After her passing, the Old-But-Not-Dead members helped one another get over it. We are close, without being overly nosy. Interested, warm, affectionate people with humour and compassion. At times sentimental, and at times a bit mad. Each one of us as old as the hills, but we try to ignore that fact as much as we can. We hope everyone has a chance to belong to such a club, but not ours. We often still hear from people who want to join, but we turn everyone down. That’s because there is no room for more than eight people in the minivan we use for our excursions, in addition to the driver.
The British Queen became the longest reigning English monarch ever last week: she has been on the throne for sixty-three years and seven months. Her poor son Charles is the longest heir-in-waiting ever. At the age when the Dutch now start their retirement, he’s still waiting for his first job.
The longest reigning monarch in the world was King Sobhuza of Swaziland, but he was an infant when he ascended the throne. That doesn’t count.
At eighty-nine, Elizabeth is a stellar example of sprightliness, according to some of us in here.
‘And she still goes to work every single day,’ is how Mrs Van Diemen expressed her admiration.
‘If you ask me, the work isn’t all that taxing,’ Evert remarked. ‘She even has a special footman to wipe her royal arse, so she can’t get that tired.’
Van Diemen was deeply shocked at such lèse-majesté.
Evert went on in that vein for a while, saying he suspected that Elizabeth had actually died a long time ago, but was stuffed after her death, with a small motor inside to keep her moving.
‘I just don’t see anything that’s human there any more.’
I had to step in in the end, because Mrs Van Diemen was about to whack Evert with her purse. My friend beamed with glee.
Monday, 14 September
The poet Lucebert spoke these insightful words: ‘All that is valuable is helpless’, but there are also people who think differently about it. ‘All that is helpless, is without any value’ comes closer to their experience. You sometimes feel, especially in young people, the contempt for our slowness and uselessness, even if it’s seldom voiced.
I can get very angry about the condescension towards old people sometimes. If you speak up about it, you’ll often get an aggressive reaction.
It terrifies me, to be so helpless. I can’t even take a hurried step backwards without toppling over. A little push is enough to decide every conflict.
And it does happen: Mr Dickhout once rebuked a young man for jumping the queue at the supermarket checkout. He muttered something along the lines of: ‘Behold the living proof of a poor upbringing.’ The queue-jumper took it as an insult to his mother, and punched Dickhout in the face. Yelling something about ‘respect’, the young man then took to his heels, leaving his cans of Red Bull on the counter. Dickhout was left with a black eye, eventually turning a yellowish-green, which he proudly showed off to everyone. He said he’d do the same thing again.
Not me. I am not brave. I keep my mouth shut, scared shitless and hopping mad at the same time.
Anyway, at the supermarket no one found it necessary to get involved, apart from the Moroccan cashier who jumped to her feet and yelled, ‘Wanker!’
Netherlands’ hope in these dark days.
Tuesday, 15 September
It’s the third Tuesday in September, Prince’s Day, time for the King’s Speech and the Golden Coach. The latter needs repairs, and the restorers say they’ll need four years to do the job properly, the same amount of time it would take you, for instance, to build a huge skyscraper. It’s hard to imagine that refurbishing a coach, not even 6 metres in length, could take that much work. Wouldn’t it be much cheaper and quicker just to make a new one? Does no one realize that? To please the Party for Animal Welfare, you could add a small electric motor, so that the horses wouldn’t have to work as hard.
Mrs Bregman asked herself anxiously how the royal couple would get to parliament these next three years, without the Golden Coach.
‘I suppose they’ll take the tram,’ said Leonie.
Mrs Bregman looked quite disconcerted.
‘I was only joking,’ Leonie said to reassure her, ‘they’ll be riding in a glass coach for the time being.’
That sent Mrs Bregman into even more of a tizzy. She thought a glass coach could be terribly dangerous.
It is a tradition in our home to gather downstairs to watch the King’s Speech and comment on the parade of silly hats in the Ridderzaal. It’s becoming more of a carnival every year. Nowadays, there’s also a tall bloke dressed up as a rather corpulent king.
