Racing Mrs Grimshaw
I was a young African-American stroke survivor in an elderly, white English space. This short story is a snapshot of that experience.
Hello Friend!
Today is my 52nd birthday, and I’m lucky to be here.
My life changed drastically in 2010 when I had a baby and two strokes within two weeks of each other. A month later, I left a hospital in Bahrain on a stretcher and was sent to Lancashire, England.
I was a young (38) African American woman in elderly, white English spaces. The connection and belonging I found took me by surprise. This post is a snapshot of that time in my life.
Racing Mrs Grimshaw
With her tiny steps, she was oblivious that she was competing.
“Afternooon, Mrs Grimshaaaw!' the hi-vis-clad Ambulance driver shouted in a sing-song delivery that amused me. He was hard on the ‘grim’ and long on the ‘shaw’ with a broad and jovial lilt. He offered an arm to a petite woman with short, tidy white hair. I guessed she was in her eighties.
Despite an unusually hot summer, Mrs Grimshaw wore a lilac knit cardigan over a white blouse and a tweed skirt with “nude” pantyhose. Her shoes were tan and sensible, and her handbag was matching. She looked down as she walked. She watched her feet. I’d been doing the same for the past few days or weeks. I couldn’t remember.
Jovial Driver escorted her through an immaculate garden that gulped the Lancashire rain with such animated delight the foliage appeared to dance. The driver’s patience and care were so disarming that my first journey anxiety composted into curiosity and compassion. When Mrs Grimshaw finally boarded, I smiled and sought eye contact. She didn’t notice. She sat and continued to look down, touching a lifeless right hand. I then realised we were a pair of bookends.
Being a newbie on that route, I didn’t know the etiquette of the stroke community. If Mrs Grimshaw had been through anything as jarring as I had, I understand why she didn’t return my visual salutation.
With Mrs Grimshaw and I strapped in like toddlers in car seats, the ambulance moved with the clinks and clanks of a Ford factory assembly line. A pop radio station played “Hey Soul Sister” by Train and “California Gurls” by Katy Perry in succession. I had to smirk. Was this a joke, Universe? If so, it was cruel but funny.
We stopped at a pebble-dashed end-terraced house. Jovial Driver’s “Hellooo, Mr Robertson!” was met with a similarly enthusiastic greeting from a handsome man who, I guessed, was the same age as my Dad, in his late sixties or early seventies.
He hopped onto the vehicle with a smile like the Teletubbies Sunflower Baby. A smile so infectious that I had to smile back. He must have had one of those mini-strokes; his mobility was barely affected. I felt the jagged sting of jealousy for a moment. Then I looked over at Mrs Grimshaw with her neck bent like a flower whose stem has softened, and I was reminded how lucky I was to have youth and long life to look forward to. However, I had been forced to see that this was no guarantee.
With Mr Robertson on board and seated, Jovial Driver fired up the clinking vehicle and changed the radio station.
When “Me and Mrs Jones” (by Billy Paul) blasted from the speakers, Mr Robertson started singing out loud! I was thrilled by his enthusiasm. His voice was good, too. We looked at each other as if we were sharing a telepathic moment. We smiled and started singing in unison.
“Me-e…a-and, Mrs, Mrs Jones…Mrs Jones, Mrs Jones, Jones, Jones. We got a thing going o-on.”
My imagination ignited, and I created Mr. Robertson’s story. Maybe he was a music teacher at a private school where he met his wife of 30 years. She passed away, so he spends his days listening to his incredible Northern Soul and Motown record collection.
We pulled into a large car park as I constructed who I imagined Mr Robertson to be. The cars were like aphids; they circled in the hope of nabbing a space. The ambulance parked outside the hospital entrance. Mrs Grimshaw waited as the driver helped me off first. I walked through the automatic doors and towards the reception desk. I held tightly to my hospital-issue aluminium cane and surveyed each brown and cream-speckled tile as my left foot dragged across the floor.
Mrs Grimshaw passed me with her tiny steps. I wasn’t happy to be at the back of a woman forty years my senior. I imagined she’d be in a hurry to sit down with a cuppa and a biscuit, turn on the telly and watch Homes Under the Hammer or something like that. She’d drift off to sleep in her late husband’s recliner. Tuesdays were exhausting for me, too.
For now, I had a new recovery goal: Defeat Mrs Grimshaw!
I raced Mrs Grimshaw to the blood clinic every Tuesday afternoon for three months. The receptionist’s ‘Hellooo’ was the starting gun. We traversed across the brown and cream-speckled floor through the aroma of processed meat and hospital gravy, past the worried faces of families with squirming toddlers fed up with sitting around. We passed sanitary white rooms with the slight smell of gauze and disinfectant. We headed down a corridor with large windows looking out onto a courtyard of evergreen plants and benches drenched by summer rain. The entrance to the anticoagulant clinic was the finish line. That was lap one. After our blood was taken, we started lap two, which was the same route in reverse.
Mrs Grimshaw and I did the world's shortest and slowest 50-metre double marathon every week. With her tiny steps, she was oblivious that she was competing. I never won a race against Mrs Grimshaw, but I came close. I know that racing the “Ramblin’ Rose” every week was integral to regaining my mobility in those first months after my strokes.
Singing with Mr Robertson and Racing Mrs Grimshaw helped me realise that despite our differences, we are all connected in our fragile yet resilient humanity.
Of all the people ever, here we are. Thank you for sharing your time with me.