The Restory Retreat Centre

House of Parliament, Sunset (1900, 1901) - Claude Monet (Claude Monet, the French impressionist painter developed cataracts as he aged, but refused to have them surgically removed.) Monet Refuses the Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of...

Taking care of Oupa Frans for the past two and a half months had its advantages. Within a very short period we, as new residents, got to know almost the entire medical fraternity of Volksrust and a few of its members in Wakkerstroom and Newcastle. As an extra bonus we discovered more than the medical side of things. On one visit to dr Strauss, who ended up being our GP, Oupa Frans was extremely agitated and uncomfortable while we were sitting in the waiting area. We were almost 100 percent certain that the swollen prostate was again blocking the urinary tract and that he had to get another catheter. The fact that the psychiatric medication had basically no effect was usually a very good indicator in that regard. The receptionist with whom we were by now on a first name basis, suggested that we take him to one of the rooms that was empty while dr Strauss was busy in another. Oupa Frans would be more comfortable lying down on a bed. Getting to this particular room we had to walk do...

Oupa Frans, December 2013 - Photograph by Matilda Within the context that Matilda sketched in her post Waiting for heaven is hell , last Wednesday was exceptionally challenging. It was a day filled to the brim with doctors’ appointments and visits to potential care facilities for Oupa Frans. Being out of his usual routine makes him even more agitated than usual. He tends to slump when sitting on a chair, to such an extent that his head is sometimes almost between his ankles. At the GP and during the interview at the retirement village, we had to help him sit up straight and then had to physically keep him in that upright position. The pit stop over lunch at friends’ house was arranged so that he could rest for a while. Nothing came of it because left alone in the bedroom he started undressing himself in an effort to get rid of the catheter. He constantly carries a harmonica, an early birthday present from Juanita, Matilda’s sister, in the upper pocket of his shirt. He...