Morning!
So my blog holiday since Friday was timely. My dear old dad Edgar got rushed into hospital on Sunday just as he and my mum Anne had sat down for their usual Sunday Lunch at The Hadlow Manor in Kent.
The ambulance was there in no time and the young managers in the restaurant remained calm and laid Edgar gently on the floor whilst they waited for the paramedics. Of course for my mum the wait was excruciating. Soul mates from the time they met when they were 20 and 18, they are also vibrant, connected and ever profoundly present in the world at 81 and 83. Edgar even teaches a weekly class in the use of the internet to 'old' people! ... at the University of the Third age. To say that Anne and Edgar are an inspiration would be to sell them short. Don't get me wrong - we have had our many ups and downs like most kids and their parents, and I wasn't always easy - but fundamentally they have never been afraid to tell me it 'as it is' - and sometimes, no often - the 'as it is' bit is not what I have wanted to hear!
They have always supported me unconditionally as an artist (they knew this about me many years before I did!) and as I was growing up often made it possible for me to circumnavigate frequently choppy waters. Hard as this might be to believe for anyone who has known me as an adult but I was a rather solitary child, odd and slightly on the edge of things, eager for acceptance and yet living pretty much full time by myself in my imaginary world. (Not much changed there you see - just better at being with real people now I hope!)
So on Sunday after he collapsed - Edgar was taken to hospital by a crew of great paramedics. He was 'made comfortable', and although the consultant said he was critical, all the family said at least 'he was in the right place' (?). I felt reassured by this and waited until Monday to do the practical things my mum needed and to take her to visit him.
I haven't been to this hospital for many many years - its changed a great deal from how remember it. I nearly died of pneumonia there when I was six (even got the last rites from Father Heggarty with his musty smelling funny dress) but it didn't cross my mind that of course it would now be a very different place from the rather ramshackle set of huts it had been in the sixties.
Arriving in the car park and seeing the huge white and glass building in front of me I felt that I had arrived at some NASA space station.
You can't deny the clean lines, the uncompromising statement of a modern temple in which to do illness. It has an austere beauty in many ways. I can imagine the architect imagining it as he designed it - a perfect-germ-free-anonymous receptacle for the treatment of the diseased body - oh and a place to be born in and to die in, managed expertly by men and women in white starched uniforms. In some ways this modern idea of living chimes with other public buildings and spaces, airports, universities, shopping monoliths, even down to the Costa Coffee and the WH Smith's.
Friendly, chirpy receptionists kindly directed us with a map to the Medical Assessment Unit (even that sounds faintly sci-fi). The walk to the unit involved several long corridors, and vast expanses of white walls. Not an image, painting sculpture or photograph to be seen. Just white barren walls. I commented on the absence of anything artistic on these walls which to me just begged for exhibition. My mum disagreed and said a hospital needs to be clinical. It slightly surprised me to hear her say this, as she was a nurse in her professional life and regaled me growing up with stories of how the 'bedside manner' was fundamental in healing. The neat corridor of the ward with identical white and metal ensuite rooms lining one side, struck me intensely in their uniformity. All lined up and efficient. As I passed, I can only admit to a certain voyeurism, peeking into the rooms I saw people lying quietly in their beds - although they are not really beds like I think of beds. They are more like flexible contraptions for lifting, turning and attachment to machines. The beeping noises of monitors marking for some a soon-to-be departure.
On reaching my Dad's room at the end of the corridor, I was struck by the contrast of this sterility and the vibrant green of the trees and grass outside the window, some teasing reminder and echo of the natural world. This juxtaposition making the separation from everyday soulful life all the more palpable for me.
Now here's a thing that really strikes me as being so odd, no flowers allowed. Its all logical of course, flowers carry pests and germs and are out of our control. But flowers also carry innate and visible energy and most of all beauty. I know myself the power of beautiful flowers, I keep fresh ones on my dining room table year round. They feed my heart and soul and sometimes their smell transports. And I guess that this is at the core of it for me.
My constant companions for over twenty years are the works of writer Thomas Moore.
http://careofthesoul.net/
Moore was a catholic monk for thirteen years - and then left the religious life to become a psychotherapist, and latterly he has been an adviser to the medical profession internationally. I revisit his book The Dark Nights of the Soul at key periods of change in my life, but only recently read his book Care of the Soul in Medicine
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Care-Soul-Medicine-Guidance-Patients/dp/1401925642.
