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Why I Love the Bureaucracy

Because things like this happen: I go to visit my dad in the nursing home, and I get there and he isn't in his room. And so I go out to the desk and ask where he might be, thinking to myself "Goodness gracious me! Maybe Dad has decided to participate in an activity for once!" But then the nurses on duty look at me with alarm and say "...Oh." And I know, with the familiar sinking-but-already-resigned feeling, that that is not the case at all.

The case instead is that my father was just picked up to go to a doctor's appointment, a doctor's appointment I knew nothing about because when they moved him from the second floor to the fourth floor, they put the appointment In the Book. In the Book apparently is the final word, and means that everyone who needs to know knows and all is prepared and all is right with the world. Except that, in this case, that was not the case.

So then I make some noises that mean, "You screwed up. Don't do it again, fools" and they make some noises that mean "We really actually feel quite bad about this, but we're afraid to say how bad we feel because that would open the door for anger and abuse from you, anger and abuse we've probably gotten from other Guardians Over the Estate and Person of at other times," and I make noises to the effect that "Okay, I get that, I've been in that situation before, but, really you guys, this sucks."

Then I leave, because after all, the real problem is that my dad just went whizzing off to some doctor's appointment. I am on foot - I do not have a car or time to wait for a ride. I traverse the Concord Hospital campus, conveniently located across the street from the nursing home, but seriously inconveniently designed for people to walk across, in a major way - it consists mainly of a series of ledges with buildings on them, connected by parking lots and driveways down which ambulances and construction trucks careen at alarming rates, not expecting to see someone walking at all, because who walks to the hospital? It's sort of like a video game, a terrible video game of many levels where you have the crappiest powers ever, no superpowered leaps or building-climbing holds or anything, just your regular, stupid feet.

I get to the doctor's appointment and start making excuses, the refrain - despite all the wrong things done by other people - "I'm a bad Guardian, I'm a bad Guardian" running through my head. And I find out from the aide - very world-weary, and about fifteen years old, I'd guess - that this happens "all the time." And Dad is in a tizzy of astronomical proportions, because maybe the one worst thing to do to people with dementia is to surprise them and whisk them off into a new environment with no warning and no familiar face to look at, and that's exactly what happened, because in addition to not having time to stop and think about who knows about what doctor's appointments, no one has the time to go to his room maybe fifteen minutes before the van shows up and say "Hey, you're going to a doctor's appointment, just a checkup, nothing to worry about, I'm going to sit right here with you and tell you what's going on twenty times until you manage to process it."

That's why I love the bureaucracy. It keeps you on your toes, it does - even the most innocent Friday afternoon visit can turn into an emergency. It doesn't let you get complacent - you're never able to relax and think that you're doing all right, you're doing all you can, because what don't you know about? What's going wrong right this second? It keeps you busy, because you are always playing catchup to some unforeseen setback. It gives you whole new coping skills - or, at least, it takes away your ability to panic because you've already used up all your panic on all the other false alarms and wrong information and "Oops, we forgot to tell you about this and it's due today"s. The bureaucracy just wants you to be a better person. Preferably one who doesn't file complaints. Who wouldn't love that, I ask you, who?

Posted by hilatron at September 13, 2004 09:47 AM | TrackBack