musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

And thereby hangs a tale


As I have begun to sense the shadows of my still unfolding epilogue, I’ve also come to appreciate the stories we elders tell to those around us. They do not always contain great wisdom, perhaps, and yet they bespeak the years of experience that have brought us this far. Sometimes, Age can teach the personal stories a book cannot: lessons learned, dangers avoided -the little things it’s best to know before they happen. Experience is unwritten knowledge; wisdom is knowledge transmitted. I was reminded of this as I wandered lonely as a cloud through my own memories of my grandmother.

“When I was just a teenager, your grandfather and I came across the country on the train in what they used to call Colonist cars…” my grandmother would often say when I went to visit her in the hospital. Presumably, she was there to control her ever spiralling blood pressure, but I think it was simply a way of keeping her safe until a bed in an elder care facility became available. The nurses always smiled at me when they came into her room, but apart from holding her hand and straightening her pillows, they never seemed to do much with her. They all liked her, I think, but they wondered how I managed to stay with her for so long each time.

“Your grandmother doesn’t seem to remember me from visit to visit,” one of the nurses said to me one day in the hall when I was coming out of her room. “I’m glad you’re here again today though, G; she seems to be so much happier after she sees you…”

I suppose the nurse was right; grandma never knew what day it was, but she did remember me and often what we had talked about on my last visit. Her short term memory was sadly deficient, but I’d quickly learned that she had a stack of memories that sustained her even when she’d forgotten she was in a hospital room. The trick, I’d learned fairly quickly, was to talk about her important memories; that wasn’t hard, because I was as fascinated with her history as she seemed to be. There were things I don’t think she’d ever felt were important enough to tell to my mother, though -at any rate, I’d certainly never heard about them when I was younger -but maybe my mother had simply never asked grandma about them.

On each retelling, a new detail would emerge, although the narrative in the message was unaltered. She seemed inordinately proud of the train journey and the skills she had acquired after the long boat ride she and my grandfather had endured from England. She was never sure of the year when that all took place, but I’m pretty certain it was somewhere around the beginning of the last century.

“Every time the train stopped to fill up the engine’s boilers, your grandfather and all the men would jump off the train and grab a load of wood for the stoves in our car…” She would usually hesitate at his point, in an attempt to remember some detail or other. “Every car had a little stove at each end I think… They were supposed to burn coal,” she would add, closing her eyes to see and no doubt hear the car, “but we didn’t have any, so we used wood.” Then she’d nod her head, satisfied she’d got it right.

“Were there a lot of people in each car?” I’d ask, when she seemed to be swimming in the memory and forgetting I was still sitting there.

She’d open her eyes, sigh, and smile at my voice. “Oh yes, G! Counting all the children, there must have been 40 or 50 of us.”

“It sounds quite crowded,” I’d add as her memories crowded around her.

One time though, I remember her expression turned serious and she stared across the room as if she could see the inside of the colonist car from her bed. “Too crowded, I’m afraid,” she said and shook her head sadly. “The kids would be running up and down the coach screaming and yelling above the noise of the train…” She closed her eyes again, but this time only briefly, not happy with what she saw. “There was bound to be an accident…”

I’d never heard about an accident in the car before, so I sat up a little straighter in my seat.

“It was snowing outside and the train was moving slowly because of it, I think. Some of the children were huddled around one of the stoves to keep warm even though their parents had discouraged it… But kids will be kids, I guess…”

She was quiet for a few seconds, and her hand moved slowly up to her mouth in the throes of her memory.

“Somebody had been boiling water for tea…” She suddenly stared at me. “They never filled the kettles very full because of the movement of the train…” It was important for her to tell me that so I wouldn’t blame anybody. “But one of the children knocked into the stove when the train lurched, and some boiling water splashed on his hand.”

I have to admit my mouth dropped open. “So… So what happened then?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Well, the train was just pulling into a siding to let another train going in the other direction train pass –that may have been why things were rattling so much: they must have been putting on the brakes…”

My eyes were boring into her face at that point and I think it spurred her to remember more details. “One of the men ran to the door and jumped off the train to get a handful of snow, then ran alongside to get back on.” She managed a little smile. “He put it on the burned hand of the child, and when the train actually stopped somebody managed to find a pail, filled it with snow, and placed the little boy’s hand entirely in it.”

“Was the boy…?” I was going to ask more questions, but her smile reassured me about the boy’s condition.

“You’ve got to be so careful with children, G.” She sent her eyes to perch on my face for a moment, their presence on my cheeks surprisingly warm. “Remember that, G,” she added, as her mind drifted back to the colonist car and its many stories.

But soon her eyes returned to roost and snuggled safely behind her drooping lids, their migration finished for the afternoon. It had been a good day for me and I suspect for her. The little smile  that blossomed on her face told me she was home again, so I kissed her forehead and left her in the colony car with her young husband on their forever journey.

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