In March 2010 my father-in-law was admitted to a nursing home having being disgnosed with dementia. His particular version was a nasty one called Vascular Dementia so-called because it is caused a by a long-running series of tiny strokes in the brain that gradually kill off brain cells until the patient is rendered incapable.
Once at the home, dad’s condition actually improved, physically at least. This was because the staff were managing his on-going medication instead of him doing it and it soon became apparent that he had been mismanaging it for some time. However, his mental condition deteriorated rapidly and it wasn’t very long before he ceased to recognise family and friends. Not long after this he retreated completely into his own world and even holding a conversation with him became impossible. I would speak English to him and he would reply in his native Finnish. I’d remind him to speak English because I couldn’t understand Finnish and that would last for a sentence or two and he would lapse again (not that what he said in English made a great deal of sense). It transpired that what he was saying in Finnish was just mumbo-jumbo as well and visiting him became the usual trial that all children experience when faced with a similar situation.
On Wednesday the nursing home contacted us to say that dad was unwell with a chest infection and this morning they called and said that he had taken a turn for the worst. My wife was able to spend most of the day with him today, although, of course, he was blissfully unaware of it and wasn’t in any pain.
Tonight about 8 o’clock the home rang to say that he had passed away. He was 85 years old.
Kinda gives you a slightly different perspective on what’s important and what’s not, doesn’t it?
dunc says
condolences to you and your wife and all the family phil
Phil Hall says
Thank you, mate, your wishes are appreciated.
teza51 says
Very sorry to hear this Phil pls give our condolences to Helena and family she has been put through the ringer of late and definatly deserves a break and some good news and laughter
Phil Hall says
Thanks, mate, I will pass on your good wishes. And we were hoping that 2012 would be a better year, too.
jeffb says
Sad news , Phil. But, by the sounds of your words, the best part of his life had passed him by. All the best to you and Helena and the family at this time.
Phil Hall says
Yes, Jeff, that is true. But, as you know, it doesn’t matter how prepared you are for death, it’s always a shock when it comes.
grae says
Late to the party, or, if it can be called that – as I often am. I expressed this sentiment to your daughter and my sister Natalie as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu
A few quotes:
The Finns have something they call sisu. It is a compound of bravado and bravery, of ferocity and tenacity, of the ability to keep fighting after most people would have quit, and to fight with the will to win. The Finns translate sisu as “the Finnish spirit” but it is a much more gutful word than that. Last week the Finns gave the world a good example of sisu by carrying the war into Russian territory on one front while on another they withstood merciless attacks by a reinforced Russian Army. In the wilderness that forms most of the Russo-Finnish frontier between Lake Laatokka and the Arctic Ocean, the Finns definitely gained the upper hand.
—Time magazine, January 8, 1940[2]
Finnish sisu—meaning a peculiarly Finnish brand of doggedness, capable of facing down death itself—was at work against the Allies. … The Finns are not happy. But sisu enables them to say: “We have nothing worse than death to fear.”
—Time magazine, May 10, 1943.[4]
Sisu is, like sauna, one of the few Finnish words lent to the English language
—-
Upon his passing of which you notified me that night, there was a curious coincidence which Karl Jung would have refered to as “sychronicity”, but to which a rational thinker and fan of science would refer to as “that Jung guy was full of crap, it’s just coincidence”. Hours before Timbo The Clown, the student you taught for a few years in Canberra and with whom I became a close friend pasted a link on IRC to a story about German nursing homes installing fake bus stops in their grounds for patients with dementia. As they would go to them, feel happy they were going somewhere, lose that place, and then be able to be recovered and return without having left the grounds. He stated that it was an incredibly depressing read. I too had seen that article the same day, but hadn’t read it, due to its proximity to the bone with Papa. But once it was shared, and my group of long term friends were discussing it, I too shared some of the stories about Papas slide in to dementia, and his incredible courage, fortitude and surprisingly effective secrecy of it. It was a story and information I hadn’t been able to bring myself to discuss until that date, that Friday a month or so ago. Because it was brought up by T the C.
Hours later when I recieved the SMS, by coincidence, that he’d just passed, I took stock of what it meant. And what the experience had shown me from his actions.
I thought of sisu, a finnish term with which Annina had granted yours truly of posessing earlier in the year due to my handling of some difficulties with which we had spent time talking.
I looked it up on google, then on that wikipedia page I linked above.
And it really said it all, that night, about how he held himself in the face of horror. Because really dad, let’s be frank, it was absolute untold horror.
I’ve maintained for quite some time that more is said about your character as a person, as a woman or man, by your actions in the worst of times, than by how you hold yourself in the best.
And I can do nothing but acknowledge that from Papa we can learn something truly incredible, after his passing. The way he held himself during not just the worst of times, but the most horrifically worst of times. Not just for most people, but particularly for a man of his intellect, for a man who left shelves full of well read atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a raft of documentary dvds, losing his mind was the loss of something he’d truly spent time cultivating the majority of the last half of his life. After many difficulties in the first half. And it wasn’t really until he was in that nursing home, under care, when mum cleaned out his room and found those post it notes. Those post it notes, he’d hidden all around his room, documenting his slow slide in to dementia, notes to himself. Notes about what day it was, where he’d left important things. What his own name was. What mums name was, that she was even his daughter.
Those show, right or wrong, he had sisu. During the worst possible time a person with a mind as active as his could ever contemplate, and especially given that Vascular Dementia has a common sympotom of rage and anger, he held himself with a degree of sisu that hopefully none of us, and none of your readers will ever be faced with.
So his passing – it was really – in the end. His victory. He’d been so incredibly brave as it took hold of him in spite of it all and in spite of what he knew he was losing. It took the dignity for several years of a private man, who’s dignity was his commodity as an older man. But in the end, he won. It couldn’t hurt him, or by extension those who cared for him anymore. He deserved to have passed a lot sooner. But his passing, was his middle god damned finger to something which robbed him of his mind, but he never let while he was able, rob him of his sisu.
So yeah. I guess I may have been a bit verbose. But it’s for a man who is worth so much more than the end of his life gave him.
The most amazing relationship which I’ve ever seen, you and mum, is from his daughter. She came here because of his hard work to bring them here as veritable refugees. You owe him so much, I owe him my very existence. And with the troubles he overcame, he behaved in a manner, when at the worst of times, shows us that we owe him the commitment that when the chips are down for us, we remember to show the sisu he did when the chips were down in the worst way imaginable for him.
<3 Ukki. He lives on not only in your amazing wife, but in your two not so shabby kids. 50% of his DNA makes up Aiti. And 25% of him makes up natalie and yours truly. And that can't be taken away by anything. 🙂
– Grae
Phil Hall says
So true. In his own quiet and dignified way he embodied everything that is noble and honourable in a man. Proud to say that he was my father-in-law.