and so now that I live in Ratmalana I hardly visit the mothership, except on occasions, and yesterday was one. Mahagedara is half way across the country that could be a problem too, just the sheer aggravation of getting there in public transport. But duty occasionally calls.
So there I was yesterday evening, at dusk on Dickmans Road (now called Lester James Pieries mawatha to confuse both tourists and three wheelers alike) pondering slow wittedly and with genuine dread, as to whether i should take a bus, or a train or a combination of train, bus, and threewheel to get there, when an adorably wizened old lady practically falls against me, and hangs on to me for life, saying she is feeling faint and asking how to get to Maradana.
Sigh.
OF course.
Just what I need right now.
I ask her why she wants to get to maradana- where is her home and she says Colombo in a firm and defiant voice. (Reminds me a lot of my mother, this one)
Completely lost and pathetic and angry at the world too. Shes not begging for help but demanding the universe help her. and if course when you are pathetic and demand things like that along comes a sucker like me.
Worst of all, when I again ask where her home is she says Salamulla which is of course a town next to where Im heading
so I bundle her in a threewheel and off we head
about an hour and a lot of taxi fare later, we the tuk tuk driver and me both urgently tell her to tell us how to get to her home, but she is vague and also slightly defiant about it. Knows where it is and dosnt actually. No we should have turned off there. No that way. NO no its this way.
Intersperced with grateful mutterings that God must have sent me along(if so I demand to know why me)were also scary moments when she seemed to be in some other world.
So after some rather giddying sightseeing of the entire wellampitiya region, and a number of mistaken landmarks, grilling resident tuktuks who by the way knew Exactly who she was and where she was from with chilling certainty (though quite often she didnt !)... we landed her safe at home, and with much happy cringing, wrested ourselves away from a grateful family and ran along. My fare was of course half my weekly transport budget, but it seemed to have brought some comfort to a tired person so I wrote it off.
This of course brings me to what I would be doing at that age.
At least she had a houseful of kids and grandchildren who seemed cheerfully eager to have her back regardless of her geriatric disruptiveness. Im not sure about if I want to cause that much aggravation, and if that was the case, what I would do, and if anyone would stick around and tolerate it. Not sure what a lot of people around would do, because they seem to have far fewer children, and also humans seem to be living separately as much as possible, and rejecting the whole concept of family, in many places.
because like it or not there just might be a time when you clean forget who and where you are.
more about dementia and aging at
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