Conversations

On our way home we met a person whom most of the villagers dislike; "well, you cannot trust her; she tells you whatever is on her mind and usually it is not nice". For my own part, I find her open and honest. Her honesty makes it easy to talk to her, to engage in real conversation, not just casual pleasantries ("well, yes, I am still a student..."). She talked about her job at a home for elderly people. We talked a bit about why nurses are usually employed there for short periods of time. What effects that has on people. We also talked about what it means for an old person, who is perhaps suffering from Alzeimer, to be sent away from the village to an institution far from home, where the person will not see her relatives often.

My grandmothers both stayed at homes for old people towards the end of their lives. One of them was practically unconscious for many years. It was hard to visit them - or, rather, I found it hard to do it, and I felt bad for feeling that way. Why? It is horrible to watch a person tied to a chair, restless, stairing at a TV broadcasting animal programs. Being unable to talk, to walk, hardly noticing that another person is in the room. And most of all it was hard to hear some of the nurses talking to her in a way resembling baby talk and/or soliloquy. How is one supposed to act naturally in an environment the clinical nature of which evokes nothing but death and misery? Becoming more and more aware of particular difficulties, my grandmothers used to say that they did not want to end up in a home. It was easy to grasp their fear. Certain names, by themselves, evoked the kind of destiny they were afraid that one day would be their own.

Sometimes my grandmother reacted to the presence of us with a smile of sudden recognition. In a shrill voice she was sometimes able to comment on the beauty of a flower or to ask a question about the whereabouts of a particular person. Her inquiries usually concerned my father. Is he at home? Is he catching any fish?

So it was not always bad. M, my other grandmother, lived in a quite relaxed, smaller home, where people at least seemed to view each others as friends, rather than reducing others to "nurse" and "that confused old hag". When me & my sister went to see my grandmother we usually bumped into a very eccentric old lady who dressed fancy and whose vocabulary was that of a law book. One day my sister was wearing a feminist T-shirt. "Sisterhood". The lady excusingly tried to hint at her own heterosexuality - at least I understood it in that way. - Her explanation included terms and relations from the world of business contracts. She talked about her relation to her teddybear which she carried around with her in terms of legal ownership. We sat down with her and she told us about her childhood in St. Petersburg and the value of having an education. She was the opposite of everything my own grandmother stood for. My grandmother was "rustic" and despised anything considered fancy or sophisticated. Her mother tongue was Finnish and her Swedish was a bit peculiar. I can only imagine what the interaction between them must have looked like. But then again, you never know in whom you suddenly find a friend.