gets in the way - older, wiser me. I should be the responsible one. Also, I love so easily.

Two weeks. Two weeks.

As Coral would say, is it actually love if it’s only two weeks? Compassion, empathy, the desire to comfort — all these are sometimes called love too.

But honestly, aside from the textbook answers to things, I was thinking that living a flawless life was dull. So what? Life is messy. People go for the things they want. Desire is messy - stains bedsheets, stains lives. I’ve avoided so much of life trying to stay mess free since the early years.

I did this. On my own. And I will deal with this on my own, whatever happens. I’ll see it through.

Love is still the dirtiest word I know.

Head:heart ratio of people I know

Catrina: 60:40
Been: 95:5 
Me: 30:70

Guess who has the messiest personal relationships?

Transitions

I.

The visiting consultant, Nancy, is flying back to China again this week. She greeted me with hugs in her last week, since I’d spent the weekend helping with her research statistics. She was constantly feeding me too. We’d just gone to dinner with one of her previous residents, and a cardiology resident and I am driving her back. 

“You must be excited to see your son again,” I’d said, when I’d parked outside her house. Her street was dark, lined with trees and to turn around I’d three-pointed in the driveway of one of the larger, gated houses. Not that it was one of those kinds of streets. It was just a beautiful house, all silent and glowing from the windows.

Her little boy is all she talks about. He’s adorable. Handsome, too. I’d seen photos on his first day of school, when she’d been jittery on ward round and we’d asked why.

“Yes,” she said, hesitantly. Then she made to say something else, stuttered, and changed her mind. “I’m just…anyway. Yes. I just tried not to think about it.”

“Why not,” I asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.” She gave a sigh and waved her arms impatiently, brushing off the subject.

I shrugged. My little brother was 4 when I left him. It’s amazing he didn’t get stranger danger all these years, because I only go back to see him once a year. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it might be. “Is it because you’re scared he’ll be different around you because he hasn’t seen you in ages?”

She suddenly jerked up. “Yes! That’s exactly it. —” Then she began to pour everything out — everything, not just this thing. Her fears about her son, about parenting him. How much she loved him. I unbuttoned my seatbelt and turned to listen. It was hard to tell if she was crying — the tree covered the passenger side in shadow but she sounded like her nose was blocked at some points. I tried to locate a tissue box but remembered it was in the back of my car. 

Her little boy intrigued me. It sounded like the kid’s a genius - one of those old souls who seems a little too good for the world. At the same time, his own reactions at age 3 and 4 and even at 7 remind me of things my mother used to say that I did. My attention to detail. Even my earliest memories are of small details: dipping my hand down in a crack in a trampoline, and the texture of tyre grease. The words on a sign (a book shop) that my mother and I were walking past. Dragonflies (at eye level). Oily fingers from those deep fried crouton sticks.

My mother had worried that the world would eat me up. She’d always say to me, “Toughen up, you’re too sensitive,” or “Snatch your toys back” when I’d cry in her lap at night about how someone took my things that way.

It seemed funny suddenly, watching Nancy wring her hands in love and frustration and fear. My mother, way back then — is this what she might have done to one of her friends?

If I could talk to my mother then, what would I say to her? I wish the old her could see me now to save years of worry. Of course, she’d worry regardless. It’s what you do if you have something to lose. As a mother, I’d be a wreck. To love something that much again - to have something from which the loss of I might never recover from…

I put my hand on Nancy’s arm. I wanted to say something reassuring about the future, but there’s nothing reassuring about the unknown as a doctor. So I told her the best thing my parents ever gave me was a happy childhood. Something to cling onto in the darkest, coldest days. That the internal life, when it was caging, would calm by the thought of that. That mythical thing called love, when things are forgotten or there appears no reason to believe it’s possible. It’s possible. We carry on.

Before she got out of the car, she hugged me - a long, relieved hug. 12 years difference - we were both born in the year of the dragon and we were very similar. She often told me that I was a lot like her, at least in terms of early career events.

She is flying back today. I hadn’t seen her since that night. Despite repeated assurances to visit if possible, I have a feeling that we’ll never see each other again. It’s strange, the people who walk in and out of our lives, and what they leave there. It makes me wonder if I’ve left deep imprints in others’ lives I’ve never been in.



II.

It’s later in the week. The night’s gotten colder, though this time no longer blamed on sea air. Outside the tea lights are blurred behind the glass.

I’m curled up in a chair, happy. Overwhelmingly so, really, at how well the day’s gone. Number one: Brighton had been lovely. A calm, peaceful few hours and I was surprisingly cheered up about it. Number two: someone else had driven, so I could have drinks (something I’ve not done for ages, having driven everywhere possible in recent memory).

