I’ve been spending the last few days in Skye where as many of you know my family originally came from and where I still have close relatives. It is always good to return ‘home’ and to catch up with folks, explore parts I do not know and get on with some tasks. It is an escape from my world of work into a place that simply possesses another rhythm and pattern of living to anywhere else I know. In October the seasons meld into one another on Skye but this time despite the robust winds the weather has been glorious, and I have rarely seen the place look more beautiful and awe-inspiring.

Yesterday with other members of my family I spent some time re-painting the lettering on a family gravestone. Might seem an odd activity but it was both rewarding and humbling to spend time in making sure that the names and memories of my kin would be visible despite the Atlantic gales which sweep that part of north-west Skye. It was good to share stories, learn new things and be together. One of the people whose name I repainted on stone was my uncle Donald who sadly died in his forties now some forty years ago.

Donald was my mother’s only sibling which in itself was an unusual fact in a Hebridean family pre the Second World War. His birth was difficult, and it resulted in him developing some learning disabilities which included a stammer and stutter that more pronounced the more anxious he was. But I absolutely loved Donald as a child and adolescent and very much regret the fact he died when I was in my late teens. His instinctive knowledge of nature, of animals and the seasons was far more important and impressive to me than the fact he struggled to read and could barely write. His influence on me was marked not least in that I became aware through the time I spent with him how much he was the victim of bullying and harassment because of his disabilities and especially his stutter. Although at times he found communication difficult what was certainly the case was that with patience and interest anyone could communicate with him and vice-versa. Sadly, not all people showed him such patience. Far from it. He had a manual job and one of his foremen made his life a simple hell with constant mimicking of his speech and other behaviours which today would have resulted in dismissal. But not then. The truth was that though Donald tried to hide his upset I knew how much it hurt him to be the victim of such belittling inhumanity and to be continually the object of another’s derision and amusement.

I thought a lot yesterday about how hard his life was as I re-painted his name on his gravestone. So, it was with some sense of synchronicity that in searching as I often do for what is happening in terms of the global calendar of events and occasions that I found out that tomorrow is Stuttering Awareness Day.

Organisations like the Scottish Stammering Network use the day to raise awareness of stammering and also to challenge and address some of the stereotypes and presumptions which exist around this remarkably common condition. They and other groups are well worth exploring not least if you are involved in the world of social care and support where many individuals who receive services and support in their own home or in a residential home live with stuttering or stammering.

Stuttering or stammering is a disruption in speech pattern involving disruptions, or dysfluencies, in a person’s speech, but there are nearly as many ways to stutter as there are people who stutter. Yet like so many conditions it is often misunderstood. It is now widely recognised that stuttering is a neurological condition which impacts and influences the production of speech and the use of language. But as with my uncle so many presumptions are made about people who stutter, and they are often the victims of discrimination and inappropriate treatment. In addition, the impact of such behaviours upon the self-esteem and self-value of those who live with stuttering can often be very negative indeed.

In exploring a world, I knew so little about I discovered that there are many myths and misunderstandings around stuttering, including amongst other things that:

‘Because fluent speakers occasionally become more disfluent when they are nervous or under stress, some people assume that people who stutter do so for the same reason. While people who stutter may be nervous because they stutter, nervousness is not the cause.

Emotional factors often accompany stuttering but it is not primarily a psychological condition. Stuttering treatment/therapy often includes counselling to help people who stutter deal with attitudes and fears that may be the result of stuttering.

Adults and children who stutter may sometimes be hesitant to speak up, even if they are not otherwise shy by nature. People who stutter can be assertive and outspoken, and many succeed in leadership positions that require talking.

Although the manner in which people stutter may develop in certain patterns, the cause of stuttering itself is not due to a habit. Because stuttering is a neurological condition, many, if not most, people who stutter as older children or adults will continue to do so—in some fashion—even when they work very hard at changing their speech.’ (see About The NSA – National Stuttering Association (westutter.org))

It is estimated that perhaps one per cent of the total global population stutter but that perhaps as many as 5% of all children go through a period where they stutter. It is also generally accepted that stuttering is more common among males than females. In adults, the male-to-female ratio is about 4 to 1; in children, it is closer to 2 to 1.

