In the fires of dementia

It’s official;
Mum loves it when I stroke her cheek.

The moment the front of my index finger
touches her skin,
her eyes close,
her shoulders relax,
her chin quivers slightly,
and she’s in heaven,
purring like a pussycat.

On this particular occasion,
we were in the respite ward
during the Men’s Final.

The man who pulls his sweatshirt up over his head
and yells ‘help’ at the top of his voice
because he thinks he’s been buried alive
was yelling ‘help’,
shaking a cup
stuck to the finger
he was about to break.

The ladies in attendance weren’t impressed.
‘Just leave him be.
He does it on purpose,’ one said,
but she’s not to know;
she only arrived last week.

Carefully taking the cup from his hand
he saw me through the hole he’d made
and I could just make out a man smiling
in his own darkness.

When I sat down again
to stroke Mum’s face,
I noticed the lady
who reckons she should be at home
because ‘there are young children inside
and I said I’d only be ten minutes
and it’s been gone an hour now
but these people won’t let me out’
standing over Mum and I,
smiling in wonderment.

‘Do you do that for everyone?’ she asked,
and my thinking head suddenly brightened
and I started to think my crazy thoughts;

What a fab idea!
There could be a room
where carers stroke the faces
and even the feet and hands
of old people,
a place where they heal
with the human touch
every day for twenty minutes!

I imagined a very ordinary room
with drawn curtains
and no telly blearing
and no kettles boiling
and no crockery crashing
and I must admit I even laughed
at how amazing it would be,
a place of groans and sighs,
touch like the sprinkling of holy water
in a warm sauna of peace
to dampen the fires of dementia.

I nearly asked her to come and sit down
so I could stroke her face with my left hand,
a little two-for-one on the couch,
but I wasn’t brave enough for that
so I just waited for her to walk away,
holding her gaze with a sorry grimace.

I’d have kicked myself if I’d said
I only did it for my Mum
because that might have made her cry
(she cries easily, this one,
especially when she’s lost her doll)
and the moment I turned away,
my dark side thought she might clip me
’round the lug-hole.

I use a pretty gormless smile
when I’m stroking Mum’s cheek in public,
now I’ve stopped thinking it weird,
and when I looked around
at the faces in the room
I noticed that all the ladies
and even the man
who pulls his sweatshirt over his head
wore beaming smiles for me
and I think I wanted to cry.

They wanted to be stroked too
but instead of ruefully glaring at me
and wishing Mum dead
they were actually enjoying it too.

Just watching someone’s face being stroked
was enough to show them that love lived
and I knew then that my idea
for a human-touch room was a winner.

The nurse looked up
from her ancient computer,
where she’d feverishly been typing
for twenty-five minutes
the things she’d done in the last half-hour
to satisfy the invisible management
who would be better placed
stacking shelves at a convenience store
preferably next to a bingo hall,
and asked if anyone would like a cup of tea.

Don’t get me wrong;
the staff are brilliant
and the management aren’t to blame
but their time is crippled,
their skills strangled
by requests from the tower’s magpies
of insurance demands
and task-completion forms
as required by the Data Protection Act
of Domesday,
running around pulling her hair out
looking for the cups
and sugar and teabags
that needed attention
at the last budget-crunching meeting.

Everyone wanted a cup of tea,
so off nurse ran
from ward to ward
sourcing ingredients.

Everyone except Mum
who couldn’t hear a word
deep in silent bliss
with her beautiful little smile
stroked by a solitary finger.