Today was a special day. Today was the day I made a little old lady cry. I was pleased she cried. She cried because she was happy with something I had done. It's ok to make little old ladies cry under such circumstances I believe. Allow me to explain...
The lady in question is one I have the honour of caring for as a small part of a team of carers. I spend 2 - 3 days a week looking after her. Amongst a few other things she suffers from a condition which affects her memory. A few weeks ago I noticed in her file a booklet entitled "My Life Story". There was hardly any entries in it since none of us knew her life story and she herself was unable to remember a lot of it. So there was a picture of her, her husband and child along with very sketchy details such as her birthday and her wedding date and the birthday of her child. There was the odd photo in it but only a recent one of her and one of her in her late teens. She was beautiful - and still is. It wasn't enough but it was all we had since neither she nor her husband could remember much and her husband really didn't see the point of such a book.
I made it my business to find out all I could about the beautiful young lady now in the twilight years of her life. What I found out filled the booklet and some. I went to talk to her sister, her son, her husband and her friends. I asked them about her life and little anecdotes which I could retell in the booklet.
They all painted a picture about how my charge was a stunningly beautiful young lady who had many potential suitors chasing her, one in particular was a handsome young soldier. My lady was dainty - a talented dancer with the smallest size 2 feet. She could rock and roll with the best of them, jive and twist. She could also glide around a ballroom and was gifted with being able to dance the perfect quick-step and other ballroom dances.
In her younger days she used to cycle with her best friend and her sister from the village in which she lived just outside of her local market town to all the surrounding villages attending the local village dances. During the war years if planes were flying over they all had to switch off their bike lights and cycle in the still darkness of the night time in order to not alert enemy planes to their position.
A young soldier noticed her in a ballroom at a dance and made a beeline for her. He was stricken by her beauty and elegance. She danced with him and then, realising he had "two left feet" and couldn't dance discreetly excused herself. He couldn't keep his eyes off her and used to ask her to dance whenever they met. She wasn't so keen. She used to say to her sister and her friend "If that soldier is coming for me keep him away because he can't dance!" He persisted and now 56 years later they are still happily married and hold hands when they sit next to each other on an evening and during the day.
They told me about her first job and how she used to cycle to work. If she hadn't had a bike it would have been a 3 mile walk! They shared about her wedding day and who was there. I learnt all about the day her son was born and how her husband had registered his name incorrectly in his excitement omitting to give him his own Christian name as a middle name and how annoyed she was that he had forgotten to do this.
I wrote about the day she went with her sister and mother to the fun fair which came to the local town market place every year and how her mother had been spun off one of the bobbing horses on the carousel. I heard about the day her son had fallen off a wall whilst on holiday and dislocated his arm and about the many holidays they took I wrote it all down and between us we documented what we could of her life story. I learnt about how she hated school but loved swimming and would go to school in order to go to the swimming lessons. I heard about how she loved military whist drives and domino drives and what a good player she was. We wrote about the cabaret shows she used to love to go and see and taking her family to the pantomime.
She was a very clever lady who ran a tight ship of a home and controlled all the family budget and managed the house - which ran like clockwork.
It was a very humbling experience, one which made me think about my own life and what, if anything, someone would write if documenting my life story. I'm not at all sure that it would make such good reading as her does! That made me feel a little sad but the thought that no-one would bother to do it for me made me even sadder!
Today was the final piece of the picture I had built about her. Today was the day that we went through her family photos together and chose pictures to match her story and then I read it to her.
It was then that she cried. She called for her husband to come and hear it. Her face lit up with excitement and she kept saying "that's all true, I remember that's what happened. How did you know all this? I can't believe it but i can remember that." over and over again. It was then that I realised that today, at least, I had done a really good job.
