Good Grief

There are certain liberties you can take when you are telling a story as an old woman. By now, my hair has been grey for far longer than it has ever been brown. I am what this new generation considers a figure of the past. It’s easy to look back with rose-coloured glasses, a fondness that glosses over mistakes and covers the blemishes you’d rather not remember.

As much as I am guilty of embellishing, I will say this: all of my stories have been based on fact. And now that the inevitable is here—I will soon be unable to trust my own memory—I feel the need to tell one last story.

This was almost fifty years ago, and many cherished memories have been made since. But this is the one that I return to time and time again, especially in moments of hardship. A little candle in the darkness, if you will.

Please allow for possible holes in my memory. Names have been changed to respect the legacy of the deceased.

What struck me the most when I first stepped into the retirement home was that it didn’t smell like disinfectant, as I had expected, but lemon dish soap. I was horribly unprepared, a comedic spectacle in my scrubs, wobbling around in borrowed shoes that were two sizes too big.

The day went by in a haze. I trailed behind the supervising caregiver, Anna, as she gave me a tour of the place. Before we went further, Anna suggested I introduce myself to all of the residents I would be working with in the east wing.

I readied myself in the hallway, straightening my posture and practicing my smile. I didn’t smile a lot in those days, so it took a few tries.

I knocked—three light taps—on the first door I came across. No answer. The television turned on somewhere down the hall, playing an old re-run of a popular game show. I waited for a few seconds and then knocked again. Nothing. So I made my way onto the next room, meaning to check back at a later time. But after all the excitement that the introductions brought, the thought of returning to room 108 completely slipped my mind.

It so happened that the next day, when I went to retrieve Mrs. Redford’s reading glasses from Room 109 (“If it’s not on my bedside table, it is most certainly near my volume of Oliver Twist!”), I accidentally opened the door to Room 108 instead. I was startled to find that the room was occupied by an elderly man in his late 70s, sharply dressed in a houndstooth sweater and pleated black pants. He stared at me with a look of genuine shock and horror in his eyes.

I instinctively moved towards the door to leave but as I turned, my eyes fell on the leather-bound notebook in his hand. My grandmother used to carry around the exact same one. We both just kept staring—me at the little black book and him at me— until I looked up and saw that the shock in his eyes had turned into anger.

“Who do you think you are, barging into my room like this?” He said. A line had appeared near his temple, the skin there paler than the rest of his face. An old scar, I thought.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Thompson. I’m the new caregiver.” I said brightly.

“So?” He looked more irritated than ever.

“I-I just don’t know my way around here very well yet.” I said, gesturing wildly at nowhere in particular.

“You see, I meant to introduce myself yesterday but you weren’t in your room! Or you were in your room but you might have not heard me…”

“Not that you couldn’t hear me because you’re old! But because—“ I babbled on, unable to stop myself.

He took a step forward and pointed towards the door. I reflexively took a step back.

“I’d like you to leave now, please.”

As much as it pained me to make such an unfortunate first impression, I didn’t have much time to dwell on the matter. He was but one of the many residents I was responsible for in the home. In the weeks that followed, I fell into a routine. I made my rounds every morning, checking up on the residents, dressing and re-dressing wounds, changing bedpans and giving sponge-baths.

I spent hours in the laundry room every day, soaking sheets in freezing cold water before they went into the washer. Soon the skin on my hands became a terrain of its own—covered in uneven cracks and bumps. Even with gloves on in the winter, I could feel the cold slice through the fabric, re-opening the thousands of tiny cuts on my hands.

It was gruelling work but nothing compared to what was to come. It was only when I had to sit and comfort residents on their bad days—the days when they grew confused and struggled to make sense of their surroundings—that I found my will wavering. They would call out the names of loved ones, and search for their faces, only to find a complete stranger sitting by their bed, in a place they don’t recognize. 

It was times like those that I felt grateful for room 108. George’s animosity towards me never fully went away but we eventually came to an unspoken agreement. I would do my usual check-ups, trying to be as cheery and courteous as possible to lighten the mood, and he would tolerate my presence and occasionally voice a complaint.

“You’re making the bed wrong. How am I supposed to sleep with the blanket folded to the side?” or “Stop being so fussy with the pillows, they’re not going anywhere.”

Other than these critical remarks here and there, he hardly spoke to me. But, gradually, I could sense that, at the very least, he didn’t find me such a nuisance anymore.

There was so much uncertainty in the home—good days, bad days, days when hearses came and went—that I began to look forward to the one constant that was George’s ever-sullen, hard-to-please attitude towards me. I could always count on his moodiness on any given day.

When the first week of the February rolled around, I was called in on a day that I was meant to take off. A case of the flu had left a severe shortage of staff, so I had no choice but to come in. Weeks earlier, when I had first asked to take February 2 off, Anna had sensed it was for personal reasons and so had not inquired further. But she had all but forgotten about my request by now.

