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All I want is a room somewhere

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Our fathers(Wills Angus and Frans Marais) in a happy mood in Wakkerstroom.
 We spent the past weekend in Wakkerstroom with both our fathers and extended family. The purpose of the visit was to acquaint them with the retirement village where we hope to have them both settled in and cared for. It is a difficult process for all of us. For them, because any big change at their age has a huge impact on them, and this move may not be what they prefer. Which is the exact reason it makes it extremely difficult for us personally to be the ones to have to make the decision in their best interest.
    I know we are not alone in this. We see many of our friends being confronted with the challenges of caring for elderly parents lately. Not only because people tend to live longer, but also because we do not have a governmental support system of facilities and caretaking in South Africa.
    To have found a center like Dana Care Center in Wakkerstroom is a God-send. It meets all the criteria of being out in the countryside, with views to die for and staff and facilities that are truly exceptional.
    We realize that it will take a lot of effort, finances, patience and maybe even tough love to get them settled in. We strongly believe they will have the best possible chance of having a peaceful and secure old age there. It will also make it possible for us to be nearby, while having our hands freed to get on with our soul task.

    Eliza Doolittle's song kept going through my head all through the weekend. The one she sang while sitting at her flower stall, looking carefully unkempt and not very much like a "fair lady". (To my adult eye, she now looks not at all like a homeless person, but then it was the Fifties and it was Audrey Hepburn, so I suppose they tried their very best to make her look prettily awful...) The moral of the song, however, holds.


All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

Lots of chocolate for me to eat
Lots of coal makin' lots of heat
Warm face, warm hands, warm feet
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

Oh, so lovely sittin' abso-bloomin'-lutely stillI 
would never budge till spring
Crept over the window sill
Someone's head restin' on my knee
Warm and tender as he can be
Who takes good care of me
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly

Loverly, loverly, loverly
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly
Loverly, loverly, loverly
Wouldn't it be loverly

(Wouldn't It Be Loverly" by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, written for the 1956 Broadway play My Fair Lady.[1])

To satisfy this very basic need we all share, for our fathers, is what we hope to achieve. Now wouldn't that be loverly!

Matilda

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