THE GOLDEN HOUR
Spending time with the residents of Ruawai Rest Home
Fred says he likes it at Ruawai, ‘‘except for all the old people’’.
I’m going to tell you about my first of many visits to Ruawai Rest Home backwards.
I’m going to tell you about how I felt when I left after three hours of spending time with six of the residents.
I felt like I didn’t want to leave. I felt like I had found out something, but I’m still not quite sure what that something was, and I felt overwhelmingly young.
But I had best go back to the start.
I’m feeling rushed and late, which is the usual. I am always chasing my slightly frazzled tail and today is no exception. But walking into Ruawai, where the 15 residents are mostly double my age, you are forced to slow right down.
We are going out for lunch and it takes us a long time to even get into the van. But it is hilarious. Tracey, who comes in five days a week to keep everyone entertained, amazes me in the first five minutes. She knows how to make the fact that hips and knees and ears and eyes aren’t fully functioning a bit of a giggle. And she does it with an unfaltering respect.
We are off and I am sitting next to Shirley. She always sits in the front I’m told and is a bit of a livewire. She has already done her morning walk around the block, which she does a few times a day, and I can tell she is happy to be out.
We trundle down Kimbolton Rd and Shirley talks about when it used to be a dirt road. That blows my mind for a minute and I start to listen a little more closely and look a little differently out the window.
I want to know their life stories all at once, but first it is clear that they need to know a bit more about mine. Tracey takes us on a tiki tour and we chinwag about various connections we all have. Daphne lived in Waituna West, where I used to live. Shirley was a gun horse rider and Laura knew the lady I bought my house off.
We ooh and aah over the new building work out the window and talk turns to how much Feilding has changed. It must be like a new world to these people, I think, a strange and not all-together better new world.
Over fish’n’chips and pies Tracey tells me about the changes she has seen over the 20 years she has worked with the elderly. Her son explains his mum’s job as ‘‘making sure old people are happy before they die’’, which she says is exactly what she does.
She tells me more people are coming into rest homes too late, when they really should have been cared for much earlier. The system is failing our ageing community and it is often leaving them alone and vulnerable, she says.
Laura sits across from me. She is beautiful and a newcomer to the rest home. She loves it. She enjoys the company. She finds it a relief not to have to cook and she is less worried about being worried. Fred at the other end of the table would probably rather be young again. He says he likes it at Ruawai, ‘‘except for all the old people’’.
I laugh, I listen and I am amazed at how quickly I am let into their world. And, yes, I don’t want to leave when it is time to go. I feel like I have gained something that will take me a while to understand and I feel young in the way that can only be felt when you are looked at by old eyes.
And I know. I know I’ll be back next week and for many weeks after that.
The Golden Hour is an ongoing series by Carly Thomas about her weekly visits to the residents of Ruawai Rest Home.