Ria has promised to wear a fetching hat for the occasion this afternoon. I hope she will set an example, and that by the time the next King’s Speech rolls around, all our ladies will be watching the telly in their fanciest hats.
At last year’s Prince’s Day we already had two gentlemen watching the televised ceremony with all their badges, medals and Four-Day March crosses pinned to their chests.
Wednesday, 16 September
Ria had a brilliant hat on: a plate made out of blue cardboard, with a huge orange napoleon on top. Her lips were painted a matching orange.
The best thing about it was that her hat was edible. When the King’s Speech was over, she took it off, took a big knife from her purse, cut the napoleon into small pieces and offered those around.
‘Long live the King! Hip, hip, hurray!’ Graeme cried.
‘Antoine baked it himself last night,’ Ria said proudly.
‘Not allowed, but all for a good cause,’ she added, with a giggle.
The lady MPs would do well to follow her example.
A number of inmates have written to the director proposing that we shelter some Syrian refugees in the empty rooms in our home, which now number about fifteen.
When the proposal was discussed over coffee, there was a consensus that there shouldn’t be any pickpockets among the new guests. Best if those stayed in Syria, really.
It would liven up the place quite a bit, some exotic new residents from distant lands. We’d be able to make ourselves useful by babysitting from time to time, and we could teach them Dutch, as the language barrier could be a problem in the beginning. They, for their part, could run errands for us, or push the wheelchairs. I am curious to see if Stelwagen will come back to us with a serious response, or if she’ll leave it for her successor to deal with.
By the way, no news yet on a new director.
The Residents’ Committee is having a final meeting with Stelwagen at the end of the month. We’ll definitely ask about the situation regarding her replacement.
Yesterday we thoroughly enjoyed seeing Louis van Gaal’s sour expression after the humiliating defeat of his Manchester United (with a €600 million turnover) by PSV Eindhoven (just €60 million in revenues).
Thursday, 17 September
Mrs Langeveld’s room has yielded a new stash of about a dozen spoons, knives and forks, property of the home. Ten days ago another sixty were uncovered in all sorts of cupboards and drawers. The head of housekeeping, with Stelwagen’s permission, performed a thorough search of Langeveld’s room, and they found not only the cutlery that didn’t belong there, but also towels, dishcloths, soap, cups, plates and other items. The lavatory had an extra wall of toilet rolls stacked up to the ceiling. Come to think of it, it’s strange that the cleaner, who mopped the floor around it, never said a word.
Mrs Langeveld was given one last warning. It’s questionable if that will help, since she doesn’t seem to have any idea how those things made it into her room. She’s all in a dither and spent an hour crying.
Her son proceeded to march into the director’s office, incensed, but when Stelwagen showed him the loot found at the scene of the crime, he was suddenly meek as a lamb. Then he turned on his mother, to save face. Which was pointless, of course, and only made her wail even louder.
Edward has taken Mrs Langeveld’s dilemma to heart, and promises from now on t
o check that items belonging to the home haven’t accidentally fallen into the basket of her rollator.
Friday, 18 September
Mrs Smit is driving me bonkers. A couple of weeks ago she began taking photographs of the residents with an old camera, and she just won’t stop. She accosts me at least ten times a day.
‘Give us a smile, Mr Groen.’ The first couple of times I managed to produce a fake grin, but I have lost any inclination to smile.
‘I’ll be damned if she isn’t stalking me, at my advanced age,’ I complained to Evert, who thought it was a riot. At coffee time, at teatime, at lunch and at dinner, at least twenty times a day there she is, snapping pictures of me. A few days ago I politely asked her to stop, but it didn’t help. Last night I told her point-blank that I’d finally had it with having my picture taken. That did startle her, I think. We’ll have to wait and see if the message got through.
Evert offered to roll over Smit’s camera with his wheelchair a few times by accident, but I thought that wasn’t necessary – yet.
