A Home Without Bird Song

Student Sarah Harrison's prize-winning story, A Home Without Bird Song, is an eloquent and poignant piece that captures with raw accuracy the experience of life in residences for frail elders. This is a work of art rather than dialectic, but that's really what we need to engage our sensibilities in the subject. Clearly great efforts are made in most residences to make lives of residents happy and comfortable, but there are systemic impediments that need to be addressed, and which will be the subject of these blogs, "Culture Change."

It is too easy in the world of health care to discuss the issues of ageing in care in a way that sanitises them of the losses people are forced to accept; loss of privacy, personal dignity, autonomy and access to their possessions. Usually they have been recently separately from the people who shared their lives most intimately, and their families are often scattered. So many friends have died or cannot move around easily. It is commonplace that people fear incapacity and isolation more than death.

Sarah's keen imagination captures the most pressing question concerning treatment of people who have done so much to make our home what it is. Wouldn't it be great if people were able to balance the irreplaceable losses of their last years at least with a sense that they would be entering "a place full of companionship and meaning?"

David Lemon

A Home Without Bird Song

by Sarah Harrison

The yellow taxi van halted outside St. Catherine’s Nursing Home. A woman who had come to meet me pulled open the back doors of the cab and with practiced ease lowered the ramp. She rolled my wheelchair out into the chilly fall air and steered me towards the great glass doors of the bleak grey building where I would spend the remainder of my life. She introduced herself as a care aide and punched in the security code for the first thick door, then the second one, but I was in my own world listening to the sounds of the birds nearby. The melody of their twitters and chirps brought beauty to the crisp morning air.

The great glass doors shut behind me. The bird song was silenced, muted by impenetrable cement walls. It felt as though I was being led into a maximum security prison from which I would never escape.

When we emerged from the elevator four floors above, I was greeted by cold white washed walls, hung with paintings of bright artificial scenes. There was a steely silence as I was pushed towards my room, punctuated only by a ringing phone in the nursing station, and sobs floating eerily through one of the many doors we passed.

I felt lost in this new and sterile environment. A desperate desire to get back in the taxi and go home flooded the pit of my stomach. But this was my new home, and I had nowhere else to go. I was stuck in this infernal metal chair and needed the care these people would give me. There was no choice now.

I was jolted out of my thoughts as my chair lurched suddenly to a stop. “This is you Mrs. Matthews,” announced the care aide, “room 408”. She pushed open the door to reveal a rather small and sparsely “furnished” room. There were two hospital beds, one on either side of the room. Beside each of these was a small oak dresser, upon which rested a ghastly porcelain lamp. Beside the door to the room was a small card table with a dust cloaked television set. A well worn armchair sat feet from the screen and I could only assume the door in the wall behind it led to the washroom. The most attractive feature of the room was a single, large window. Situated on the back wall between the beds, it overlooked a bright garden, edged with tall trees and full of lush hydrangea bushes. I surveyed my “cell” with a feeling of foreboding. It took me a moment to realise there was someone else in the room.

“Oh Hello!” She bubbled in the warmest voice I’d heard since my arrival. “Who are you?”

“Mrs. Paisley, this is your new roommate Rebecca Mathews.” said the care aide.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you my dear!” sang Mrs. Paisley.

“Likewise, I’m sure.” I replied hesitantly.

Wrinkled and old, Mrs. Paisley was almost lost in the large armchair, and her floral coat and hat blended so well into the upholstery, it was no wonder I hadn’t noticed her. She clutched an oversized pink handbag in her lap, and smiled widely, her gaze a little too empty. She looked as though she was ready to go out for the day.

“Have you seen Mrs. Oakley?” she inquired.

“Mrs. Oakley doesn’t live here anymore.” explained the care aide patiently. “That’s why Mrs. Mathews has arrived.”

“Oh lovely!” sighed Mrs. Paisley. “I’d love to stay and chat dear, but I’m afraid I won’t be here long. My son is coming to take me to lunch today.”

