Waltz

Ive posted this story before, but after watching Cinderella on digi box I was reminded of this story all over again….like all good stories, I never really tire of telling it. 

I was just twenty two years old when I first grew up as a nurse and as a man…….I remember the situation as if it was yesterday, and the memory seared into my psychi forty two years ago is fresh and as moving and as important as it was on that muddy weekday morning when I was slopping tea into thirty empty cups in the kitchen of an old asylum Ward .

I was tired and weary.
One of four staff, I had helped 30 men to get washed, dressed and fed on Durham ward. A ward that catered for the senile, the head injured and the institutionalised.
It was late morning and the men had been sat in a routine square around the day room as the staff puffed fags on the verandah.
I didn't smoke so it was my job to get their tea, before another rounding of toileting began
The tea was made in one large metal teapot. Tea, milk and sugar all added to the mix and it took two hands to lift the pot as I poured the brew out into saucerless cups.

As I worked I watched the female residents of Durham's sister ward Daresbury , all sat in similar poses along the square of their dayroom chairs.
In one corner sat a visitor .
I had often seen him before , and recognised his smart suit, and his polished shoes.
He always sat with a very still patient, a patient that I assumed to be his wife and they shared tea from a flask that he brought with him every morning.
I remember his wife having grey hair that was curled chignon style at the nape of her neck and that morning I watched in a half interested way, as he started to pull her out of her chair to her feet.
His wife stood shakily, like senile people often do when they don't understand what is wanted of them and after a bit of manoeuvring the man held her in a waltz hold.
They staggered back and forth for some moments, unbalanced and unpredictable and then I saw something quite magical happen as her muscle memory started to kicked in 
With a turn of her head on an arched neck she grasped his hand tightly and they started to waltz .
Very slowly at first , but with a gathering momentum, they two of them danced around infront of two dozen unseeing eyes , with only me there to witness the event, and they did two circuits of the room before silently returning to their seats like a pair of ghosts.
I stood still , the teapot still in my hands , and wept.
In one tiny moment I had seen a true love expressed and recognised the importance of seeing hospital patients as real people with a past and a future

And all at the age of twenty two

I grew up