The kindness of strangers

My mother was on her last lap this time five years ago: at 99½ she'd had a medical crisis and been ambulanced to hospital. The regular hospital staff reckoned palliative care and a week would see her out. But a young new on the job and tech-savvy surgeon offered her a minimally invasive intestinal stent that would solve the immediate problem and let her be discharged. And it was so! She refused to go "home" but spent the last 4 months of her life in "A Home" in the next village. She then proceeded to 'put her affairs in order' using my power-of-attorney sister as proxy. "Sell the house" she said. "Is there any ready money?" she said. My sister was then instructed to write bequest cheques to a bunch of people unmentioned in The Will. The fellow who pottered in the garden; the other super right-wingnut who mowed the lawn; the chef in the nursing home, whom she'd known since he was a chap and did a neat line in petit-fours. The cheques weren't big enough to dent a 21stC mortgage but enough for a lorra tinnies . . . or petit fours. It must have been nice to be able to wrest agency from adversity and make some acquaintances windfall happy

When Pat the Salt died a month ago, there wasn't any ready money. His 99½ year old estate was there-or-there-abouts enough to cover the funeral and he didn't last long enough to get the windfall centenarian cheque from An Uachtaráin. His decline had been a ten year journey, however, involving care and attention from a couple of dozen people from several different agencies and institutions. Those men and women (mostly women!) had done a lot more for him (and up close and personal!) than mowing his lawn!

Last night Bobby Bunter and the available two of Pat's daughters invited all the carers to a slap up feed in O'Neills at the top of Main Street, Tramore. The idea is not original to our family but it does the job and is recommended. Nobody made speeches and there wasn't much talk about Pat, whose care had brought us all together. But I heard plenty of stories of economic hardship and assault-in-school from the 1960s, 1970s . . . and 1990s. I reflected that poverty and generosity are not mutually exclusive. It also turns out that a well-presented slice of banoffee pie will go a ways to making a young feller happy.

It was also interesting to reflect on the cousinage among the carers. It's almost as if the craft of giving runs in families. As Blanche "Streetcar" DuBois put it "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Or again, Charles de Lint: Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back. And maybe something something Atatürk ?