I’d been to Brighton earlier that day, just as the sun set. C, a friend of S’s from school whom I’d met once at her house in New Zealand, had invited me to a beach property for a BBQ co hosted by S’s ex (Also an S), whom S had left me for. Athena’s a mutual friend of ours, and in the recent months Athena had been here I’d seen this girl a handful of times. I hadn’t seen C for a long time, and had always been meaning to catch up. She is doing 4th year now, in the same course as me. It’s the hardest year in the curriculum, and I wanted to ask her if she had any questions. More people fail 4th year than every other year, and averages get dragged down constantly.

I’d clearly moved on in life, but a stubborn part of me just wanted to segregate the past from the future.

Athena’s boyfriend, would later say when I explained that Athena had been watching the rugby with me the same night that she was meant to be at S’s place, with great confusion, “Have the two worlds collided?” He knew both S and S together through Athena, because they’d worked together for a long time, and were close. For a long time there was some kind of unwritten rule that made Athena feel the need to warn me whenever S would be at the same event as me, even though I never let it stop me going to things for friends. I actually had nothing to do with the rule itself, it was just something Athena seemed to invent for herself.

“I should go,” I’d said for the nth time that morning, while icing ninja-bread men (not a typo) at Renny’s place.

“Just go,” she’d said.

“It starts off with a BBQ,” I’d said. “It might be an off gathering next. But then you just passively absorb details about someone’s life over time and suddenly you’re just..in their lives. Or they’re in yours. Whatever.” I thought about all the details of S’s life that I’d known from mutual friends and S over the years. How she wanted to move to Melbourne two years before she did it. How her dream had been to study English at the university of Melbourne here. Some of her relationships after S (back when she was rooming with Gaayathri, a good friend of mine). All details that just happened to crop up in passing, not all of it intentionally told to me. It was ridiculous.

But all my whining was just whining about something I had already made up my mind about.

I’m at a cafe in Glen Waverley, and it’s freezing outside. The day had turned on itself, bitter winds coming inland - at first I thought it had been Brighton but even here it’s frosty. Jason, the kid from the respiratory lab, is with me. I shouldn’t say kid - he’s only two years younger than me - but it feels like it. Two years difference is an eon. Does time accelerate/decelerate at will? It makes me feel old.

He reminds me of a strange combination of people I’ve known in the past, including myself. Or perhaps his current situations just reminds me of something that happened to me once, that I wish had had a better outcome. We’re incredibly different in personality after all - in fact probably the exact opposite. Our moral compasses are way off.

It did make me acknowledge that I’m drawn to people with familiar sounding stories though. Recently at work I’ve been finding myself struggling with people who have been in similar situations as me. I feel myself wanting to wrench them by the collar, shake them, and tell them how stupid they are. Nicely. “He won’t ever love you.” or, “Have some self respect!”.

Probably an inappropriate way to feel about other people’s lives sometimes, but there you go.

I seem to be having similar conversations to this one with many people over my life. In fact, I feel extremely good at these kinds of conversations and cheering people up after break ups.

Then I realised: I’m a good at helping people through transitions because that’s pretty much how others have treated me in relationships. Someone transitioning them through parts of their life before they find someone they really want. Inadvertantly, obviously, because nobody does that kind of thing on purpose, but it’s what ended up happening nonetheless. 

Argh.

Epiphanies are few and far between these days. Why are they never good ones, like they used to be?

The long goodbye

It has been an entire week of aged care. That’s 4 days of referrals for rehab vs. residential care and a visit to Alzheimer’s Australia. 

What I hadn’t expected about site visits was the element of field trip it had to it. The Alzheimer’s Australia office is in an old colonial house, one of 3 bought in neighbouring properties by the organisation and done up (or preserved). The gardens were spectacular, although the back had been converted into a car park. Inside, it reminded me exactly of the building in its sister organisation in my hometown. A stairwell, a resource cupboard converted from an old side room. The stained glass windows. Wooden walls. Even the smell was the same.

Back in school in New Zealand, I used to volunteer for Alzheimer’s Auckland. Sue had had me making up information packs and in this way, nothing I’d learnt on the day was completely new. In my spare time back then I’d read through them all. Alzheimer’s Australia used similar font and layout.

I’d been passionate about geriatrics then (I must have been 16, 17). My immediate neighbours were mostly elderly. I’d visit Gloria sometimes after school, for fun. She played scrabble every Tuesday. She had many photos in her home. I had grandparents, whom I loved. They hid chocolate in their room, and it was always a game to find it. When an elderly woman down the street moved away to a nursing home I hand wrote her a note. We didn’t know each other, but she would give me lily cuttings when I walked past her garden - a beautiful garden, with the prettiest white lilies. They demolished her house after she left.

Sometimes, I remember my great-grandmother from when I was 5, in China, and that room in the corner where she lived. She liked to comb her hair. I would clamber to her in the morning demanding hard salted crackers in return for kisses. 

