The Language of Kindness

On Friday my mum worked her last shift as a nurse. For the past few years she has worked in a hospice, providing end-of-life care to patients.

She first started nursing when she was eighteen, over forty years ago. Born in Swanage, a quiet seaside town, she moved to suburban Edgware. My mum was living away from home for the first time and her dad had not long passed. The loss of a father, the move to a new town, the start of a new job meant she had to grow up fast.

Training to do anything then was not as easy as it is now. The hours were long with few concessions afforded to students. You had to observe carefully and learn fast. The Sister's rule was law. Iron fists hiding velvet hearts. Meet their standards or meet your Maker. The choice was yours. My mum got through her practice and met my dad. He was in hospital with malaria and saw her on another ward. His Florence Nightingale. The lady with a lamp that lit up his heart. In a fit of romanticism he went over to the nursing quarters and asked her out. They’re still married today.  

"Florence, would you turn that bleeding lantern off. I'm trying to get some sleep."

From there, they moved to Watford where she worked in the hospital for over twenty years. Working with the elderly, she provided dignity when their age could not. Tired and spent by ward work, she moved to a rehabilitation clinic, nursing people of different ages. Her final job was a real challenge. The euphemisms of ‘they had a good innings’ didn’t always apply here. She was seeing young children say goodbye to mothers and fathers. It’s hard to keep going when you’re surrounded by such sadness, but that in many ways is the true test of a nurse: when the Fates have been so cruel, treating kind people with such contempt, it’s down to you to show- however powerless- goodness reigns. The opportunity to give people the best goodbye in the worst situations was a responsibility she never took lightly.

A few months ago, my mum lent me a book, The Language of Kindness: A Nurse’s Story by Christie Watson. I’ve been meaning to start it for a while but I thought this week , given mum was concluding her own story, would be particularly apt. Watson’s first novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away won the Costa First Novel Award in 2011. Whilst writing her debut she was working at a London teaching hospital. It isn’t until recently that she’s decided to hang up the fob watch and pursue her career as a writer full-time. This book, her third, is a rumination on her time spent working as a nurse.

Author and book.

For the young Christie nursing wasn’t on the horizon. She trumpeted the idea of law, photographer, conservationist and even Jazz trumpeter. Nursing wasn’t the life she saw ahead of her – why? Because it was already in her. Her mum was a social worker, who in one scene brings her work home with her. During a training placement, she invites a group of adults with learning disability into her living room for a drink – they end up stopping for dinner. At first Christie, aged fifteen, is unsure. Over the course of the evening she sees these are no Boo Radleys, quite the opposite, there is tenderness and kindness here: a textbook lesson in not to judge a book by its cover. On quitting school she volunteered for The Spastic Society (what is now known as Scope). Here she was persuaded to induct in nursing (at this time it came with a grant. Imagine that. A grant to support people into an under-staffed, under-paid profession. They were really on to something then). And this was the beginning of a tenure that would take her through hospital corridors, up and down floors, to provide a comprehensive guide as to what it’s like being a nurse.

With This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay and Admissions by Henry Marsh, it’s about time nurses' voices reached the mainstream. The aforementioned are superb, offering a behind the curtains glimpse into life as a consultant; however what isn’t always heard is the place nurses play in a patient’s recovery. Their role in the theatre of medicine is less about showmanship and more about craft. They might not have the biggest speech, but their role in the ensemble is vital. A doctor may take the final bow, receive the ovation, sign the autographs at stage door, but in the wings are the people who keep the show on the road.  

Great reads as well, particularly Kay's.

Christie’s book is a marvel because it moves seamlessly between memoir, treatise and polemic. She drips in philosophical quotation and portentous statistics to make her book more than an autobiography. In reading I learnt some things that were truly shocking. For example, I knew suicide was the biggest killer of young men, what I didn’t know was domestic violence was the biggest killer of young women. I discovered that the Government want 21,000 more mental health nurses, but aren’t prepared to pay a grant to attract them. I learnt that over a million people are expected to have dementia by 2025. Christie’s drops in these hand grenades, then runs for cover behind her anecdotes. The result is we learn by stealth. You never feel it’s preachy, whilst recognising that something has to be done.

Her journey across specialisms means she is well qualified to talk about many areas of nursing. However her concentration in intensive care give her stories real gravitas: this is life and death. In one memory Jasmin, a little girl, is in with smoke inhalation. Her mother is already dead. Aware that she hasn’t got long, her aunt asks for a priest. He’s not going to make it in time. Christie assumes the role and baptises the child. Despite being trained medical professionals, priest isn’t the only role they have to adopt. Nurses are cleaners, administrators, mathematicians, dream-catchers and counsellors. Although it seems like nurses deal in biology, psychology is as important. To keep someone’s spirits up in the sterile atmosphere of a hospital is perhaps the heaviest lifting they perform.

I’m grateful for this book as it has helped me understand the woman who raised me. What she’s done for others. What she’s done for me. I salute Christie for celebrating this noble profession. Nurses like my mum have read it and felt proud of the job they do. And in a world where they’re under-appreciated, these pick-me-ups are needed more than ever. Ultimately, Christie's memoir is a phrase book on kindness; a reminder we must do all we can to support those already fluent in it.

The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson is available now.