A SEX THERAPIST, POP SINGER AND A BANKER WALK INTO A HOSPITAL ROOM...
A hospital blog
Dear Readers,
Until now, I have been shielded from the costs of disability because of our wonderful and vital NHS. This will change when I get home due to the considerable costs of remodelling the house, and my need for round the clock care.
I ask, therefore, that if you enjoy The Kureishi Chronicles, believe in paying for good writing, and want to help with my recovery, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
I wish nothing in my world had changed. But there have been interesting alterations. One of those has been my relationships with the women in my life, who have come to care for me in a more intimate and extended way.
When I first had my accident, and was in Rome, and then in the two London hospitals, I hated to be alone at all, and I had many visitors; family, friends, acquaintances and people I have worked with. But some relationships developed in ways I could never have anticipated, just as my demands for tenderness and friendship have developed. One friend, Miss Y, comes in at least once a week, though she has her own family, and she brings me food, massages my hands, and we spend hours together, talking about politics, dreams, schools, Shakespeare and anything else that occurs to us. She and I have been friends for years - I taught her writing at one point - but later would only meet occasionally to exchange information about our lives. Now I need much more from her as well as from other people, and I have received it, with additions.
Another woman, whom I was not so close to before, but who has suffered a lot in her life, now brings me food, sits with me for two or three hours, and reads the newspapers aloud. She will then clean my teeth, put my clothes out for the next day, lower my head and put me to bed, helping to prepare me for the night. Almost everyone who has visited me asks the same question: “is there anything I can do?”. Well, yes, there is plenty you can do if you really want to.
People have been doing things that I could never have imagined needing help with before: having my pyjamas changed, head scratched, being available for long conversations, and just sitting here while I doze. Other friends whom I would have only seen every couple of months have been visiting every day, in some cases. In the previous two general hospitals, Isabella says it got a little crazy, with people coming in and out at all times of the day. There were some odd meet ups, and some interesting ones in my cramped little room on the dementia ward. Two films directors discussing how they prefer digital to film, because it is simpler to revise - you can completely relight a scene in a cutting room. A psychoanalyst, sex therapist and a pop singer, discussing why children won’t got to school these days. A novelist and one of my sons chatting about social media and attention spans. A former banker brought me two bottles of Bollinger, much filthy political gossip and a VR head set, to cheer me up. I spent my life working in theatre, film, television and literature, and have therefore got to know scores of brilliant people: producers, writers, musicians, dancers and actors.
Isabella wondered whether if it was getting too busy, and if people were just coming to take a look at me, like some kind of curiosity. But I had had insomnia, was feeling alone and depressed, and these meet-ups with unexpected combinations of people reminded that there was still a world to be interested in. When I left the suburbs for London, I wanted to work in culture, and have always been fascinated by what goes in Britain. My visitors are a connection to a country I fear losing touch with.
It is remarkable what my injury has evoked in other people; what it has brought out in them, something I never expected. I wonder who I am for them, what I mean to them, but perhaps this is not something I can grasp, or even they know. But an illness such as mine, in which vulnerability is so central, clearly touches something in people, and I have found them to be truly devoted. But sometimes something about this worries me, because I wonder if I would be able to do the same for other people. I don’t know that I would; I doubt I would, but I just don’t know. Obviously I feel differently about illness now. I don’t see it so much as an intrusion, but as an inevitable and essential part of life, particularly as we live longer.
My relationship with my partner Isabella and with Tracey, the mother of my twin sons, has also changed. Now, they do far more for me than I can do for them, and I wonder what I will be able to do in the future to equalise things a little, as if that were necessary. Do relationships have to be equal? My female friends have gone further in their care than the men; they are more physical, nourishing and loving and they are less afraid of illness and hospitals than their male counterparts. When they arrive they always tidy up.
My bond with my three boys has also developed in ways I hadn’t expected. One of the boys was angry with me for a while; he would sit in my room in the hospital vibrating with fury, he couldn’t wait to get out and go home to get on with his life, as if I were an obstacle. And then sometimes he would return an hour later feeling guilty and annoyed with himself. But If I ever wondered why anyone would want to have children at all, I can assure you that it will pay off in the long run, and that they will love you as you loved them when they were helpless and dependant. I am saying all of this because someone asked me the other day whether I thought anything good had come out of this catastrophe. I disliked the question because I didn’t want to credit this horror with any progress. But I have had to learn to make demands of the people around me, and I cannot worry if I am inconveniencing them, and if I do, they have to tell me, so a new channel of communication has opened up in me; I cannot hide my thoughts or wishes, I’ve had to learn how to ask. I guess I like to believe that I was a relatively inhibited person, who didn’t want to be a nuisance, but all of this is subterfuge or false; sometimes being direct is the only way through.
I certainly worried at the beginning whether this accident would render me weaker and less powerful as a father, partner, or friend. But I am in fact more powerful now as a sick person. The sick can dominate a family, sucking out all the oxygen, as many readers will recognise. To be sick is sometimes to have a stranglehold over others; because of your condition they cannot refuse you, and they might feel that their demands can’t rivals yours. This is something I would like to think more about, or even write about, when I finally get home next week, and begin a new life.
Your loving writer,
Hanif
Dear Hanif,
As I write this after reading your latest note I realise you give a lot to others, whether men or womem , know or unknown, friend, simple admirer or any other way in which they interact with you. You give them the opportunity to give in ways they may never have had before, to be unselfish and give whatever gifts they have acquired over their lives whether long or short. You are in a way a facilitator, you've given each one the chance to help another person in their own particular way, it is a gift to you as the recipient but a gift to them too. They learn they too can do, help, in ways they may never have imagined before, simple or demanding they forget the self for a while.
If we have learned anything in this last difficult years it is that we desperately need other people, real people not those we see on screens in some far off existence. When the ability to interact in person with friends, family and other's is taken from us, we live in a kind of limbo... is this type of living or surviving? Maybe a discussion for another time.
Never underestimate what you have given to the many with whom you have interacted in some way since your first post, your honesty, as you have faced the unimaginable difficulties you have, and will continue to have, has been humbling to those of us who , perhaps, take our lives , as they are, for granted. I number myself amongst those people too but have been reminded again that life is frail and we take it for granted at our peril...I ,for one ,needed reminding of this. Thank you, Hanif.
Lis xx
You have had so many chapters of this new life of yours just in this one year. Soon you will begin another new life at home and more chapters to come. And with so many real friends and family members who truly love you, right there to support you as you continue to progress. Your last article made me feel so hopeful and happy for you. And weirdly for me!