My name is Vera and I’m scared.
I’m scared that I’m sitting here in your care home or lying in your hospital bed and you don’t know who I am. So I thought I’d tell you, whilst I’m still young (67) and compos mentis.
Shall I tell you what really scares me? I’m deaf. No, not just a little bit deaf – completely, utterly profoundly deaf in my right ear and very deaf in my left. That’s without technology. With my cochlear implant switched on and my hearing aid in I hear really very well – but do you know anything about cochlear implants? I’ve seen people with hearing aids treated as having dementia when actually they just needed a new battery. My implant is essential to me and you need to know how it works: how to switch it on, how to change the batteries, how to recharge the batteries and a myriad more things. The staff at the Cochlear Implant Centre are miracle workers, but you need to take me to them when I can’t hear you. (When it’s working, I can).
Yes, YOU need to know how it works and YOU need to take me there. I don’t have children. No, that wasn’t a choice. Nigel and I wanted kids but it didn’t happen. There are more than a million retired people in the UK who have never had children. (Did you know there were that many of us? It’s expected to be two million by 2030).
Am I sad about it? Not really. Not anymore. Life took a turn I wasn’t expecting but it meant I got the chance to do things I might not have done if we’d had kids. I’ve had a great life. But there won’t be children to fight my battles for me, which means YOU need to do it. Yes, YOU reading this, in the care home. YOU. There’s no one else to make sure I get the best service and I’m not forgotten.
I still haven’t told you who I am.
I was born in Co Durham to an ordinary couple (dad worked at the Co-op, mum was a housewife) who were extraordinarily good parents. They encouraged me to dream big and be ambitious so off I went to university at 18 (economics, at Loughborough), the first in a thousand generations of Breareys to do so. (Apologies for the rip-off of Kinnock. Have you heard of Neil Kinnock?)
Then, at 21, off to London with my backpack on my back. Can you picture a young woman going down the Underground escalator at Kings Cross, confident that huge adventures lay ahead of her? That was me.
There I stayed throughout the 70s, living in grotty shared flats and having a whale of a time. Making friends. Being very left-wing. (Now? Not so much). Yeah, happy memories.
Met a wonderful man, married him at Finsbury Register Office in Islington in 1985. Best thing I ever did. Love of my life. If Nigel’s still alive you won’t need to see this, he will tell you all about me, but he might not be.
In 1992 we moved to a village in the Yorkshire Dales. Second best thing I ever did. Who would swap the valleys, moors and hills of Yorkshire for life in a city?
I worked as a housing manager. Stumbled into it, loved it, never did anything else, ended up a Director of one of the big Housing Associations. Great times.
I write. I’ve always written. As a kid I was good at the writing they set you in school. At home I compiled pretend newspapers, wrote plays and poetry and had penfriends. In retirement I’ve had a blog (about my deafness) and written about hearing loss (and some other stuff).
I have fell-walked, dog walked and loved being outdoors. Oh yes, dogs….I love dogs. If you have one of those schemes where people bring well-behaved dogs into care homes bring me a black Labrador to make a fuss of – I had one in my teens (Cola) and one in my sixties (Izzy). Or, at a push, bring me any dog.
I’ve done a lot of travelling. I’ve seen polar bears in the Arctic, wolves in Yosemite and albatross in the Galapagos. I’ve watched horse races on the Mongolian steppe and travelled in Patagonia.
I have loved art and visiting art galleries. Mainly the modern stuff; I’m not keen on the gloomy medieval sort, or religious depictions. Oh heavens, religion, almost forgot. I’m an atheist, very confident that there is no God and no afterlife. No praying please.
Given the chance, I wear jeans, T-shirts, trainers, sweaters. Never liked make-up. I’m not a manicured, tidy, formal dressing sort of person.
And when I die? Well, there’s a will and a request to have my ashes mixed with Nigel’s and scattered in a particular spot on the Lake District fells. You won’t forget that? Because there might be no-one to remember.
One final thing, but it’s very important. If this is a care home and you try to make me play bingo I swear I will bite you.
Vera Brearey