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Today’s banner
Sunset over Glasgow taken from Kelvinside
Photograph by
Ann Donaldson
The way things
were: the care my
dying mother got
Michael Elcock
A little more than half of my mother’s last six weeks were spent in Canada,
in our house, with care from the local medical community that I can only describe as having been sent from heaven.
A friend in nearby Victoria, a cricket umpire called Gilbert Smith, offered to come and visit my mother. Gilbert was a Belfast man, a minister with a doctor of divinity degree from Edinburgh University. None of us, and certainly not my mother, were churchgoers, and Gilbert didn’t lay on the religion. He just offered some wonderful, wise solace for the spirit. My oldest pal, from childhood days in Spottiswoode Street, flew up from California. My dad came out from England, and my mother’s twin sister flew over from Glasgow. They all saw mum before she died; they all gave her comfort.
My mother passed away almost exactly six weeks after the diagnosis had been made in Edinburgh. We purchased a burial plot in the local cemetery and had some beautiful lines from Stevenson etched onto a block of granite above her resting place. A friend came out and played the pipes, and that was that.
A little more than half of my mother’s last six weeks were spent in Canada, in our house, with care from the local medical community that I can only describe as having been sent from heaven. It was all part of an extraordinary mix, and all of it helped my mother get through the most difficult time of her life. Those few weeks gave each of us an incredibly rich, spiritual experience. It was the most memorable of times.
When it was all over I contacted our physician in Sooke and asked her to let me have the bill. I was expecting it to be in the many thousands of dollars. It came to a little less than $500. Even then, 23 years ago, that was a miniscule amount of money for the superlative care my mother had received. I called the doctor’s office and said that they must have made a mistake, that it must be more. No, I was told, that’s what it is. The doctor came on the line. ‘If you want to, you can make a donation to the Hospice Society,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they would appreciate it.’
I know that kind of care is rare in the UK, if it exists at all nowadays (this piece has been inspired partly by the recent SR articles of Victoria Law and Marian Pallister). It has been gone from western Canada for at least 20 years. Our physician has retired and the new one thinks along more ‘modern’ lines. Our Conservative federal government in Ottawa and our Conservative government here in British Columbia also think along ‘modern’ lines. If you want special care, which is how they would describe the attention my mother received, then you’ll have to pay for it. Big time. And I won’t get into the discussion about how the big multi-national pharmaceutical companies have managed to subvert just about every nickel and dime that isn’t nailed down. But as we move along towards our own ‘borrowed’ time it’s worth remembering these things once in a while; the way things were.
Michael Elcock was born in Forres and grew up in Edinburgh and West Africa. He emigrated to Canada when he was 21. He was athletic director
at the University of Victoria for 10 years, and then CEO of Tourism
Victoria for five
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