Happy Families? How do you do summer?

So I was talking to a friend (well, emailing) and she was feeling guilty.

‘The holidays are nearly over and I don’t feel I’ve done anything with the children.  I mean, what will they remember when they’re older?  Sitting in front of the TV all summer?’

I reassured her. I made the right noises. About how I feel we are under too much pressure to provide these perfect experiences for our children. About how I don’t feel a bit of boredom hurts a child.  But even so, I know what she means. 

This summer it’s been okay – I haven’t had the annual attack of the guilts.  James and I went to Morocco (however unsuccessful it was on the activity front, we got to hang out a lot together and that was plain lovely) and, right now, he’s in Berlin with Adrian.  In between he’s been working – seriously hard – at the local shop-cum-café and volunteering at the local retirement home.  He’s done a bit of cricket, seen a few mates, and, yes (we’re now coming to the dregs of it) spent many an hour shooting things (goals and zombies) on Xbox and stayed up hideously late to watch Family Guy.  But hey…

And it did make me think, again, how little we do as a family.  It’s always been like that and I’ve always felt bad about it.  Because some families just seem to manage it – they’re always popping off to the beach, or heading out for picnics or barbecues or camping or kayaking or biking or whatever.  And we…don’t.  

James' toes for a change.  :)

The problem is that we just don’t like doing the same thing.  Or at least, not in the same way.  Adrian isn’t exactly allergic to the beach but he’s never really enjoyed it.  When James was small he would occasionally make an effort and would sit, on a rock, in jeans, combat boots, bomber jacket, reading a book on the War, looking pained.   On the other hand, he loves seriously long hikes.  I see walking as a kind of contemplation; he sees it as an endurance challenge.  He loves pubs – he’s sociable, loves chatting to people, any people, about anything.  And he absolutely adores cooking, eating, drinking.  His eyes come alive if he hears the words ‘street food’ and if anyone says  ‘pulled pork’, he starts to salivate.  Whereas I can’t be doing with small talk, get bored rigid in pubs and would happily live on oats and grapefruit.   

But it’s not really that, is it?  I wonder if we learn this togetherness or solitude from our own childhoods.  When I think back, I can’t remember our family doing anything together really.  We didn’t have a car so there was no opportunity for day trips or picnics or trips to the sea.  Once a year we went on holiday to the beach but it never seemed a particularly joyous occasion.  Dad would sit in the pub or go for long walks while the rest of us would sit in the beach hut listening to the rain.  My memories of childhood are predominantly solitary.  It never bothered me, not one bit.  Maybe some of us are wired for family communality; some not so much.

But anyhow, what do you do?  Compromise?  Take it in turns to do whatever turns you on?  Or just accept that you’ve got different tastes and split up for activities?  Usually we opt for the latter but this summer we’ve notched up two exceptions.  We made it to the beach one day (well, for a few hours) and Adrian even admitted he quite enjoyed it.  It wasn’t the long lazy day of flopping in and out of the water for which I'd hoped.  In my head, I see a campfire and clinking glasses and laughter as the sun goes down.  I hear a guitar playing maybe, quietly against the bass beat of the soft waves.  There’s no angst, no watching the clock, no anxiety about what other people are or aren’t doing.  What a dreamer, huh?  But hey, let's not grumble. It was nice. 

And likewise, the other day when Adrian said he was going for a walk, I said I’d go with him.  ‘Really?’ he said.  ‘Are you sure?’  And we walked up into the woods and did a long circuit, crouching like commandos through the undergrowth, clambering up rocks, sliding down steep hillsides.  ‘Don’t you want to go to your tree and meditate or something?’ he said but I shook my head.  But it was nice he thought of it.  And we came back down into town and I said, ‘Do you want a drink?’ and we sat outside the pub and he had a few pints while I had a couple of decaf coffees and that was fine too. 

Maybe we just have to make a bit more effort.  Maybe we have to put aside our own selfish desires sometimes and fit in with what other people want?  Maybe we have to meet halfway. 

I don’t know.  How do you do it?  

The Mid Staffs Public Inquiry and my mother

I watched the BBC news this morning with a heavy heart.  Hearing the news that five other hospital trusts are to be investigated in the wake of the inquiry into the abysmal failings at Stafford Hospital.  For those of my readers who are not in the UK, the inquiry highlighted far-reaching neglect and abuse at the hospital, leading to a large number of unnecessary deaths between 2005 and 2008. 

