Once in a while, I wake up during the night because it feels as if something has happened. In my usual state when wakened from sleep, it can take me a wee while to get a handle on what's going on. Sometimes it's the arrival of the ominous 'private ambulance.' That's the bus (as they say in the USA) that takes away the bodies of anyone who has died in the complex. When you live in a sheltered housing place, you get used to that. You're just glad it's not you. Sometimes it's a proper ambulance that comes to transport a sick person to a local hospital. Sometimes it's the fire brigade, who arrive with lights flashing and sirens going and all because some eejit has burnt their toast. This has happened twice in the 13 months I've been here. Not that I mind. The fire crews are so pleasing on the eye I sometimes wonder if that's how they are recruited.
Tonight - at 3.46am to be exact - we have not one but two ambulances in the car park.
Emergency ambulance staff are very good - I know from experience - quiet, efficient, reassuring. Not a job I could ever do. But as soon as I see them arriving, my imagination starts to run riot. Is R okay? That's the neighbour recently out of hospital who's been having a wee problem with his heart. Could it be J? 90 and going strong but still, you never know. Or her pal, H, who is 99 and still making it out for a wee walk every day. And there's A, who has mental health problems and has been pretty isolated for weeks now, despite the warden trying to talk to him every day.
I should be - and I am - grateful that I live in a place where neighbours sit shiva for a resident who has died, celebrate the 90th birthday of another resident - and where the warden cries when told of the death in hospital of another resident.
But living here doesn't half bring you face to face with the realities of life.
Nae pockets in a shroud. That's one reality.
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