For me his work is a revelation and contains many guiding principles on life, love and art that resonate profoundly for me.He says of his life purpose:
“My life work is an attempt to ground the pure, visionary spirit in the imperfect, intoxicating sensuousness of worldly life.”
My experience of the hospital on Monday and my Dad's room and the way human beings are worked off their feet to treat their patients through machines, tests and measurements all point to the lack of understanding of the place of the whole human being at a time of personal and familial crisis.
Don't get me wrong - the nurses were wonderful, real warm human beings with their own quirkiness and humour and doing their best. And they are second to none in their desire to help and care. Its the system that gets in the way of the healing ironically. This giving up of our everyday lifeness, the clutter and our individual signatures, food, work, family, the warmth of our homes - to relinquish ourselves simply as body-machines for mending. It just misses the point and worse than that I think it makes us more ill in the end.
Moore's work is described like this.
So my blog holiday since Friday was timely. My dear old dad Edgar got rushed into hospital on Sunday just as he and my mum Anne had sat down for their usual Sunday Lunch at The Hadlow Manor in Kent.
 |
| Regular setting for Sunday lunch at Hadlow Manor |
The ambulance was there in no time and the young managers in the restaurant remained calm and laid Edgar gently on the floor whilst they waited for the paramedics. Of course for my mum the wait was excruciating. Soul mates from the time they met when they were 20 and 18, they are also vibrant, connected and ever profoundly present in the world at 81 and 83. Edgar even teaches a weekly class in the use of the internet to 'old' people! ... at the University of the Third age. To say that Anne and Edgar are an inspiration would be to sell them short. Don't get me wrong - we have had our many ups and downs like most kids and their parents, and I wasn't always easy - but fundamentally they have never been afraid to tell me it 'as it is' - and sometimes, no often - the 'as it is' bit is not what I have wanted to hear!
They have always supported me unconditionally as an artist (they knew this about me many years before I did!) and as I was growing up often made it possible for me to circumnavigate frequently choppy waters. Hard as this might be to believe for anyone who has known me as an adult but I was a rather solitary child, odd and slightly on the edge of things, eager for acceptance and yet living pretty much full time by myself in my imaginary world. (Not much changed there you see - just better at being with real people now I hope!)
So on Sunday after he collapsed - Edgar was taken to hospital by a crew of great paramedics. He was 'made comfortable', and although the consultant said he was critical, all the family said at least 'he was in the right place' (?). I felt reassured by this and waited until Monday to do the practical things my mum needed and to take her to visit him.
I haven't been to this hospital for many many years - its changed a great deal from how remember it. I nearly died of pneumonia there when I was six (even got the last rites from Father Heggarty with his musty smelling funny dress) but it didn't cross my mind that of course it would now be a very different place from the rather ramshackle set of huts it had been in the sixties.
Arriving in the car park and seeing the huge white and glass building in front of me I felt that I had arrived at some NASA space station.
You can't deny the clean lines, the uncompromising statement of a modern temple in which to do illness. It has an austere beauty in many ways. I can imagine the architect imagining it as he designed it - a perfect-germ-free-anonymous receptacle for the treatment of the diseased body - oh and a place to be born in and to die in, managed expertly by men and women in white starched uniforms. In some ways this modern idea of living chimes with other public buildings and spaces, airports, universities, shopping monoliths, even down to the Costa Coffee and the WH Smith's.
Friendly, chirpy receptionists kindly directed us with a map to the Medical Assessment Unit (even that sounds faintly sci-fi). The walk to the unit involved several long corridors, and vast expanses of white walls. Not an image, painting sculpture or photograph to be seen. Just white barren walls. I commented on the absence of anything artistic on these walls which to me just begged for exhibition. My mum disagreed and said a hospital needs to be clinical. It slightly surprised me to hear her say this, as she was a nurse in her professional life and regaled me growing up with stories of how the 'bedside manner' was fundamental in healing. The neat corridor of the ward with identical white and metal ensuite rooms lining one side, struck me intensely in their uniformity. All lined up and efficient. As I passed, I can only admit to a certain voyeurism, peeking into the rooms I saw people lying quietly in their beds - although they are not really beds like I think of beds. They are more like flexible contraptions for lifting, turning and attachment to machines. The beeping noises of monitors marking for some a soon-to-be departure.
