" 'elp!!"

Reading  Tom Stephenson's recent blog entry on Gallows Humour has got me thinking about funerals. I have been reminded in particular, of some of the services I have attended, that have been somewhat "bizarre" due to the simple fact that humour (albeit gallows in nature) has played a large part.

Back in the 1980s, and on the way to my Grandfather's funeral, I was driving up Prestatyn High Street with my sisters and brother in law when we were effectively side swiped by a lorry which had tried to negotiate a difficult turn. We were already late for the service and  so my sisters and I had to abandon the car ( Ann clutching a hip flask full of brandy) to gallop up the length of the High Street in order to "beat" the coffin into the church. Not an auspicious start to a sombre event to be sure.

As a nurse, I have often felt it was right to go to a former patient's funeral.

Mostly the reason for doing so, is a deep seated respect for that particular character and their family, but occasionally the reason for going can be purely one of a sense that either "it was the right thing to do" or in some other cases that there was simply no one else to go.

I recall a patient I shall call Sid from years ago, who was admitted to the spinal Injury ward I was working on as a junior staff nurse. He was what we call now as a bit of challenge. Then we called him quite simply as a bit of a pain in the arse

Before being paralysed from the neck down, I always suspected that Sid was a "difficult character" a Yorkshire Miner all his life, he was a hard drinking hard man, that fixed problems with a sharp tongue, colourful language and his fists.After his injury, all his former coping mechanisms had been removed,as he could no longer move, a muscle, nor could he swear to any effective degree, as he had a tracheostomy in situ

However Sid had a huge amount of spirit. He could drive a chin controlled electric wheelchair with deadly accuracy. He knew what he wanted when it came to personal care and he could communicate those wishes with the assertion  that bordered on aggression.

and begrudgingly the ward staff warmed to him

Looking after him within the rehab environment was a challenge, and it was dreadfully hard work, especially as one of the few words Sid would utter when something needed doing was a slightly breathless "'elp!".

"Elp!" was uttered what seemed like a million times a day,
At times that one small abbreviated word could almost reduce a tired nurse to tears! and I am sure it was the last word he did utter, for one day when all of the younger and fitter patients were being roused in their wheelchairs to attend gym, Sid collapsed and died.

His funeral was held in a rough miner's town, and at the crematorium, I noticed that all of hard drinking and hard talking miners sat on one side of the chapel and all the hard drinking hard talking rehab nurses sat on the other.

The chaplain, did his speech.  A miner friend performed another, and we the nurses that knew Sid only  as  "hard work" heard all about a guy's life that we did not really recognise...We were only brought back to the "reality" of the situation when the Chaplain put his hand on the coffin and in response to something in the eulogy he uttered the words

"what would Sid have said about all this?"

In the silence that followed, and before the giggling started, somewhere amid the nurses' ranks a tiny voice whispered loudly..........

"'elp!"