It struck a personal chord.  I don’t know about Stafford Hospital but I do know about how my own mother died in Somerset’s Musgrove Park Hospital.  The lack of care she received was quite terrifying. 

I received a call from her nursing home to say she had become ill and had been sent to hospital. I went straight over.  It was late afternoon and nobody could find her.  Yes, the ambulance had dropped her off; yes, she was logged into the system but nobody knew where precisely she was. After an hour of desperately hunting, a doctor 

finally pulled me into her room and there was my mother, sunk in a wheelchair, barely conscious. 

‘I honestly thought she was going to die out in the corridor,’ said the doctor. ‘I couldn’t get a ward to take her so I brought her in here so at least I could keep an eye on her.’ 

The doctor said that, out of desperation, she had (knowingly) wrongly diagnosed my mother so that at least she could get onto the one ward which had vacancies.  ‘Please complain about this,’ she said, holding my arm as the orderlies came to take her away.  ‘Elderly people, in particular, are treated appallingly here.  It needs to come out.’ 

But, to be honest, I had other things on my mind. Like trying to keep my mother alive right there and then, and on through the night.  I figured getting onto a ward would make things better but it turned into the most surreal hell.  The ward was a Bedlam, people screaming and yelling. At one point the police came in, as one man started slashing a knife around.  My mother was petrified and she could barely breathe.  I could tell her condition was deteriorating swiftly.  Eventually, after several hours, I managed to persuade a junior doctor to come and examine her.  He said fluid had built up on her lungs and needed to be drained as a matter of urgency.  There was nobody to help so I stood handing him instruments and holding Mum while he performed the procedure right there, on the ward, in her bed. I don’t even think the screens went up.  I had to remind him to use antiseptic wash on his hands before he started.

I don’t know how we made it through that night, she and I.  I didn’t dare leave her bedside.  She was thirsty all the time; she was coughing up thick globbets of muck.  If I hadn’t been there I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have made it to morning.  The next day she was moved to another ward and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Surely it would be better here?  But no.  People weren’t screaming here but they were groaning and they were pushing bells which weren’t answered.  On this ward, the nurses’ station was separate, outside the main ward.  And it was very much a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.  On the news today, it was suggested that hospitals are understaffed and that nurses simply can’t give their patients the level of care they need.  Well, sorry, but it didn’t look that way from where I was sitting.  I stayed with Mum for three days and nights solidly because I couldn’t trust the nurses to keep her hydrated and to prevent her from choking on the muck from her lungs.  Eventually my sister was able to come down from London with some of her family and we were able to take turns in watching her, in trying to get her to eat, in giving her sips of water, freshening her up, keeping her breathing apparatus over her face.

It wasn’t me being paranoid.  In the bed next to Mum another family kept vigil over their mother – just like us, they didn’t dare leave her alone.  They watered and fed and watched her.  Between us we tried to help other people on the ward too – when bells repeatedly went unanswered.  Some of the patients clearly had dementia – they rang the bell a lot because they became confused and frightened.  And that, in turn, confused and frightened the other patients.    

Getting information out of staff was nigh-on impossible.  Everyone was perfectly pleasant, just not remotely involved somehow.  Eventually Mum died, on that ward. 

Why didn’t I complain?  I suppose because my mother had just died, and I was contending with guilt as well as grief.  I couldn’t quite let my mind dwell on what had happened. I couldn't quite believe what had happened.  I knew, logically, that there hadn’t been anything else I could have done but even so, I felt lacking.  Doubtless she would have died anyhow – her lungs had developed a thick carapace around them – but I hated that she had suffered more than necessary because of lack of good nursing care.

Also, I guess, we don't like to complain about the NHS.  It's free, we think: we should be grateful for what we've got.  And, yes, the NHS does do wonderful things and there are wonderful people in it, including amazing and dedicated nurses.  And not all departments and wards are equal.  My family has had good treatment at Musgrove.  But, on this occasion, the hospital, the NHS, and the nurses in particular, let us - and Mum - down.  And there was no way of putting it right.  

I should have complained.  I should have made a fuss.