Another outing next week. Graeme is the organizer. He asked me, in confidence, if I thought Evert could, or would, want to come. I assured him that Evert is determined to enjoy life to the full with what strength remains to him, so he’ll definitely want to come. And that he is able to as well.
‘Once he’s dead, it might get a bit harder.’
‘That’s something Evert himself would say, Henk,’ said Graeme.
‘That’s right, I’m quoting him, more or less.’
Saturday, 19 September
Well, I must say it did have an effect: Mrs Smit has stopped taking pictures of me. And the fact that her camera mysteriously ended up in the aquarium can’t be the only reason. Now she just sidles up to me and sits down next to me ten times a day. I have remained cordial for as long as I could stomach it, have even tried getting up and sitting down somewhere else several times, have asked her not to follow me; but nothing helps.
‘I can sit where I want, can’t I, Mr Groen?’ she told me with the sweetest smile.
That woman is getting on my nerves. I suddenly know what an intrusion it is to be stalked. I keep getting the urge to hit her. And I have to stop Evert from doing it for me. Not only on account of the enormous brouhaha that would ensue; but I also fear there’s a good chance my friend’s brittle arm would break.
His weight is down to almost nothing now. Recently I walked into his room – after knocking, naturally – and saw him sitting in his wheelchair, wrestling with his shirt. His red braces were slung across his sunken ribcage. I was shocked. I could see every rib.
‘Admiring the results of my exercise routine?’ my friend said.
Carefully, with tears in my eyes, I helped him into his shirt, and pulled his braces up. Evert doesn’t like to be helped, but the time has come when he’ll just have to put up with it.
‘I had rather you did it than to have some nurse barge in,’ he said.
‘I can easily pop in every morning before coffee to help out a bit,’ I offered.
‘Well, all right then, Hendrik, only because it’s you.’ And he gave me a vicious pinch in the arm.
Sunday, 20 September
Twenty per cent of the elderly prefer to live in the traditional sort of care home. That’s what the research outfit ‘Platform 31’ has discovered. And if a research outfit says it, it must be true. The fact that the traditional care home is so popular is a bit inconvenient, since many of them are being demolished because the authorities will no longer pay for this type of housing. Women over seventy whose sole income is their state pension are particularly partial to going to live in an old-age home. It’s probably for the companionship and the twenty-four-hour alarm button. Yet they are precisely the demographic that can’t afford the new ‘market-rate’ fees for care, room and board. ‘Market-rate’ is the new term for too expensive. Old-age homes are closing their doors, and there are 30,000 elderly people outside waiting to be let in.
‘We’re still all right in here, but for how much longer?’ I heard at teatime.
‘Before you know it all the old-age homes will close, and then what?’
‘Then we’ll be just like a bunch of old slugs trying to make it across the A2 motorway,’ said Leonie with a shake of the head. She helped herself to another ginger biscuit.
Her tablemates nodded. A few of them did start to laugh, luckily, including yours truly. Then Mrs Smit pulled up a chair next to mine.
‘I’m coming to sit next to you, Mr Groen.’
‘Yes, you often do, lately. It’s making me rather nervous.’
‘Goodness, that’s not necessary, you know.’
‘Actually, I’d rather you left me alone.’
Smit nodded amicably, but remained firmly planted beside me.
Then Mrs Schansleh decided to butt in. Why not.
‘You’re glaring like the man with the sour grape on his shoulder, Mr Groen.’
I fled to my room. Ria and Antoine, who saw the whole thing, stopped by a little later to lend support. They are going to help me find a solution that’s short of a bloodbath.
Monday, 21 September
The director has yet to respond to the proposal put forward by some of the residents to house refugees in the vacant rooms. Edward has written a separate letter on his own initiative, asking if we couldn’t offer two innocent prisoners from Guantánamo a place to live as well, to make up for our government’s shameful refusal to accept them. There was far from unanimous agreement on that one.
‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ said Mrs Duits. ‘I bet they weren’t imprisoned all that time for being innocent.’