I had been fine most of the day—a little forgetful, but efficient in carrying out my duties. But with one single event, I lost all the composure I had been so carefully nursing.

“Marie?” A voice called out, strained, “Marie, is that you?”

I had been organizing a row of gauzes on a medical cart when I heard her call out from room 114. I recognized the voice immediately. It was Vera, a resident living with late-term Alzheimer’s, calling for her daughter who lived overseas. The nurse in the room stepped out to wave me over. I had helped comfort Vera before when she was confused. Some days she saw me as the caregiver I was, but most of the time she mistook me for her daughter.

But this time was different. I couldn’t move. When I saw the flash of blue from the nurse’s scrubs, I quickly ducked inside the nearest room. I knew this was George’s room, very much off-limits to me, but I couldn’t think far beyond the situation at hand. My hand still on the door knob, I remained with my back facing him. I could hear the scrape of his chair as he stood up, undoubtedly in surprise, but I made no move to explain what was going on. I stayed silent, and unexpectedly, so did he. A few seconds passed like this, not a word from either of us.

My eyes were stinging. I blinked a few times but the sensation didn’t go away. I became aware of the tightness in my chest, a hefty stone lodged in my ribcage. I tried to take a deep breath but the stone just sunk deeper, eventually pressing against my diaphragm.

“What is this?” I thought to myself. I tried to clutch at my chest but my fingers were numb, pawing at static.

A voice came from behind me, steady, solemn.

“Why are you here?”

I turned around. George was standing with his arms crossed over his chest. I could the black notebook peeking out from underneath one arm. When he saw me, a faint look of sympathy flitted across his face, a gentler expression than I had ever seen from him before. It was only for a brief moment but I thought I recognized something of my own sadness in his eyes.

“Who are you grieving for?” He said this time.

I knew I was crying now. The tears felt heavy, fat raindrops soaking the front of my scrub top. But I could move now and the numbness had gone away.

“My grandmother,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

George remained silent, stone-faced.

“I was too much of a coward,” I continued, “Felt too guilty for not making time to visit her before she fell ill. I couldn’t face her, I couldn’t bear to see how weak she’d become when I wasn’t there to take care of her."

“She must have called out for me that day. Wondered where I was. I left her all alone.”

George stood there with me as I sobbed. After a while, when my breathing evened out, he pulled up a chair, which I gratefully slumped onto. Then, to my surprise, he brought out the little black notebook. I hadn’t noticed before but the cover had the name “Valerie” embossed in tiny lettering, only a shade lighter than the cover itself. He flipped open to the page that a thin strip of black ribbon marked. Someone had written a date from fifteen years ago on the top right-hand corner in childish lettering. August 15, 1964. The rest of the page was blank.

“My granddaughter, Valerie, would have been 27 this year,” He said, not meeting my eyes, “That’s about your age, isn’t it?”

I wiped my tears with the back of my wrist and nodded.

“There was an accident. It was my fault. I wished every day for years it was me who died instead. If not in exchange for her life, then at least I might be spared from living with this kind of pain, this unending guilt.”

He gripped the notebook tightly.

“This was hers, the diary?” I asked quietly.

“It’s all I have left.” He said.

When I looked up, I saw that his eyes were shiny.

George went to his desk and turned his back to me. I took this as my cue to leave.

The next morning I went into work early. Curiously, George’s door was slightly ajar. I knocked but received no answer. I knocked again, and then peeked in. The room was empty. His bed had been made the way he liked it but none of his personal belongings were around. On his desk was a large manila envelope, and pinned to the envelope was a note addressed to me.

In George's thick, blocky letters, I read:

“Had my granddaughter lived, I expect she would have looked a lot like you at this age. But from that first day, when you charged into my room uninvited, I realized then and there that it was only a physical resemblance and nothing else. You barely have a third of the tact she possessed, even as a child. Ill-mannered as you are, I must begrudgingly admit that I see quite a bit of myself in you.

So I hope you will understand when I ask for this favour. All these years, I have been too fixated on my loss to do justice to my granddaughter's memory. So I would like to entrust this duty to you.

In return, I will bring your love to your grandmother. I hope that, between the two of us, I will be the one to see her first.

But in order to do this, I need you to promise me to come to terms with your grief. Harbouring this much guilt is no way to honour the dead. So allow the pain to stay, however long it may, and then make peace with it. Do not punish yourself over and over again as I have. And keep my dear Valerie in your thoughts when you remember to. This is all I ask."

It was signed George Thompson and dated on the top right-hand corner.

Inside the manila envelope was the little black notebook and a cheque for $20,000. On the line for the memo, it read: "For a granddaughter after my own heart.”