Last month an old man died: I shall call
him ‘Cyril’. He was my neighbour.
He was from the Caribbean: I don’t know
which country. I don’t know his surname. He had a wife, I believe, but they had
separated many years ago and were not in contact. On very rare occasions an
adult son would visit, but not stay.
I do know that he used to work as a welder,
for many years in a local factory – now closed down. Some people say he used to
work night shifts, and that this was why he was most active at night and often
slept during the day.
During the ten years or so that I have
known him he has never been away, never been on holiday, In fact he very rarely
left his house, except to go shopping with a battered old shopping trolley.
He kept the front of his terraced house
tidy, until near the end, painting the windowsills and the top of the wall
around the tiny front garden (which was filled with a mixture of wheelie bins,
boxes, and odd pieces of hardware).
Most frequently, though, he could be found
on his front door step, or at the gate in front of his garden-terrace house,
generally dressed in a chaotic assortment of the sort of clothes one might
expect to garden in, (or in some cases to sleep in). He would greet passers by
(everyone seemed to know him) and was keen to chat.
His conversation was of the style that is
generally referred to as ‘holding forth’: he was not a good listener. His main
theme was the extent to which a wide variety of persons and institutions had
ripped him off in various ways: banks who had stolen his money, plumbers who
had walked off with his tools, relatives who had let him down. Everyone he
encountered seemed to be ‘boogers’, as he put it, out to exploit him.
Despite this, he was generally affable and
friendly to me, and to the other people who stayed to talk (or, rather, to
listen). He was something of a hazard if one was going out and in a hurry, as
there was an implicit expectation that one wander across to ‘say hello’, an
activity that might cost ten minutes or more. I sometimes used to peer
nervously from my spy hole, and wait for him to disappear indoors before
venturing hastily to my car.
He liked to know about everything that was
going on, which did mean that our street had a sort of one man neighbourhood
watch, but, on the other hand, also meant that I couldn’t receive a single
houseguest without comment and questions. When indoors and awake, he would
frequently stand at his upstairs window peering at the world outside, and
unashamedly watching me as I pottered around in my study, which always left me
feeling a bit unsettled, as it would have been the height of rudeness to draw
the curtains.
About a year ago Cyril was diagnosed with
lung cancer. He told me (proudly, it seemed) that the prognosis was poor and
that he was expected to die from it, which indeed he did.
The initial period of the illness seemed to
mainly consist of a new opportunity to identify new targets for his complaints:
nurses, social workers, care assistants.
It did seem, initially, that he had some
cause for complaint. A promised, and much needed, oxygen cylinder and mask
failed to arrive for weeks. However, it soon became clear that things were a
bit more complicated.
Apparently the house had been found to be
cluttered and messy, to an extent that left no room to safely install the
oxygen tank. Worse, the house was filthy: mouse droppings lay deep over every
surface, the fridge and freezer were full of decaying food. Some workers,
understandably, refused to visit.
Enter, stage left, ‘Mr and Mrs Mohammed’,
Cyril’s next-door neighbours. They took it upon themselves to clean his house
for him so that the carers and nurses could visit, and so that Cyril’s needs
could be addressed. This was a literally thankless task: Cyril resented their
intrusion into his home, his life, and when Mr Mohammed bought and fitted a new
fridge-freezer to replace the previous noisome monstrosity, Cyril was convinced
that he had overcharged him for it: in fact, the fridge was considerably more expensive than Mr Mohammed told him, and he had withheld the bill
to protect the old man’s pride.
The scene was now ready for the caring
services to take full control of Cyril’s life. The oxygen cylinder arrived, a
rota of home carers started to visit. It was decided that Cyril would benefit
from improved kitchen and bathroom facilities, and the builders arrived.
For a while Cyril continued to appear,
occasionally, at his front door, ready to rail against the injustices visited
upon him. More often, he would open the door and flap it open and shut, moaning
loudly as he tried to fill his dying lungs, as unashamed of this as he had
been, in the past, of gazing keenly across at me in my study.
Then he stopped appearing. I never saw or
heard him again.
He was admitted to hospital, where some
neighbours visited him. He should have stayed, should have died, in hospital,
but he complained that he wanted to go home, so his wishes were complied with,
and home he went.
I continued to see the flickering light of
the TV in his downstairs front room, and the procession of carers in, and out.
Then one day Mr Mohammed came over to me.
He told me that he had heard Cyril banging on the party wall. He had gone over
and found him, soiled and hungry. The home care worker had failed to attend,
and he had been left, unfed and lying in his own shit, for 24 hours. Mr
Mohammed cleaned him, and fed him. I later saw a visiting nurse, and raised my
concerns.
The next day he was seen at his front door,
shouting and begging for food.
The next day he was dead.
Mr Mohamed told me and another neighbour
that he hoped to find out the day of the funeral, so that we could attend, but
either he was unsuccessful or he forgot to tell me. My understanding is that
none of his family expressed an interest in attending. I believe that a social
worker took his ashes back to his Caribbean home.
I’m not writing this to complain about how
he was treated by the authorities: I believe, on the whole, they did their best
for a difficult old man in difficult circumstances. I think I am mainly writing
this because I think his life, and his passing, should be acknowledged.
But I am also writing this because I am
ashamed of my part in this story: my complicity in a society that allows
someone to die like this.
I do not, on any significant level, grieve
for him, very much. My life goes on, much as before. He was a walk-on part in
the play of my life. I don’t think anyone will be grieving for him much. He was
not very useful, liked but not greatly loved by his neighbours, and as he died
he watched the small castle he had built around him get dismantled, piece by
piece, until there was nothing left.
The manner of his death diminishes me:
forgive me, Lord.
Rest eternal grant him o Lord, and let
light perpetual shine upon him.