In other words, these are remarkably common phenomena. It is therefore really important that appropriate support and resource is identified to addressing the issues of those who stutter or stammer.

I leave you with a poem written by Natasha Foster called ‘Lighting Candles’ . Natasha wrote of the poem:

“Sometimes I have felt that my stammer stole the words from my mouth, but in writing, I can express things as I want to. There are losses and gains connected to having a stammer, and I tried to reflect that in my poem.

‘I called my poem ‘Lighting candles’ because when I’m open about my stammer, and share my experiences, I like to imagine lighting a small candle of awareness in others. I find motivated to think of increased ‘light’ being shed on the subject, and how this might help me, and others like me, who stammer.”

LIGHTING CANDLES

Knotted words

Angry Heart

Shame and pain

A faltering start

A sense of grief

At a life a bit bashed

By a loss of speech

Some opportunities dashed

My stammer is my uneasy friend

One that will probably stay till the end

City Lit, Stamma, and my fellow peers who know

Helped me change my thinking, learn and grow

I’m working on being a woman of pride

My stammer lives within me, part of me,

By my side

I’m free to speak with a stammer

And share who I am

My person, my experience, my spirit, I can!

Unknotted words

Thankful heart

Self acceptance and hope

Every day is a new start.

(Taken from Poem: ‘Lighting candles’ | STAMMA)

Donald Macaskill

In just under a month on the 1^st November the working group which published Scotland’s Bereavement Charter for Adults and Children will be holding a webinar entitled ‘The Space Between: understanding anticipatory grief.’ You can sign up for it and get more details here. On the day we will hear from invited speakers who will reflect on the loss of a parent, the loss of a child and sibling, and the loss of a loved one who you have cared for. The day will also see the publication of the refreshed and updated version of the Charter Guidance document which contains advice and guidance on grief and bereavement. At this time there will be a new section focussing on anticipatory grief.

The phrase might seem a bit strange or alien to those who are not part of the bereavement and grief support world. Sadly, however I suspect the experience of anticipating grief will be all too familiar to many of us.

Anticipatory grief is variously described but in essence it is the grief which starts before someone dies. It is a grief which is often not talked about and sometimes people can be made to feel guilty if they talk about the loss of someone who they know is going to die. So, they shut up and dismiss their feelings. Yet for many of us who have known a loved one who receives a terminal diagnosis like cancer or who has been diagnosed with a condition such as dementia, the grieving can start there and then. It can be terrifyingly immediate and overwhelming. All the lost dreams and possibilities, all the dashed hopes and aspirations, all the places unvisited and the plans unfulfilled. Knowing that someone you love and care about is going to die is a waiting which paralyses the soul and empties you of the few tears you may have left.

My twin brother died from cancer close to 6 years ago and it has taken until now for me to mention that truth in this weekly blog despite all the writing and speaking I undertake on grief and loss. Many twins reading this will recognise that there is often a connection between twins which you feel to be unique and special. It might not always be easy, and distance and the passing years might lessen it, but growing up so inter-connected with another person from the first moments of life onwards can make the sense of grief all the sharper and more painful. And in truth having spoken to a few twins it is a grief that is rarely talked about or shared.

After my twin’s death one of the most challenging series of statements I had to deal with came from those who said things like ‘it was good you had time to prepare’; ‘at least it wasn’t a sudden death’ or ‘you’ll be content that he is at peace now.’ There is a grain and a morsel of truth in some of those sentiments, but their uttering is a dagger to the heart. I know I am not the only person who has heard such words. So many people today will have recently experienced the death of a loved one who they knew was going to die … but we always hold onto the hope, the dream that they would have more time, that there would be more space to make memory and build togetherness… and yet it was not to be. There is no peace in waiting for hurt.

Waiting for someone who means so much to you to die does not prepare you it exhausts you. Waiting for death to come does not make the emptiness of absence any easier it makes it feel even more hollow. Waiting for death does not make the sheer sorrow of the moment any less raw and real.

