TELLING THEIR STORIES

By Steve Burrows

He was sitting alone in a wheelchair in the large high-ceilinged room where windows at one end overlooked an urban street two floors below. This was the hospice ward a few years ago where I was a staff nurse.

He was upset. Things were going wrong. On the floor below his feet were little puddles of serous fluid that had soaked through the bandages that wrapped up his oedematous legs. His advanced terminal cancer was knocking him about. But wet swollen legs weren't much; it could and would do better than that. For now, though, this pleasant gentleman in his sixties was embarrassed and distressed by this leakage.

I told him I was coming to help him and not to worry. I put some urgency into it. I also prayed silently that my ministrations might be therapeutic somehow. I gathered the required materials. I cleaned up the floor. I took off the old sodden dressings and pushed them into a plastic bag. Now for the bowl of warm water and emulsifying ointment; and the feet went in; and that was better.

I put gauze squares into the water and used them to wipe over the fragile skin on his legs, and to pull between his toes to wash there. And after that I laid a towel on the floor for his feet to rest on, and unrolled some paper-towel to pat his limbs dry.

There were a few dressing layers to re-apply. Non-adherent woven sheets went directly on to the skin. Next came two large absorbent pads. While I was wrapping these around his calf and ankle, and taping them in place, he remarked, "Forty years ago in Crystal Palace I worked opposite a place that made cladding. That was what Crystal Palace was known for, cladding. It's funny to think of that. I never would have thought it then. And look at me now."

"And this reminds you of cladding?" I responded.

He assented with a nod, and seemed to wonder at the returning scenes. When I left him a little later, with dry clean comfortably-bandaged legs, he was a more peaceful person. I was off-duty for the following few days, and when I came back he had died. "He went quickly," I was told.

The way that memories visit us is interesting. In his book of talks for schoolgirls, 'The Gospel in Slow Motion' (page 6), Ronald Knox, the Catholic priest, wrote, " .....the unconscious part of your mind is always alive to God's will. You know how you find yourself suddenly humming a tune, and say to yourself, 'Good gracious, I wonder what on earth put that tune into my head? ........ you didn't recall it to your memory by any act of will. It dug itself up .... from .... your unconscious mind; and it dug itself up because God told it to. It's only when his call comes to your conscious mind, to your will, that it is sometimes disobeyed. ...." The providential accident of the pads resembling cladding had "dug up" the patient's memories, and brought his past back to him in that empty space.

In his homily at a mass a few weeks ago a priest gave what seemed to me a helpful insight about healing. In the Gospel reading Jesus came upon the man by the portico'd pool, and "knowing he had been lying there a long time, said to him, 'Do you want to be healed?' The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.'" (John 5:67)

The priest pointed out that rather than giving the man an instruction, Jesus had asked him a question, and so invited him to tell his story. This enabled, the priest explained, the Holy Spirit to go more deeply into the sick man to heal him. In the hospice ward, after his memories had visited him, the patient had reflected on his current situation and also on his younger working days.

The following scene may be a true case of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it may nevertheless continue the story-telling theme. I was on a journey during which a youngish couple were talking to each other at the front of the bus. She said, "I don't like mint ice cream." Then she continued, as if it was important that he understood her, "Why don't I like mint ice cream?" She waited for an answer.

"Because it tastes like bubblegum?" ventured the man.

"Because it reminds me of toothpaste! Because it tastes the same as toothpaste!" she exclaimed.

"Oh yes, right," he acknowledged.

She subsided then, seemingly satisfied that he had heard her. (ENDS)