Chocolachillie

A comment over at TerriblePalsy sparked some thoughts. About the practice of medicine, healthcare providers and a discerning consumer culture. I have quite a lot to say so I’m not going to edit it as thoroughly as I usually do.

I can’t speak for other countries in the world, but reading other people’s blogs I gather that things are the same, no matter where you go.

In South Africa we ostensibly have some of the best doctors in the world. South Africa was where the first heart was transplanted, because of our problems with HIV/AIDS we have done a lot of research on this particular issue and overseas doctors have told me that they come to South Africa to practice in hospitals like our local Edendale hospital because here you’ll find the most unusual diseases and build up the most knowledge. Mmmm…

Something you may not know about me is that I’m a specialist librarian. I currently work in an architecture and engineering library. But somewhere at the beginning of my career, I worked at Edendale hospital as a medical librarian. My job was to help put together a decent medical library and help out with information queries from doctors and nurses.

The medical field was very interesting. I picked up the jargon quickly. If you have an aptitude for languages, you do, for most medical terms derive from classical languages like Latin and Greek. The research part is easy if you are a trained information specialist. No rocket science there. In fact, I suspect that even rocket science isn’t rocket science if you have an aptitude for it, remains interested in it and have been trained in it.

My problem was not the subject field, but the attitude of the professionals.

All professional people have a certain attitude. Most architects are a bit arty-farty. Engineers are factual – and probably the easiest group to work with. Quantity surveyors are anal. In the best possible way. Attorneys can be difficult (sorry Dirk and Jacqui!) Town Planners are workaholics and usually very reserved. And so on.

But doctors! I could write pages upon pages of my time at Edendale, helping out at Addington and computerizing Kind Edward VIII and Wentworth medical libraries. Let me just say that I hated working with doctors.

These doctors thought they were God’s gift to mankind. They came from South Africa and most other parts of the world. Most of them could not speak their patients’ language. And when they came to ask for research, they could barely explain themselves or pronounce the conditions or diseases they were looking for in English. That was the overseas doctors. The South African doctors were just… assholian? One guy, an elderly South African, regularly visited the library. He would take the latest copy of the British Medical Journal, sit down in the most comfy armchair and promptly go to sleep with the journal draped over his face. He was a specialist and worked office hours only – in case you thought the poor guy worked nights and had no sleep. I’m not saying that these doctors weren’t good and there for the best of reasons. I’m merely saying that I often had my doubts about their efficacy- given the great divide between them and their patients and what I know of Zulu culture. And that their bedside manner probably didn’t matter, given the fact that their patients could not understand them and that their go-betweens could barely speak English too.

All of them were shameless thieves as far as books and journals are concerned. But that was the least of my worries.

So, as far as professional attitude goes, doctors tend to be a most unattractive bunch in my opinion and I had no time or interest in either fawning over them to feed their gigantic egos or becoming a world class bitch myself. Which was probably the only way to deal with them effectively. So, I was only too glad when a permanent post was created and I could once again work amongst decent people.

Let’s talk facts though. (more…)

Marco and I went to the last Toptots session for this term. His last ever. I would have felt more sentimental and tearful about it if he wasn’t so completely revolting the whole time we were there.

To make a list of his misdemeanors would take too long. I consider it sufficient to say that, even if there were more sessions to go to, I would seriously consider dropping out after today.

For posterity I wish to leave you with the two moments he was actually behaving and co-operating.

And with the image of his brother: Watching and learning….

Golden children dancing
To the sound of your amusement, your pride
Beautiful, talented, clever

Where his face belongs is an open space on your wall
Emptiness in your wallet where his image should be
Empty as your memory is filled with one word
Damaged

You were shamed, scandalized, wronged
This only happens to other people
Less worthy

And so you went missing.
Missing out on his love.

You couldn’t give acceptance, support,
Wouldn’t watch. It offended.
You had no interest in learning,
And so you never saw that he wanted to make you proud.