Years of working and being amongst the dying and the grieving has taught me how little I know about living and dying. But one lesson whose truth I sense as authentic is that grief is not a moment but a series of memories; it is not a task to be undertaken and fulfilled, but a work to be struggled with for what seems forever. It is a journey whose destination is unknown and whose completion is ever in the future.

Maybe that is what those who are anticipating grief and those who are living through it share. A sense that we are changed because of the love we feel for another here and yet absent, present and gone. For they have riven us through with their loving and we are moulded into who we are by our knowing of them.

As for my twin, I think about him every day – like so many bereaved I hear his voice, sense his presence and catch myself wanting to talk to him; I hear his laughter and his passion; I want to pick up the phone and tell him my news or just hear his voice again. To just have another minute to say what was left unsaid and to say a proper goodbye knowing in truth that I could never finish the sentence of love in any time of minutes and hours. Even as I write this, I can feel the shiver inside my body. Grief sits with me, and I have grown used to her presence, but it is one that continually empties me of energy. So, no I cannot accept the experience of some that knowing about the inevitability of death, that anticipating it, prepares you for the reality.

As many of you know I find solace and escape in the reading of poems. Sometimes I find myself coming across esoteric and rare poems. One such which I recently discovered was in a famous group of poems in the tenth-century manuscript known as the Exeter Book. They are stunningly moving medieval reflections on isolation, loss and grief. One of the most famous is called (in a modern translation) The Wife’s Lament, and speaks of the loneliness felt in summer day, a loneliness brought about by isolation and grief. It introduces to the reader a word ‘uhtcearu, a compound which means ‘pre-dawn-sorrow’, ‘grief at early morning’. In Old English uht is the name for the last part of the night, the empty chilly hours just before the dawn, and so a particularly painful time for grief and loneliness.’

I resonate so much with that sense of uhtcearu because for me at least it is in the last hours of night, when the world is still and strangely silent, that loss feels more intense and memory of those not with me seems to settle in beside me, both to soothe and in love to call me into another day. As we anticipate the dawning of the day we move our grieving heart to face the light of another absent day and we know the task of living through memory is to mould our lost love into a new beginning, however hard, every day. But the morning only comes if we allow the uhtcearu.

Donald Macaskill

Dr Eleanor Parker from Oxford University has written a brilliant piece on the Wife’s Lament. See The Wife’s Lament. A Medieval Poem about Isolation | TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Photo by Abbas Tehrani on Unsplash

This coming Tuesday (10^th October) is World Homeless Day. It is also a day on which for some time World Mental Health Day has been held. The occurrence of both these awareness days on the same date is perhaps not accidental because sadly there is often a close relationship between mental ill health and the causes of homelessness for many people.

World Homeless Day’s primary purpose is to raise awareness of the serious issues faced by the homeless population globally, as well as giving a focus to some of the issues which can act as a cause of homelessness.

This past week I was speaking with a former colleague who is now working for a charity that supports people who are homeless. I was reflecting with them that from my own awareness there seemed to be more rough sleepers in the centre of Glasgow when I walked through the city than I could remember for some time. It would appear that personal observation is not an inaccurate one. I was also struck by an observation he made which was that he and colleagues are seeing more and more older people becoming homeless and that older people’s homelessness is often ‘hidden and hard’.

According to a report from Shelter there are around 300,000 people across the United Kingdom who are currently experiencing homelessness. In Scotland a Scottish Government report at the end of last year highlighted the growing extent of homelessness which is indeed on the rise, increasing 10% from previous data.

One of the particular issues which interests me personally is the growing number of older persons who are becoming homeless. This is the hidden homelessness my ex-colleague referred to. Indeed, one of the first people I ever met in a residential care setting was someone who had spent a great deal of his adult life being homeless. By the time I had met him he was in his late seventies and bore all the scars from years of living rough, or time in various hostels and temporary accommodation settings. He found himself in a care home supported by understanding staff and fellow residents and perhaps for the first time in a long time having his specific needs addressed in an inclusive and positive manner. He had first become homeless as a result of a relationship breakdown and from personal mental health struggles and had found it increasingly hard to both get a job and to get himself out of the spiralling addictions which had become his lifestyle. Over the years it has become clear to me that many residents in our care homes have lived with chaotic lives up until that time.

