7th October 2006 - Rab's Hands

The top of Rab’s hands look like a frozen late autumn puddle, brown red, transparent, cold and clammy. It’s those hands I watch him try to strangle Stella with, before I shout for help. Rab’s a weird one, even for there he’s odd. His backbone would appear to be an S shape, a permanent question mark. And whatever drugs he is on have the effect – side effect presumably – of making his lower eyelids peel open. When he looks at you it’s like a bald bloodhound with half moon glasses, dribbling. He shuffles like a character from Scooby-Doo, with his hands outstretched, head at a tilt, drooling and moaning. Then, once, he came into the office when I was talking to the sister about Dad’s care and reasonably coherently asked to go out for a walk, and when told it was raining to wait until the rain went off, negociated his way out of the room perfectly and waited for the rain to subside. When it did he came back, and someone took him out for a walk. I’d – up until then – have thought he was helpless and hopeless, mad and wandering in the dark but he’s not, he can look forward to things, he can communicate and he can appreciate reason. And he can strangle those that annoy him.