On reaching my Dad's room at the end of the corridor, I was struck by the contrast of this sterility and the vibrant green of the trees and grass outside the window, some teasing reminder and echo of the natural world. This juxtaposition making the separation from everyday soulful life all the more palpable for me.
Now here's a thing that really strikes me as being so odd, no flowers allowed. Its all logical of course, flowers carry pests and germs and are out of our control. But flowers also carry innate and visible energy and most of all beauty. I know myself the power of beautiful flowers, I keep fresh ones on my dining room table year round. They feed my heart and soul and sometimes their smell transports. And I guess that this is at the core of it for me.
My constant companions for over twenty years are the works of writer Thomas Moore. http://careofthesoul.net/
Moore was a catholic monk for thirteen years - and then left the religious life to become a psychotherapist, and latterly he has been an adviser to the medical profession internationally. I revisit his book The Dark Nights of the Soul at key periods of change in my life, but only recently read his book Care of the Soul in Medicine
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Care-Soul-Medicine-Guidance-Patients/dp/1401925642.
For me his work is a revelation and contains many guiding principles on life, love and art that resonate profoundly for me.He says of his life purpose:
“My life work is an attempt to ground the pure, visionary spirit in the imperfect, intoxicating sensuousness of worldly life.”
Don't get me wrong - the nurses were wonderful, real warm human beings with their own quirkiness and humour and doing their best. And they are second to none in their desire to help and care. Its the system that gets in the way of the healing ironically. This giving up of our everyday lifeness, the clutter and our individual signatures, food, work, family, the warmth of our homes - to relinquish ourselves simply as body-machines for mending. It just misses the point and worse than that I think it makes us more ill in the end.
Moore's work is described like this.
Few experiences stir the emotions and throw a person into crisis as illness does, affecting not only the body but the spirit and soul. Yet the current health-care system is not structured around these considerations.Doctors and other medical professionals are trained to treat the body part or organ, not the whole person. Despite the scientific advancements of modern medicine, the hospital can be a cold, sterile environment—and for that reason alone, people are not finding overall health and well-being in many of our health centres. Care of the Soul in Medicine is Thomas Moore's vision for improving health care. Moore speaks of the importance of healing a person rather than simply treating a body. While sharing stories from his personal and professional life, he gives advice to both health-care providers and patients for maintaining dignity and humanity, providing spiritual guidance for dealing with feelings of mortality and threat, and encouraging patients to not only take an active part in healing but also to view illness as a positive passage to new awareness.
This book is a kind of manifesto, written by someone who is a reflective patient and not a doctor or medical researcher. It's a wake-up call and an initial charting of a new, all-embracing approach to medicine. It is not a grand detour into some New Age and esoteric kind of "healing," but a close examination of medicine as it is practised today, with suggestions from a layman for how it could expand and embrace the whole person.
There can be no doubt now that there is a serious movement in our culture toward a new way of being. In all areas, including medicine, old philosophies are breaking up and a new vision is falling into place. Religious institutions are facing the challenge of a more personal and immediate spirituality. In the United States, a black man and a woman competed for the presidency of the country, and the black man became president.
The turn of a century, to say nothing of a millennium, invites us to rethink where we have arrived and what we're doing here. This is a good time—this year, this decade—to imagine a different future for medicine. This is the time to move in a new direction and not merely expand on the old one. This is the time for us all to become healers of people rather than technicians of the body.
In recent months I have been working with a department in the NHS to look at just this too - through using theatre as a part of healing. This musical work is in its infancy at the moment but is called The Soulful Commissioner and if it comes to be will be directed for health care professionals in the new Clinical Commissioning groups. I am excited about it and hope it will become a reality - and I am grateful to Thomas Moore's inspiration in this.
I hope you have a good day - and don't have to visit a hospital! But if you do - remember to take you with you!
PS; Edgar is doing really well - and his momentary meeting with his own mortality was powerful for us all - so until then - its back home today, family, good food and above all love.
PS; Edgar is doing really well - and his momentary meeting with his own mortality was powerful for us all - so until then - its back home today, family, good food and above all love.
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| Dad with the lovely Sister Jack |
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