I wasn’t impressed with the spiked black railings
Keeping the residents in,
They swept around to the padlocked gates
Like a prison for mortal sin,
But the signs said ‘Happiness Reigns Within –
The end of their lives secure,’
‘The Five Star Capital Home for Nursing,
Bring your old to our door.’

I’d only gone to be shown around,
I’d said my aunt wasn’t safe,
She wouldn’t stay in her cottage grounds
But wandered all over the place.
She needed care, ‘which is why I’m here,’
I said, but really I lied,
Some friends had asked I embrace the task
To get a good look inside.

I got to wander around the grounds,
I even shook off the guide,
I settled down in their dim-lit lounge
And watched for the ones that cried.
A woman, clad in a shawl was there,
Who wept, so no-one could see,
Who dabbed her eyes, then in some surprise
She sat there, staring at me.

I didn’t think she’d remember me
We were friends some years before,
But she’d succumbed to dementia then
While scrubbing the kitchen floor,
She’d wandered out in a busy street
Was almost hit by a bus,
The ambulance driver said, ‘Who’s she?’
And I said, ‘She’s one of us.’

I noticed then, she never came home
And her husband said, ‘She’s gone!’
He wasn’t too stable then himself
And he went, before too long.
I sat with her in the Nursing Home
And I held her trembling hand,
She said she didn’t remember me
But she asked me, where was Sam?

The question came as a shock to me
For her husband, Sam, was there,
From where she sat she could surely see
Him straight across, in a chair,
They’d seen each other each day, it seems
He’d not remembered a trace,
Their marriage lost in swirl of dreams
And she’d forgotten his face.

I tried to trigger their memories
Remind them that they had loved,
Had lived together for fifty years
Whenever he’d pushed, she shoved.
But Jennifer took one look at Sam
And twisted her gaze away,
‘I’m certain he couldn’t be my man,
He has so little to say.’

When next I heard, she had gone back home,
Her mind as clear as a bell,
My friends said I must have shaken her up,
They’d never seen her so well.
But still she wept for her Sam at night,
Said where on earth could he be,
So I went back to that house of hell,
Brought Sam back out on a ‘Free’.

Some places hold their own loving spell,
The very air is bewitched,
And Jennifer’s house was enchanted with
A spell from the house to the ditch.
When she saw Sam on the bluebell path
Uncertain of what to do,
She rushed straight into his arms and cried,
‘My love, I’ve been waiting for you!’

David Lewis Paget