A description of an Old man

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Siân Robinson        Old Age 10B

A Description Of An Old Man

        I’m writing this in a crisp, white hospital bed. I’m getting old. So many things are getting worse: my joints are creaking, shrieking with pain; my hair is getting greyer everyday; my memory is going now but I still know what I want.

        Lying in a ward for elderly patients, I don’t want to be here. My daughter forced me, my Doctor forced me. Why can’t they mind their own business and let me die peacefully in my own home? It’s what I want. The first line of my Will reads,

“After dying peacefully at home, I leave...” That will never come true now. I’m too weak and feeble to go home. All this has been made worse by the medication they are pouring into my veins. I hallucinate, I forget things but I still remember every vivid detail of how I got into this state-into this ward.

Huddling by the scarce warmth of the gas fire in the hospital waiting room I knew what was coming next. The Doctor would emerge from the room next door and tell me I was dying. I didn’t need to be told. I have known for months now that I am fading away. It was just the way I wanted it to be; to die peacefully at home, no-one need ever know that I was suffering. That dream, that one last wish flew out of the window when my rude, disrespectful daughter drove me to the hospital in the next town. I didn’t want to go. In fact I didn’t know I was going.

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‘Let’s go for a drive, Dad.’ WOW! That sounded lovely; ‘perhaps’ I thought ‘she loves me after all’. No such luck, I should have guessed. I thought I was going for a nice peaceful drive in the countryside, something to take my mind of my aches and pains. My happiness, however, dissolved as we entered the hospital car-park. She forced my shuffling, old body into the hospital on a wobbly walking stick. She introduced me as only my daughter would,

“My old, ill father would like to see a Doctor.” When had she ever asked for my opinion? She didn’t even ...

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