Whilst the Scottish Government report last year highlighted that the majority of those who are homeless are under the age of 49 there is still a sizeable group (some 12%) who are over 50. It also showed that older people often fail to maintain accommodation (frequently in the private rented sector) as a result of physical as well as mental health issues. Yet this older group is least likely to take up the opportunity of temporary accommodation.

Age UK has argued that it is important for our older age citizens that we recognise that homelessness does not just mean rough sleeping. It can equally be circumstances where an older person does not feel that it is safe to remain in their own home or has been forced out of their own place because of family or community breakdown. It can also be the case that the death of a partner or a spouse can make someone homeless. Sadly, we are also increasingly aware that the cost of living crisis has prevented some people from maintaining their homes to a standard that makes them safe, and even more common that a developing or new disability or illness makes someone’s home no longer suitable to meet their needs.

As we move into autumn and winter many of us are concerned that the homes of many of our older citizens will not be fit for purpose and that many older Scots will join the growing numbers of those who are in reality homeless even if they are not noted in the official statistics. Despite record figures being reported in the media of those being made homeless in Scotland, as Citizens Advice Scotland have stated this may only be a fraction of the true story:

‘Citizens Advice Scotland spokesperson Aoife Deery said: “This is the horrifying impact of the cost of living crisis and the housing emergency. There is a serious risk these figures are the tip of the iceberg, as people can’t keep up with essential spending.

“Across the Citizens Advice network we have seen that advice on actual homelessness has been growing as a proportion of housing advice for the past few months. In fact, homelessness advice in December 2022 was up 34% from December 2021 as a proportion of all homelessness advice.”

I hope we can all of us this coming Tuesday and in the days and weeks to come reflect on the issue of homelessness in our communities, and most especially to think of older people and the reasons they may become homeless.

In so doing we might ponder the words of Ian Macmillan who wrote in last year’s Big Issue for last year’s World Homeless Day:

A Shakespearean Sonnet About Doors by Ian McMillan

It’s not much to ask. Just a door to lock.
A door that won’t break when someone kicks it.
Door with a keyhole. Respond to that knock
Or not. My choice. It’s broke so let’s fix it:
The world, I mean. Not the door. That’s ok.
It’s my door, to my room. Look: here’s the key.
The world, though. That’s different. Somewhere to stay
Is what we all need. Somewhere to be me
And not just someone you blithely ignore
When you see me sleeping on the street.
Let’s begin with this. A door. Just a door
To start with. A door. Food. Then light and heat.
The world must respond to this simple truth:
Let’s all have a door. Let’s all have a roof

National Poetry Day: Read this exclusive poem about homelessness by Ian McMillan – The Big Issue

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Donald Macaskill

Whenever I am with a group of people who come from outside Scotland one of the commonest questions I get asked – as I am sure we all do – is “Where do you come from?” I have to confess it is a question I have often struggled to answer and have probably given contradictory and different replies over the years.

“Where do you come from?” might simply be a request for geographical birthplace origins but it is so much more.

For me the answer is I was born in Glasgow and lived there in my formative years, then returned again as an adult. But as I walked the streets of Partick, or learnt academic lessons at Gilmorehill, or experienced life’s lessons through the delights of the city’s west end, there were undoubtedly times when I felt ‘at home’ but I’m not sure I ever felt it was the place ‘where I was from.’ That for me is the place where you feel that you truly ‘belong.’

Belonging is an intriguing concept. It can be the space that you call home, the physical bricks and mortar that offers shelter, security and nurture. But it can often be the place that yearns deep within you. For me it has always been closer to the places I sense in my blood – most especially Skye where my parents came from, where I spent every holiday, I had up until my twenties, and where even today after months and months of absence makes me feel different when I arrive there. And lest you think I’ve swallowed a dose of romantic escapism – I don’t think belonging necessarily is always positive or comfortable it can also be a place that unsettles, contradicts and challenges- but it is through all that a place that pulls you into itself and which possesses a magnetic irresistibility. Memory of place can both heal and hurt.