What the people said or thought was so loud that it drowned out
The language of his eyes.

You say you were worried. You said that you prayed from afar.
Thank you. I suppose.

I know you were too busy:
Condemning
Denying hope
Negative
Negative
Death

Keep your silver pieces. They never meant much anyway.

We have a set of a few steps in our passage going down to the level of our bedroom. When we moved into the house I griped about the steps and the stupid people who would put steps in the middle of a passage. (Sorry Mr. McCormack. I know there was no other way.) Non-stop.

And indeed, I fell down those steps in the middle of the night going to the bathroom with monotonous regularity. Once even while I was pregnant.

One day I complained about the stupid three steps in our passage to a good friend of mine. She looked at me with a slight smile.

“Nelba,” she said, “there are four steps.”

I counted them and yes, sure, there were four. My perception and the reality were two different things. Different enough to trip me up. My problem was not the steps, but my perception of them.

Guess what? Ever since that day, I’ve never fallen down the steps again

There is nothing that depletes joy as quickly as the misconception that perfection exists.

As a child I envied my friends their sense of security. Perceptive from the start, I knew that I was different. And I thought that the difference was that they were happy and I was not. I was right, incidentally. But what I didn’t realize was that happiness is a choice.

This became a pattern throughout my life. I would rush through life towards the next thing that I thought would make me happy. Work, marriage, parenthood.

My love for Marco was tainted with always falling short of my own expectations as a mother. Loren would be my chance to get things perfect.

And then Loren wasn’t perfect, despite/ because of my best efforts.

The hardest learning curve of my life, started.

I’m not quite sure when the turning point came. But one day I realized that life isn’t perfect. Never. Imperfection is normal. And that wishing for an unattainable ideal was robbing me of the moment:

Being loved for being Mama. Not for being perfect.

I confided – who knows why, I generally don’t confide in strangers? - that we craved stability after our middle child, Loren, died last year. He gulped, said that he was sorry and then proceeded to ask me questions that at first made me squirm but were so spot-on that I finally realized: This man’s child died too.

Yes, he said. It was a cot death when his first-born daughter was only eight weeks old. They had tasted parenthood. Just tasted it.

They had two sons after her, but he will always miss his little girl. It was long ago – his sons are almost grown.

And so we talked – two strangers made intimate by our shared grief. I felt no shame at the tears streaming down my face. He knows about the stupid things people say, about fathers going silent, about feeling guilty for making love to your wife. He started doing counseling with parents facing similar situations and realized that the divorce rate was close to 80% He knows the expectation that grief will last forever and that it will lock out all joy.

Only to surprised by reality: The knowledge that our children were beautiful beyond belief and that their lives meant something. That we miss them, but that we need not spend our lives blinded by grief. That we will see them again and that they are in a better place than we are. For now. And ultimately that God cares more than we’ll ever realize. If it wasn’t for his daughter’s death, he would never have known this most important fact.

Yes, one day, you walk out of your office on your way to give a quote to a woman you don’t know. You look at the trees and marvel at their beauty, wondering what all of this means: This earth, this beauty, this existence. But your wonder is merely abstraction, because you have reached a place of peace where what you already know, is more important than what you don’t know.

Despite his excellent abilities and qualifications as a teacher, my father decided to farm. He first rented properties and planted crops until he could afford a farm of his own. My maternal grandmother, who loved him like her own son, cried when she saw his soft hands with the slender fingers turn into the hands of a farmer. But it was those same hands – the farmer’s hands – that held mine after Loren was born. “It was NOT you fault. Don’t you dare believe that for one moment!” he whispered fiercely.

It was thus the hands that I noticed first on the photograph. They reminded me of my father’s hands – calloused and stained with tractor oil – the hands of a man who does manual labour. But they were lifted protectively to keep the baby girl in his arms from falling forward.

“Blind father reunited with his daughter” was the caption of the newspaper article. (The Mercury 3 March 200 And I was hooked.

