To the music
Monday 30 November 2015 Afterwards, she should have paid more attention, Jilda thought.She should have picked up the signals. But who in the world would have thought that a new colleague, a volunteer in a nursing home off all, would be so nasty that she even put a patient in danger? Unbelievable. In all the years Jilda volunteered at the nursing home, she had never met someone who was so full of hate. And her rancour didn’t seem to have any limits. And that only because Jilda told her that it was not acceptable and not respectful to treat people suffering from dementia as disobedient children. And that it is “not done” to be rude. Jilda, the patient meek Jilda, had really made some noise for her doing. Her colleague was not impressed and only shrug her shoulders. But since then strange things happened. Things got lost. Even the scheduling for next activities, always filed neatly at the computer of the supervisor, had suddenly been erased. And each time something was lost, Jilda’s name hummed around, although no one had actually accused her.
That afternoon a music group would come to play music with the patients. One of the patients, Mrs. De Jong, always could beat the time with the tambourine. Music made Mrs. De Jong happy, and impatiently she pulled Jilda’s arm. “To the music”, she said. “I want to go to the music”. But she had to wait a moment. First the mysteriously disappeared tambourine, triangle, recorder and drums had to be searched for. And when they finally were found, Mrs. De Jong has disappeared!
Never ever would Jilda forget how she, searching for Mrs. De Jong, had ran through the streets. Gasping, screaming. Hardly aware that others were searching too: colleagues, police, neighbours. But at the end, it was Jilda who found her. In the park, at the border of the pond.
Later, it turned out that Mrs. De Jong had been taken outside by the hateful colleague and had started wandering around. Jilda and her colleagues could not comprehend this at all. Letting a patient go outside, that was very dangerous. Someone who did a thing like that must have some kind of personality disorder and it was to be hoped for that she would go in therapy. Jilda thought of the moment she saw Mrs. De Jong stand at the border of the pond. To not scare her Jilda had approached her carefully and had begun to sing softly: “How easy glides our boat through the water”. And Mrs. De Jong turned to her and took her by the hand and they walked out of the park, singing. And suddenly there were colleagues, police and neighbours walking along. A little boy ran to them. He asked where they would go to. Mrs. De Jong stopped singing for a moment. “Where are you going?”, the boy asked again. “To the music,” Mrs. De Jong answered.
Translation from Dutch by Astrid Kostelijk