The role of place and the nature of belonging in our character and personality has long been recognised to be of psychological significance. Where we are born and where we live matters on so many counts; where we feel we belong aids our wellbeing and this is perhaps especially true as we age and grow older.

Tomorrow is the annual United Nations International Day of Older Persons. It is a day when we are all encouraged to think about key issues for older age across the globe but most especially in our own communities and nations.

One leading organisation, the Centre for Ageing Better, has chosen this year to focus on the integral role of older people to their place, and the importance of place to ageing well. Like many age-friendly organisations their work is in part grounded in their knowledge and awareness that the place where we live has a huge impact on our wellbeing as we age. So this year they are focussing on the need to celebrate ageing in our community’s past, present and future.

As they state:

‘This year’s IDOP theme encourages people to get curious and be proud about your place; to come together across age-groups to discover your place’s past, to celebrate the diverse range of people and places making yours a great place to age, and to commit to make changes, so more people can enjoy good later lives in your community – now and in the future.’

The ageing-in-place agenda posits that the preferred environment for older adults to age is in the community, where they can remain active, engaged, socially connected, and independent.

So how are we doing? Are we helping people to stay in place? What are we doing to make our streets and communities really inclusive of older age? This is both about the physical and built environment but also about attitudes which include, value and recognise the contribution of older age citizens.

Yesterday I walked through the city centre of my old ‘home city’ Glasgow and by my personal assessment it is not a space that is truly inclusive. Pavements which appear to prioritise cyclists but confuse citizens as to where they should walk or be; on street shop display boards that challenge someone who uses a wheelchair or who has a visual impairment; graded and stepped areas which are an invitation to slips and falls; and pedestrian crossings requiring the speed of a Usain Bolt to get across in time. A frantic, busy commercialism that seems detached from the patience and pace required to support customers living with dementia or simply with the frailty of growing old. Now I don’t want to be banned from entering Glasgow – I could just as easily have mentioned Edinburgh, London or Newcastle. The cities I’ve been in recently simply do not strike me as having prioritised ageing in place.

I think we could and should do so much better. If we are going to take ageing in place seriously we have to recognise as a whole society that we have a long long way to go. And it makes both societal and economic sense not least as the relative disposable income and spending older citizens dwarfs any other age group. But put simply our city centres have excluded themselves through urban planning which has not been age aware or sensitive.

Our population is ageing and in a decade its composition will be very different from what it is today. We need civic leaders to take ageing seriously and not as an afterthought; to create urban communities that foster belonging and equality.

But we also need there to be a wider political recognition that ageing in place with all the benefits that brings to the citizen and to the wider health economy does not just happen by accident but it has to be adequately resourced. It’s not just the physical environment that discriminates against older age.

The stripping out of funding for community based third sector groups; the lack of sustainable support for homecare organisations which foster continued independence, and the hollowing out of support for respite and older persons day resources and services are making it an uphill battle for older people who want to continue to belong to their place to remain where they want.

As the Centre for Ageing Better make clear:

‘ simply changing the built form is not sufficient to create a more inclusive environment for ageing since places are more than physical spaces. Viable environments are articulated through a strong sense of place, defined as the social, psychological and emotional bonds that people have with their environment. A strong sense of place results from having access to supports for active participation, opportunities to build and sustain social networks, and assuming a meaningful role in the community. In contrast a feeling of displacement or ‘placelessness’ is associated with alienation, isolation and loneliness, often resulting in adverse health and well-being outcomes, particularly amongst vulnerable older adults.’

Being able to age where you want should be a fundamental right of citizenship in our communities or we are at risk of creating ghettos of demography.

We all of us need to be given the tools and resources which enable us to belong in the space we choose to be.

This place has grown old with me, its ground has held my feet, its grass has cradled my belonging, its hills have nurtured my hope; its rivers have soothed my dreaming; its streets echo with the laughter of memory, its doors open up to new conversation; it’s where I want to become young in my older age.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by George Hiles on Unsplash