Great Expectations

The Communist has been living in the nursing home since just before Christmas, though with a month's break which he spent in the grim Beckett Wing of St James's Hospital in Leeds.

His brain is working fine, mostly, except where it fails to tell him that the rest of him really isn't. He has only got one leg, of course: his hands don't work properly - he can't even sign his name - and has no strength at all. His eyes don't seem to work in unison any more so he finds it hard to read.

His best friend, Syd, visits him often - he is the same age as The Communist and they have been friends since they were fourteen or so.

Now they are both eighty-four-and-a-half. Syd is remarkably physically fit in many ways, but unfortunately is nearly blind. Since he's been like this for over twenty years, he doesn't really pay much attention to it, and is often to be seen walking along fast and with determination, using a white cane.

Now the problem is, Syd can hear the Communist's voice, which sounds fine, but can't see how he looks. So he comes up with lots of interesting ideas for the Communist, all completely unworkable, and the Communist repeats them as if they were dictated by Karl Marx himself.

"Syd says I need a laptop. He says I could surf the internet. Could I borrow yours?"

So, where to start? He couldn't switch it on, or understand anything about it, or press any of the buttons, or even read a web page if he found one.

But if I say this to him, it sounds really negative, and I know it would upset him. So I try to distract him and hope he forgets about it - though really, he isn't particularly forgetful and will doubtless mention it the next time I visit.

So - bring in the laptop and prove to him how much he's deteriorated, or avoid the issue and let him think that I cruelly won't lend it to him?

And then there's the artificial leg. He mentions that every time I visit. "When I get my artificial leg - - ". The trouble with this one is that when he says that, anyone who doesn't know much about such things chimes in with "Oh yes, that'll be good, when do you get it?"

It takes seventy percent more energy to walk with an artificial leg than with a real one. So for a man of eighty-four-and-a-half who has lost all his strength, it's a non-starter. But if I say this - and I have done, many, many times, in many different ways - I just feel cruel.

He does take in explanations of most things so I think the reason he keeps coming back to the artificial leg idea is that he's hoping that, one day, I'll say "Yes, that's a great idea, it's coming tomorrow and you'll be able to walk again by the end of the week."

When I'm not there he tries more things out in the hope of getting a positive response. I reckon he thinks he'll get away with it more with other people who aren't Cruel Daphne.

"He says he's going to go to visit Michael in Amsterdam," says my mother in tones of panic.
"And how, exactly is he going to do that?" I ask.

Of course some of his friends who were visiting him had said, when he announced this far-fetched and impossible idea, "Oh yes, great idea, all the airlines make provision for disabled passengers."

After three hours in the wheelchair he's exhausted. My brother lives at the top of one of those tall, thin Amsterdam houses, with hundreds of narrow stairs.

To get him into the wheelchair or out of it, or onto the easy chair, or onto the bed, takes two nurses and a hoist. And he has to be turned in the middle of the night, and that takes two nurses too.

Of course it's good that he's making positive plans for the future. It's just that I tend to be the one who has to burst his bubble, and I hate it.