And with that, she fixed her gaze on the doorway behind us. I was given a tour of the home and found to my utter disappointment that it could not have felt less like the warm apartment I had left behind.

I have never felt as alone and abandoned as I did the day of my arrival at St. Catherine’s.

After a year here, I have settled into a pattern of life. I have learned my way around the home and the stories of my fellow residents. Some, like me, are here because they were too weak to take care of themselves. Others are here because they suffer from dementia. I have learned to look beyond the blank faces but cannot come to terms with that eerie sound of sobbing and the occasional scream that can be heard exploding from a room, echoing in the halls and reverberating through the walls, until it feels like St. Catherine’s itself is screaming. This is where I live; this is supposed to be my home. That is not how it feels. It is an institution, a place of medicine and death where all my worldly belongings are in a dresser by my bed. I am stuck in a world where everything is plastic. The chairs and the couches are plastic. Layered beneath the pungent stench of bleach, the dining room still reeks of cooking oil. There, even the tables are covered in plastic. Every plant in the place is plastic.

I still share a room with Mrs. Paisley and some mornings if the nurse opens my window I can hear the birds sing. That rare sound of joy and life is a pleasant change from the ringing of call bells that has become the soundtrack of my mere existence. Living is something more than being alive. I have ceased to call this a life.

Life was before my fall. Life was when I had my independence and experienced new things. Granted, at 86 I was feeble, but I was free. Now I’m left here in my chair being taken care of by professionals who view me as nothing more than a job. I am a task on their checklist. The men and women working here wonder why people die despite the fact that they administer the highest quality of medical “care”. They fail to recognize the true plagues at St. Catherine’s.

People here are dying of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. We waste away because we are too weak to do things on our own, and there is no one willing to take the time to be with us. In the last year at St. Catherine’s I have exhausted every possible resource available to me. I can do the puzzles blindfolded; I know every record in their pathetic little library. The only thing that keeps me going is trying to brighten other people’s days.

Even then I am faced with helplessness. What can I do? I can smile, I visit people’s rooms, but how can I really help them when I suffer from the same problems? I have no family to visit me. My best remaining friend, Margaret Ross, lives in a home across the country. We write to each other but it’s not enough. There are no animals here – no bird song within these walls, no children to fill the halls with laughter. Companionship is food for the soul, the only thing that can curb our loneliness. We starve for it. My one source of companionship is Mrs. Paisley.

Bunny Paisley suffers from dementia. Every morning she asks me my name and where Mrs. Oakley is. I tell her Mrs. Oakley doesn’t live at St. Catherine’s anymore. Truth be told, she died days before my arrival.

After this daily introduction, Bunny puts on her coat and hat, picks up her purse and plants herself in our armchair, and waits for her son to take her for lunch. Seeing her watch the door with such loving anticipation breaks my heart, knowing her son comes only once a month to see her. Some afternoons end in tears, but I always manage to comfort her and make her smile. In those moments I feel like she remembers me, and we are friends.

I have just received another letter from Margaret. She has written to me about some remarkable changes taking place at her home.

“…You should see it Becca! The place is full of life! There’s a day care center that has rented space in the basement, and everyday the children come and visit us. They are the most precious little things! And the animals! There is a new aquarium in the lobby with the most beautiful fish. They look like they’ve been stolen from a rainbow. I now have a budgie named Peter and his cage sits at the end of my bed. He sings like you wouldn’t believe! I wish you could see it….”

Reading her letter floods my eyes with tears. Why can’t our institution become a “home” like that, a place where I could be happy to live - a place full of companionship and meaning?

As I wheel over to my window and look out at the garden beyond the glass, I close my eyes and dream of a day when my room is filled with the sound of birdsong.

Works Cited

Drance, Elisabeth. Personal Interview. 9 Nov. 2007.
Thomas, William. Life Worth Living. Acton, Massachusetts: Publicom, Inc., 1996

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