Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell

Author:Wendy Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408893340
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-12-14T17:53:46+00:00

8

Do you remember your first day of work? I can still see you in that grey pinstripe suit, the smart white blouse underneath. You were thirty-nine then and that day felt like the first of the rest of your life. It was your best year yet. You weren’t nervous walking through those automatic doors into the physiotherapy department, just excited. Inside was a packed waiting room, and there sat your new chair behind the reception desk. For the first morning you just watched what to do, and by the afternoon you were picking up phones. It made you feel so proud being able to answer and say: ‘Physiotherapy, Wendy speaking, how can I help you?’ I can’t even use a phone now – it’s too disorientating, people talk too fast – but you would chatter back, multitasking all the time, the phone crooked under your neck while you made an appointment on the computer, smiling at the next patient waiting at your desk. These things would be impossible for me, but they were nothing to you. The phone never stopped ringing, but it didn’t faze you. You’d pride yourself on your memory, how you remembered the names of patients even months between appointments. Your colleagues were amazed, but you knew it added that personal touch, that it made patients feel special. Your memory was your thing, so you made it your mission to never forget.

The end, when it comes, is swift and sharp. I have never been one for long goodbyes, which is ironic, considering the disease that I have means I’m losing a little bit of me every day.

It is March 2015 and my last day at work. My team know I wouldn’t want a fuss, so one of them hands over the cards and presents to me early in the morning, before anyone else arrives. I only stay in the office for two hours; anything more would be just too painful. I leave with a clipped goodbye, just as I did every evening, only this time I am not going to return. I don’t leave that way because I don’t care, but because perhaps I care too much.

I’m out in the corridor now, the cool air filling my lungs, and yet they still feel tight. I’m through one set of double doors and then the next, each step taking me further away from the twenty-year career I’ve loved. I’m numb inside, let down by a system that isn’t willing to support people with dementia to stay at work, that can’t adapt and change like those of us living with it do. I know that life will carry on without me, and I’m proud that my staff will manage, but I resent a management system that no longer needs me. My career had made me feel valued, but now I feel worthless.

I don’t even try and remember this day. I don’t want to. Perhaps that’s why I have little to write here.

I’m not ready to say goodbye.

It was never

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