On hearing things
MY FRIEND’S MOTHER says it was a gradual thing. It wasn’t as though she just stopped hearing everything overnight. She might be at a meeting and realise that she hadn’t heard every word that was said. Or she would be at lunch with friends and everyone would be laughing, at what, she did not know.
Then one Christmas, a few years ago, her daughters were chatting and she left them to it because she was only hearing snippets. One daughter said: “Mam, I don’t think you can hear us half the time.” And she laughed it off. But she knew it was probably true.
She decided to go for an MOT. While at the health check she mentioned the hearing thing and she got a test and the doctor found that she could hardly hear at all, which worried her. But what do you do? There were people dying of cancer: surely she should be able to put up with something as trivial as her ears.
It bothered her, though. She knew that people might think it was a blessing, but, as an example, she couldn’t hear what the people were saying on Fair City any more. And she loved that programme; she didn’t care what anyone said. The radio was better. She always played it loud. She knew that because her daughter would come in sometimes and say “Mam, you are blasting that thing.”
One day, listening to the radio played loud, she heard the voice of one of her favourite people in the whole world: Daniel O’Donnell. And he was talking about his mother, Julia. How her hearing had been bad and how they’d sent her to this place to be checked out and how she was fitted with a state-of-the-art hearing device. “My mammy never looked back,” wee Daniel said.
My friend’s mother trusts Daniel O’Donnell more than she trusts an awful lot of people. If Daniel said something worked, it must be true.
And as much as the thought of a hearing aid filled her with dread, as much as it made her think of being old, she knew that if it was good enough for Daniel’s mammy, it was good enough for her.
She told her husband they were going to get her ears checked. He is a laid-back character. He hadn’t really noticed how bad her hearing had got. You know how it is. Two people living together. It’s easy not to realise that one of them can’t hear. Sure she knows what he is thinking most of the time, she doesn’t need to hear him say it. When she told him about the ears, it barely registered. She could have been saying she was going to get a new leg, he is that relaxed about life.
At the hearing clinic a lovely man in a white coat took her through the tests. When her laidback husband realised how deaf she actually was, he was horrified. It was going to cost a few thousand euro but he said they’d manage. So she got this digital device that nobody could even see, if she combed her hair a certain way. It was like a kind of miracle.
The man at the hearing place said that if it didn’t suit her, she could get her money back within three months. He said he had only met one man who hadn’t been happy with the device. This man lived in the middle of nowhere and his family had clubbed together to buy it for him. He wasn’t too keen, but he did it to please them. After a while he came back to the clinic looking for his money back. He knew, living in the middle of nowhere, that nobody would complain no matter how high he blasted the TV and he wasn’t going to have a hearing aid just so he could hear his family when they came to visit.
My friend’s mother doesn’t want her money back. She is like a new woman. She has been to weddings and other family events and she knows she is hearing things she hasn’t heard for years. Whole conversations and jokes that now she understands. And another thing: she can now tell when other people are finding it difficult to hear. She sees her old self in them, observes the vacant nods and smiles in inappropriate places. So she sits close to them and talks directly to them, which makes all the difference when you are hard of hearing.
What people don’t understand, she says, is that when you stop hearing you withdraw from life because it’s just too much effort to keep up.
She thinks the Government should get Daniel to front their campaigns aimed at older people. It’s not as though she would do absolutely everything he said. Like if he told her to wear a pair of leather trousers she wouldn’t, but when it came to important matters like her health, she trusted him. It was that simple.
My friend’s mother watched The Godfather the other night. And you know the way that Marlon Brando fellow has his faced stuffed with God knows what and he mumbles like anything, well it didn’t matter. She could hear every word.
In other news . . . The Dublin Flea Market is teaming up with the Street Feast initiative for an old fashioned community meet and eat tomorrow, at the Co-op, Newmarket Square, Dublin 8. Bring a dish and pull up a pew