It reminds me of House Of God - the book by S. Shem: I used to love old people. Now, I feel tired whenever I think of them.

“Never grow old,” one woman said this week. She was over 100 years old and as sharp as a knife, although her hearing had also gone a little. Her eyes were blind. She had reached up to me to touch my face but had found the stethescope prongs in my ears instead. She meant to feel me for age, I knew. She’d said, shocked, when she realised I wasn’t some nurse and that I was part of the medical team, “A doctor?! You sound awfully young to be a doctor.”

It’s true. I know I have a young sounding voice, although one of my family friends had remarked when I was 13 that I’d lost the baby quality to it. A woman’s voice. What I learnt over the years was that it sometimes took on a naive, guileless lilt and that knocked years off it.

There are only three times in my life that a patient has tried to reach for my face. This was the third time. All were elderly. First had been an old man in Emergency who suddenly cupped a hand to my cheek when I finished taking his history - I had been 19, taken by surprise. The second time had been years ago in Haematology, when the other lady had required sedation to undergo a bone marrow biopsy, deliriously joyful (an unusual thing to be delirious with).

The woman this week - the centurion - had looked so anxious. I was visiting her to assess her for discharge placement: rehab vs nursing home care. It’s at terrible thing to remove someone from their houses forever. On Aged Care I’ve had time to think about it more. What it’s like to give up all your possessions and live in a room. A little like my life - everything crammed into the bedroom. Except worse. They only have a few shelves, that’s it. A few shelves for all of their lives. Reminders, trinkets.

I tried to placate her with the truth: “When I’m your age, I only hope to be as sharp as you.” I said, bending down over her to listen to her heart. Her bedside cognitive score was completely normal.

She clasped her hands around both of mine. “Never live to my age.” she rasped, pulling me down. The conversation had been pleasant before then, but now she appeared to be tearing up. “It’s a terrible thing, to be old. To outlive your contemporaries.”

“Never get old,” another man had said to me the other day. “It’s at terrible thing.”

“Stay beautiful,” another had said once in outpatients, in front of Dr. L. “Stay a pretty little thing forever. Don’t age.”

Some people say that they cried when they visited the Alzheimer’s organisation. I had sat in the room wondering what about, until they put on that DVD, ‘The Long Goodbye’. It’s a documentary about people living with Alzheimers, and the impact it has on their families.

I teared up. Loving the ghost of someone - an echo of who they were. Carers are amazing people.

Perhaps all that’s left after that is our rawest nature. Sometimes I wonder, who would I be once the rest of me has been stripped away?

They always say that dementia is disinhibiting. People revert to underlying personalities, underlying instincts. I met a man once in a neuropsychiatric ward who was obsessive about clocks. In his younger days he’d always run his household like clockwork, fixing things, tinkering with odd jobs. Now he was here because his wife was being driven nuts by his constant taking things apart and putting them back together wrongly. He hoarded parts that somehow he couldn’t fit back and got angry when she tried to move them. Everything had an order, but he no longer understood it.

The second patient I ever met, Val* (not real name), had the biggest bluest eyes in a nursing home at the base of a snowy mountain. She’d cried and told me not to let them take her mother away in a little girl’s voice and I’d held her hand. She was in her late 90s. It was a sunny afternoon but it had chilled me to the bone. She had the look of a terrified child, and I had just lost my childhood. It was a strange moment.

Looking back, that visit had shaken me. I’d had an awful thought that I’d be just like her when I am her age, returning to the me that I had been when I was sitting with her. At that time, I’d been spending most of my nights crying either on the inside or outside. I’d loved someone a lot — too much. A kind of love that changes a life, in some way. I’d loved someone else in a different way. Both were people who couldn’t love me the way I wanted them to. I’d suddenly seen myself as a 90-something year old mumbling to strangers: “It hurts. I love you. Come back. Tell me you love me. You made a choice. You can’t say there was no choice. You chose her.” Helpless phrases. Helpless things.

‘What would I cry about at 92?’ I’d written, ‘What memory would I be stuck in? The time when I was 15, in the summer? One evening sitting in S’s car beneath the streetlamp? In the park with N on the grass, feeling well fed and lying on my front saying, “You always seem to know what you’re doing.” Or drying the wildflowers and weeds upside down off my door handle with ribbon? Would it be the night I was floored by this desire to cease to exist, simply (not morbidly)? I want to do something to fix myself up. (But what)?’’

It seems like a lifetime ago.

I’m glad things have changed for the better, with the help of some of the best people in the world by my side. :) I’m ever gladder that it’s Spring and that the sun was out today again. It’s always better to do the more difficult jobs  in warmer months. Then you have something to look forward to, like daylight when you go home, and sangria if you are like me and can hop off at any time really (I always seem to stay though).

Aged care is a hard job, and requires a lot of patience. I admire geriatricians everywhere.