Behind Closed Doors

Living lives of quiet desperation

Do you enjoy your solitude? Perhaps you are like me, and it is a hard earned prize after a life of being the ‘sociable’ person that our society tells us we ‘should’ be. But you are here, online, reaching out to others in comments, you are writing and publishing and reading. You have choice.

I half remembered the quote about ‘lives of quiet desperation’ (Thoreau) which I mentioned to a friend who looked it up. Then by synchronicity, it was quoted in almost the very next post that I read on Substack by The Curious Platypus.

Today I am going to tell you some stories about real people, who do not have choice. These stories are true but names have been changed. My source does not give me names, they never have. They work on the front lines of social services, dealing with people who have slipped through the cracks. My source is not from the same part of the U.K. and so there is no chance of me recognising or knowing any of these people. These are the people who don’t know they can ask for help. The people who have no one to see that they are living their lives in quiet desperation, sinking in a mire of society’s rejection because they can’t keep up. These stories will make you sad, remember that these people are part of your society too.

While we sit in our houses with our newly opened presents, with our recycle bins full of coloured paper we have been encouraged to buy despite whatever other narratives we are meant to believe. This is the week of the year where we get very little done, we maybe have a whole week of overindulging our need for ‘distraction’. While we feel stuffed with food and over stimulated with family ‘bonding’ behind closed doors there are people dying of neglect. These are not just stories about poverty, but also stories about human beings, your species. Some of these people have died and no one even knows their ending except for a small piece of data on a council computer.

First I am going to tell you about George. George is in his mid 60’s and lives in a block of flats. He has a ‘carer’ who visits him twice a week. He has been unwell for some time but he doesn’t like to moan about it. But on this Friday, he feels worse than normal. His carer arrives and recognises that George is quite poorly. She phones an ambulance. She is advised that there is quite a long wait before they can get there. She phones the social services emergency line. She says she cannot wait after 5 o clock. She drags George down to the foyer of his building. It is Friday and she is going out. She pins a note with his name on and despite the woman on the other end of the line telling her that she can be at her location within ten minutes of the phone lines closing, she leaves George on his own in the cold dark of the foyer with the flickering overhead light. The woman from the phone lines arrives, it is not her job to do this but she is worried about George. George is dead, slumped in the chair with his note pinned to him. She tries to give him mouth to mouth but it is obvious that he was probably dead before the ‘carer’ left at 5pm. He has been dead for more than ten minutes. The woman from the phone lines, holds George’s cold hand and waits with him until the ambulance arrives to take him away.

Now let us open another door and visit Eric. He is in his late 70’s and has suffered a stroke which has disabled him down his left side. It is a struggle for him to keep up with his usual routines. A neighbour phoned the council after noticing a large pile of fly eggs on the window sill of Eric’s kitchen. He is a cheerful soul and is delighted by the visit from the young council officer. She clears away the fly eggs and picks up the glass from a broken internal door which has been dangerously littering the floor for weeks. There are buckets collecting water where the roof of his bungalow is leaking. He tells her that a nice young man came and told him he would fix the roof for a few hundred pounds. The nice young man took Eric to a cash machine outside of Eric’s walking radius. Eric withdrew the money to pay the young man, who then said it would be a bit more for materials, and then sent Eric back for another withdrawal saying he would also do his garden, then another amount to give Eric a lift home. Eric is puzzled that the roof has not been fixed, the young man did not come back.

A council worker went to visit Phil, a man in his 40’s. He was lying in a pile of cider cans and faeces on his living room floor. There was no heating and no food in the property. The council worker went home and decided to phone his GP the next day. After speaking to a fellow officer who raised concerns about leaving Phil in that condition. The visiting council worker had not deemed Phil’s condition so urgent that she dealt with it then and there. She went home to her family and her dinner and her warm home. Her manager sent her back that night to phone an ambulance. Phil died in hospital a few days later. He had late stage cancer and had not engaged in treatment for some weeks. He had no one else to know that he was lying on that cold floor with his pain relieving cider cans to ease him into the next world. No one except that council worker who decided he was ‘next day’ urgent. Sleep well council worker.

Now we will knock on Marian’s door. It is an unexpected visit and she is confused. Her niece has contacted social services without leaving her own name or contact details. Marian has a son but he has taken out a large loan in her name and has not been seen since. Marian thinks she is 75, she is 79. She thinks the country has just gone into a lockdown and doesn’t understand when the council worker tells her that was nearly five years ago. She thinks the council lady is joking with her. She has lost 5 years. Somehow she is living in her own little bubble, alone and confused.

Let us visit Martin. He is in his late 70’s his family have reported they are concerned about his behaviour. He has lost thousands of pounds to online scams, believing he has a girlfriend in her 30’s in Columbia. He doesn’t contact his family much but they have tried to explain to him that he does not have a young lady on WhatsApp who has fallen in love with him. Martin goes missing one day and the police are informed. They discover Martin has believed so fully in his online love that he has boarded a plane to Columbia where he is now severely ill from lack of his usual medication. The social services visit is too late to help this time.

Sharon is in her 30’s, she is severely ill from alcohol poisoning, she has been an alcoholic for more than half of her short life. The council worker is kind to her and she has not had anyone be kind to her for quite some time. Her neighbour is kind to her and lends her money when her benefits run out but then when her new benefits come in, the neighbour wants to be paid double the amount that they lent her. Sharon wants to keep on her neighbour’s good side. She locks the council worker into her flat because she can’t bear to lose her. But when Sharon visits the toilet the council worker finds the keys under the couch cushion and is able to unlock the door.

Here is Derek. His council visitor does not get a response when knocking on his door but discovers the number to his key safe in his file and lets herself in. She is calling out as she enters the property. She walks through to the bedroom to find that Derek has passed away in the process of transferring himself from his wheelchair to his bed. On the table neatly laid out are his will and other details. Derek had tidied up.

Because these people are not on the streets and you can’t see them you probably do not know they are there. Living in your town too. They may not even know that help is available to them. They don’t know how to find out, how to fill in an ‘online’ form. They don’t know how to deal with an automated voice on the other end of the phone. No one knows that their lives of quiet desperation existed. Mostly they are now just a small piece of data on a council database. Except that now you know their stories too.