Sunday 19 March 2017

Home


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

Author:  Gelonida

7 comments:

brudberg said...

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...

Sherry Blue Sky said...

Oh poor Violet. My heart aches for her. The staff sound very caring.

Anonymous said...

Atmospheric writing. You really capture the sense of 'invasion' to Violets home.

Anonymous said...

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.

Bekkie Sanchez said...

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.

Magaly Guerrero said...

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

grapeling said...

so very tragic, Anna ~