I have always wanted to watch “The Lady in the Van”, so what better place than on the plane flying from Cape Town to Istanbul. Good wine, ok food, a terrible seat, and a good movie to take my attention off the fact that my knees are locked behind my ears. The woman in front of me tells her husband “you are too polite! Push the chair back – you are always too polite to do this. Look – it can go a lot further back”. Yes it does indeed – pushing your bloody backrest right into my face, painfully crushing my kneecaps to a pulp. She is all of 4”3’, and there really is no need for her to lie flat on her back eating her meal. I gently tap her on the shoulder (I promise) – she jumps up as if an ax murderer had just shown his face at her seat. (Guilty conscience I suppose). I ask her if she could at all just sit up a little bit to allow me to breath and not have her seat in my mouth. When the husband asks her “what did he say” she politely replies “oh nothing…!”.

After a night of not sleeping, winds at 95km/h and waiting for a tree to fall on our roof, I am particularly edgy. The fact that the air warden has run out of tonic at row 17 does not help. He offers me gin with soda. I laugh – maybe just a tad too loud. A few minutes later he miraculously finds tonic, and pours me a gin that makes my hair stand on end. And that takes some doing as most of you will know. I now do feel and look like an ax murderer. We are offered beef or pasta – only to be told that there is no more pasta. When asking for red wine, I am told that there is a choice between CabSav or Merlot. But there is no CabSav left. I settle for meatballs and Merlot. I should threaten the person in front of me with a meatball – it would have been considered a cultural weapon. Yet, it is tasty.

The Lady in the Van. An incredibly moving portrayal of the frailty that often comes with ageing. Not necessarily the frailty of body, but more the frailty that comes with vulnerability. And how life can deal a bad hand, how the dice can fall in peculiar ways for some. Last night, lying awake in the storm, I could not help thinking of the thousands of people living in informal settlements, and how this storm would have affected them. Maggie Smith embodies the vulnerability of every older person I have ever encountered, living in her van in the driveway of the very reluctant Alan Bennet. His own struggle with his mother, living with dementia, does not make things easier for their relationship. His seeming inability to care for his mother or the lady in the van, makes him particularly vulnerable as well. At one point he says “I hate care, it is dirty!”, after stepping in the excrement of his unwanted tenant.

Their relationship grows as he learns that she was a nun (twice) and studied music, even thought she now cannot bare the sound of any music. In fact, she becomes violent when the children of the owners of the house in front of which she is squatting play the recorder. (Of course, here I am with her. There are few sounds on this earth more nerve wrecking than that of a recorder.)

As her health deteriorates, Margaret becomes stronger willed. Yet, she allows herself to be taken to a day hospital to everyones surprise. Mr. Bennet realises how much he has become attached and how much he actually cares. And how no one else really cares on a meaningful level. At one point he says that”no one went into the van. I went into the van”. The disgustingly smelly van. Few are willing to go into the van. We peep throught the mirrors, tell ourselves that everything is ok. That “they are safe”. We need to go into the van. I sit sobbing throught the tough meatballs, swallowing it down with gulps of Merlot. Atul Gawande in “Being Mortal” says that “hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan” referring to the medical fraternity and their obsession with extending/saving life at all costs, and how this medical hope is dished out like lottery tickets. Very few win…

I discover the last series of Downton Abbey – another Maggie Smith masterpiece. I love it when she asks her cousin “does it not get very cold up there on the moral high ground?”. Does speaking out constitute “taking the moral high ground”? Calling people out about ageist attitudes, racism, white privilege. Standing up against bullying. In a world where the concept of being moral has all but disappeared, one stands little chance of change.

In the world of Aged Care, we have become so good at knowing what is “best for them”, mostly totally negating the “them” in the equation. Is it possible to act in the best interest of another? At what age does autonomy diminish to the point where others take over – family, children, doctors and health care professionals. When am I no longer the true expert of my own life, entitled to deciding on the course I want my life to take? Should we “rage against the dying light”? Our should we gracefully accept our own mortality? Modern medicine does not prolong life – it only temporarily pushes away that which would kill us.

Last week I meet a property developer waxing lyrically about the progress in stem cell research, and how we will soon be able to live forever. Even simpler (according to this expert) we will actually grow younger if we get injected with the blood of children. I cannot imagine the horror on so many levels.