There are people in my home,
shuffling
in the roof space,
banging
on the windows
and
banging on the doors.
‘Please
leave me, please
leave
me alone’ I plead
as
I turn off all the lights…
Old
bones snap on the tricks of tired eyes,
tumble
I do to the shock of terra firma…
as
they shuffle in the roof space…
turning
off the lights…
Mind
is tired, forgets to remember…
father’s
in my bed, telling me he loves me…
sharing
(with me) awful secrets of the night…
’Please
leave me alone,’ I scream (inside me)
as
I fumble and stumble, trying to turn off the lights…
Pain
in my leg and I don’t understand it,
wonder
if you’ve hit me
as they shuffle in the roof space…
banging
on the windows
banging
on the doors…
I
lie in my bed here, screaming deep inside me,
hoping
and praying they don’t turn off the
lights…
Anna
:o]
Brendan
at Toads has us writing of our interpretation of what Home is. To me, home is not
merely bricks and mortar, rather a sense of belonging, a feeling of safety, a
knowing of unconditional acceptance, indeed, a place where the heart lies, a
place of comfort and love.
Home
is not necessarily just the house in which you live, it maybe your place of
work which gives you that same sense of belonging, or your town or your
country, whatever defines the place of where you want to be, are happy in.
My
words tell of ‘Violet’ who lived in the care home in which I once worked. She was a very confused lady and regarded and
saw
the home as hers, her fellow residents and staff being
intruders. This belief made her very
agitated and physically aggressive as she would forever attempt to remove us,
and how deep her frustration when she could not. She was also at great risk of falls, and if
she did so, sustaining a fracture, she was adamant these strangers in her house
had pushed her.
Violet
was a lady who feared the night and her light was always left on. Despite this she would become very scared and
tearful, a timid shadow of her daytime self, and staff sat with her until she
fell asleep. It was a couple or so of
years before something she said made us realise why she feared the night, her
childhood home never offering itself in how we perceive home, rather a place of
abuse…
How
sad that her memories and indeed lack of memory, made the care home, to her, a
place of fear too.
Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
7 comments:
Home can be a place of terror, and for the abused the intruder will always come back in that state of confusion... you tell this from a chilling POV...
Oh poor Violet. My heart aches for her. The staff sound very caring.
Atmospheric writing. You really capture the sense of 'invasion' to Violets home.
Violet's tale here suggests that home can become a hungry ghost in one's soul; and the losing of it is so much like the losing of a soul, cast into a hell of suspicion, fear, and loss. I've seen this dementia in others, a woman who feared so much intruder in her house that she ended up sleeping on the steps of my father's church in Chicago, in mid-winter, making home out of newspapers while her apartment was warm and silent. For everything we love, can we grow mad with the fear of losing it? Comforting thought. Great write, Anna.
Very sad. I still have a childhood fear when it's pitch dark in my bedroom. Not until the sheet is up to my neck (or over my head) am I safe.
This is a nightmare, one of those we can't wake up from. The anxiety of inhabiting such a home has to bee maddening, lonely, and extremely sad. f
so very tragic, Anna ~
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