This father fought the authorities over getting custody of his baby girl after she was taken away from him late last year. His wife died of cancer in November, leaving him the sole custodian of their baby girl and his wife’s older children. Despite the fact that he had not only been nursing his sick wife, but has also been the primary caregiver of all the children for a while, the children were removed from his care by social workers and placed with his sister-in-law. They claimed that he would be unable to look after the children by himself and that he would not be able to support them on his meager salary.

Some time last week, the courts awarded him custody of his daughter. The man said that the older children could decide for themselves whether they wanted to stay with him or not, but that he knew he was capable of supporting his daughter financially and taking care of her. He has since remarried.

There is nothing as leveling as moving. I’ve been lucky in that I had to move once as a child and only a few times as an adult.

I often joke that I would like to get rid of all my possessions to the point where everything fits into one suitcase and travel the world. But, in truth, I would find that way too unsettling. I need my things around me. I need space. I need a home. I hate that moment when my things are packed into the moving van and I have no place to sit down and have a cup of tea. No home.

This past week-end we visited Dirk’s new partner in Estcourt – the little town he proposes to start working in on 2 May. The idea was for Dirk to travel the 50 minutes there and back every day. But we soon realized that it would not be easy and furthermore that he would not be able to do it forever. We were merely postponing the inevitable. So, we took the plunge, had a look at a rental property and decided to relocate there at the end of April.

I saw a rental agent yesterday – a nice guy who’s already handling our other property. He walked through our house and gave me his honest opinion. “Charming and rustic farmhouse with city amenities. A bit small, lacking a second inside entertainment area, but compensating for it with various undercover outside entertainment areas. Nice pool, bedrooms accessible from the outside, showers.” Things people tend to like. No doubt there would be people who’d absolutely hate it, but I know that there will also be people who’d fall in head-over-heels in love with it at first glance. Like we did. The problem with a slightly upmarket rental property is that it becomes cost-ineffective for the owner. But selling it at this point would be stupid.

The house we are moving to in Estcourt seems adequate for our needs. The yard is fenced. It is in a cul-de-sac. It faces away from the cold winds coming from the mountains, hides behind a hill. It has a fireplace. It is in a mock-Spanish style – a style that I feel do NOT belong in South Africa; thus making my objection intellectual in nature - but its location makes that aspect of it rather charming. (I’m thinking bougainvilleas, pelargoniums etc. One of my colleagues says I should henceforth call it our hacienda!)It unfortunately also has wall-to-wall carpets past their sell-by date and bathtubs in a questionable shade of pumpkin. But, hey, if you have to say one thing about me it would be that I like a challenge! I know that I can make it look nice and I’m sure we’ll be happy there. My first impression of it was favourable and I trust that.

One salary. Ouch. Since we were married I’ve been used to earning an income. It isn’t going to be easy doing without – even if it is only for a while. But I also feel that the kids need me at home right now.

We are moving closer to the Drakensberg – in fact the town overlooks the Drakensberg to the west. So there is plenty of cheap entertainment available. Driving for 30 minutes brings you to arguably one of the most beautiful places in South Africa where there are plenty of free day-walks, trout-fishing, bird-watching and many other lovely things to do and see. There is only one fast-food place being built in town and two small supermarkets. There is no real need to spend money, as long as we have food on the table. And we will have food on the table even if I have to start a vegetable garden!

We won’t be able to afford a maid or a gardener. I don’t mind cleaning and gardening but I’m not so fond of washing and ironing. Oh well, I guess compensation comes in the form of two bright faces that I no longer have to kiss goodbye every morning…

Leaving memories behind is somewhat more difficult. There is the little grave. And I feel as if my heart would break thinking of leaving the place he was born and where he died. But considering that we have been surviving for almost a year now in a world without Loren, this is just one more hurt to face and live with. Just as I had to accept that he resides no longer in that body with its restrictions, I have to accept that there is no part of him bound to a geographical place. He goes with us, in our hearts. Always.