Thanks to an item in the TV program News hour I suddenly had to think about Mrs. Silva again. Nieuwsuur showed that the policy in Dutch nursing homes is still too little on migrant elderly. How problematic that could be, I noticed after my introduction to Mrs. Silva in my wife’s previous nursing home.
Mrs. Silva was my wife’s neighbor there. Their rooms were divorced, but they shared a gap for toilet and shower. A little happy construction for demented residents like them. They had to close each other’s interior door before they used shower or toilet. If they forgot that, uncomfortable situations arose where one could find the other on the toilet or in the shower.
They could still live with that, but for me it was a reason to never use the toilet – my unexpected presence could greatly disturb Mrs. Silva. But maybe she would have just continued with something she always did: talk – in a pretty loud tone. Everyone who appeared in her vicinity had to believe it. Mrs. Silva stopped you and started to put a story that didn’t seem to be coming to an end. You didn’t know if it was an interesting story unless you spoke Portuguese. It was the only language she was still master.
A long time ago she had emigrated to the Netherlands with her husband from Portugal. She had learned the Dutch language well here, but after the dementia was entered, that knowledge had disappeared and only her native language in her memory remained. Her husband, with whom she had settled in this nursing home a few years earlier, had since died. She still had a son who occasionally visited her, but otherwise she was alone.
No one in her immediate area, the caregivers nor the other residents, also spoke one word Portuguese. It didn’t help if you tried to significantly signal her that you couldn’t understand her. She did not seem to understand what you meant and rebel by as if there was no language gap.
She was physically strong, although she was already 92 years old. She helped where she could, whether it was in the kitchen or when folding the laundry. Because she was not accessible to information, there were often misunderstandings and chaotic situations around her. The caregivers remained patient angels, apart from a male caregiver who started pushing at a certain point – you are a man for that, he will have thought. Mrs. Silva pushed back, after which I was able to find peace as an impartial bystander by conducting her back to her room. Since then I know how outrage in Portuguese sounds.
They were times when you realized the deep tragedy of her situation. Mother soul alone in an environment without your native language. You don’t understand anyone, nobody understands you.
I mainly came to pick up my wife for a walk in the area. I would like to have taken Mrs. Silva, but that was not justified.
Mrs. Silva and my wife were good, they understood each other without understanding each other. A day before my wife moved to another nursing home, Mrs. Silva suddenly died. It may have been a coincidence.
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