On Saturday I fetched a quarter pound of Serrano ham, which goes so well with a glass of white wine. I was going to share it with Evert yesterday. The ham was in one of those resealable plastic bags, which means the bag can be closed again, as long as you’ve been able to master pulling apart the two slippery, tenacious halves first, and then, with your shaky old fingers, peel off the fiddly plastic strip to reveal another sticky surface. Bleeding modern technology! I wasted five minutes on it before deciding not to let it spoil my mood. Scissors to the rescue, and three seconds later, hey presto. Then, just to be on the safe side, I ate the entire quarter pound, thereby removing the need to close the damn bag again.
I’m not done yet. The label on the ham said, in hard-to-read writing: ‘May contain: almonds, barley, brazil nuts, cashews, durum flour, egg, gluten, hazelnuts, lactose, lupine, macadamia nut, milk, mustard, oats, pecans, pistachios, rye, spices, sesame, soy, spelt, sulphite (e220-2270), walnuts, wheat’. I am not exaggerating! It’s a few ounces of ham for God’s sake, not a five-course meal. Just ham, which ‘may’ contain every nut and grain known to man, plus a dozen or so other ingredients. And perhaps even little specks of lupine! Did the ham delivery van sideswipe a flower stall, by chance?
While I’m complaining: I recently cooked pasta for Evert, one of the few things he’ll still eat, and it took both of us for ever to find out how long you were supposed to boil it. We finally discovered, with the help of a magnifying glass, a miniscule ‘6 minutes’ on one side of the box. Why oh why make it so small?
Tuesday, 22 September
The locked ward visiting hour was unusually busy yesterday. I suppose because it was World Alzheimer’s Day, which has been widely covered in the papers. Which made the children decide to visit their neglected dads and mums again for a change. After all, parents with dementia are no longer able to pick up the phone and casually remind their son or daughter how long it has been since their last visit.
I had brought Grietje a new puzzle. She was very happy with it, but still preferred to work on her old puzzle for the hundredth time. The new one remained neatly packed in its cellophane. She made a happy impression, as always. It makes my visits more bearable, but I don’t try to ignore the general misery there. It’s not only the patients who often grow anxious when they have visitors, but also their children or companions. You n
ever get used to not being recognized by someone you love or once loved. Just as you never get used to recognizing very little or nothing about a loved one as he or she once was.
I read in the paper that the ‘Deltaplan for Dementia’ doctors are again claiming that a cure will ‘shortly’ be found for Alzheimer’s, but for the people here, ‘shortly’ is too late. The same doctors wrote the book The Mystery of Alzheimer’s. Sounds a bit like a detective novel. A novel whose denouement we, in our old people’s home, won’t be around to see. And if Dr Sherlock Holmes doesn’t get on with it soon, it is estimated that by 2040 the Netherlands will have half a million people with dementia. The term ‘dementia-tsunami’ has already been coined. Another popular phrase is ‘refugee-tsunami’. It’s a veritable tsunami of tsunamis. I propose that the word ‘tsunami’ be restricted to tidal waves from now on.
An Old-But-Not-Dead Club outing is in the offing! We’re to present ourselves in the hall at noon.
Wednesday, 23 September
I must say the Old-But-Not-Dead presented rather a dashing sight yesterday. Arrayed in brightly coloured rain gear and umbrellas, we took in the windmills of the Zaanse Schans, the wooden-clog workshop, the birthplace of the Albert Heijn supermarket and the Verkade biscuit factory. The last Japanese and Chinese tourists of the season thought we were even more photogenic than the antique houses and windmills. As a group, we are too hardy to allow the weather to dampen our mood. I wonder what they’ll think out there in the Far East when they see photos of a little team of rain-drenched elders posing in, on top of and next to a 2½-metre-long, bright-yellow clog. In the restaurant Evert treated us to a round of ‘coffee with legs’, i.e. Irish coffee. Or we could order a coffee with cognac if we preferred, he said magnanimously, or tea with rum.