Fighting the Odds

It was an autumn romance. Chris and Ann had both been married and raised families. Ann's marriage had ended in divorce when her children were quite young but Chris had nursed his wife through a long degenerative illness, finally losing her, after years of hope deferred and heartache, at the age of sixty.
I don't know their story, except that Chris and Ann met through church and were in their mid sixties when they married. There was a picture of their wedding day on the landing, Ann elegant in a cream suit, Chris standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder. Ann's face looked radiant in the photo, laughing eyes that followed you as you went on up the stairs, wondering how life could be so cruel..
Ann and Chris had five good years and then Ann was diagnosed with Multi Systems Atrophy, a degenerative illness that does what it says on the tin, it destroys you on all levels, attacking organs, muscles and nerves and leading to a protracted and difficult death.
We became involved about three years after Ann's diagnosis. She was no longer mobile and her voice was a tiny whisper that seemed to cost her a huge effort. We visited three times a day but it was the morning visit that became famous. Ann was a feminine woman and she didn't let her disability change that. We used to joke it was a free beautician's training course doing that call. Ann had a shower with expensive gel and then there was a plethora of lotions and potions, some for her legs, others for her hands, face creams and the whole finished off with hair blow dried and liberally sprayed. Ann could hardly speak but that bathroom rang with laughter as she rolled her eyes when we used too much cream or accidentally gave her a quiff with the hairdryer. Disability cannot confine personality and Ann managed to make a genuine relationship with all the girls who cared for her.
Chris coped about as well as a man struck by lightning twice might be expected to. He was angry and frightened and he was far from happy to have his home full of carers and nurses. He denied each stage of Ann's illness, fighting against each piece of equipment as it was needed and bolting from the house to the shop as soon as the carers arrived each morning, returning so simultaneously with their departure that it was obvious he must have been waiting outside until the coast was about to be clear. The evening call usually found him well into a bottle of wine and often ready for an argument. He would complain about the amount of washing we were creating, the carers being five minutes late, anything he could find to vent his frustration. Gradually though the girls learned to cope with him, speaking back to him in a way that made me shudder but which made him laugh. Once or twice he was so unreasonable that he reduced one of the girls to tears and it was only Ann, gentle loving Ann, her eyes full of answering tears, squeezing their hands as they took her out of the room, that kept them there. Chris was always contrite the next day and the team stuck at the call because they understood that Chris was fighting his demons and because they loved Ann and her courage.
Ann had reached a point where transferring her to a wheelchair to get to the stairlift was becoming impossible. It was with a sinking heart that I suggested the solution to Chris. A tracking hoist runs on a rail set into the ceiling, it is smoother for the patient but it is quite a radical change to a house and, predictably, Chris would not countenance it. We were still circling the situation when Ann's health reached a crisis. She just seemed to fold in on herself, the staff could barely wake her and she didn't have the strength to sit up. The doctor was summoned and the carer was there when Ann said to him, in a tone more distinct than we had heard in two years "I've had enough" That was it, even Chris could not insist she was fine and Ann went to bed for the last time.
Our society is strange about death in older people. "He had a good innings" "She lived a full life", the trite phrases we hear used all the time imply somehow that nobody is devestated by the death of older people. We expect stoicism from the elderly bereaved and often it seems that this is how it is. Chris was not stoical. We continued caring for Ann for three days after the doctor's visit. She seemed unconscious but she squeezed the girls hands when they spoke to her and each morning they washed her in bed and put her creams and unguents on, they said they had done it for four years and they weren't changing now. It was highly emotional but the worst part was seeing Chris. He never left her bedside and he cried almost constantly saying "Don't leave me, don't leave me" Chris was not ready to let her go and it was agony to see the big determined man still railing against the lousy hand he had been dealt.
I went to the funeral and it was packed. I watched Ann's children directing people to the correct area, the members of the choir she had sung in, extended family, workmates. They smiled and shook hands but they looked devastated and I had the selfish thought with an accompanying moment of panic, that one day my children would be in this position and, like Ann, I wouldn't be there to put them back together afterwards. Chris followed the coffin and he had changed overnight into an old old man, dry eyed but visibly shaking and supported by the tearful children of his own first marriage, more people who were playing out this scene for the second time.
Chris died six weeks later, it wasn't "a good innings" it was a rip off, and he never got over it.