If it were my stomach roll, this would all be fine.
If it were my ham and salad roll that Son stole from me after I stole it from him, this would all be fine.
It’s my blogroll! I spent hours copy/pasting urls to this and somehow, yesterday, when I tried to link the love story blog to this blog, everyone just rolled away.
Very sorry – I will begin again – grrrr!
Ola is the little gosling turning the ‘wrong’ way in the picture below - ha! If you have seen previous posts, you will know that Godfrey, our godfather gander has been trying, for nearly a year now, to whip these babies into shape. Ola not only defies him, she ignores him!
See! This Ola and her sister Seli (both pseudonymed afer Mandy’s first borns).
I have, from time to time over the years, had leg cramps during the night and I must have inherited this from my grandmother because I remember that, when we all went to the beach, she wouldn’t go into deep water in case she got a cramp. If your legs cramp while you are swimming in deep water, you can easily drown.
If you have never had a leg cramp in the night, you are lucky, but, if you have, you will know that, in order to alleviate the pain, you have to jump out of bed and walk around until it goes away. You take some magnesium, or a bit of salt, and you are okay.
One of Anthony’s medications has a cramp side-effect. He told me the other day, with a bit of a chuckle, because he remembered my leaping out of bed to walk/run the cramp away. It used to make us both laugh because my antics were rather slapstick.
I still get the leg cramps at night and now, so does Anthony. But the difference is that he cannot leap out of his bed and I wonder how many other elderly people in nursing homes across the world, and over time, have experienced the excruciating pain of leg cramps and had to suffer silently.
Luckily, my loud, vociferous Anthony has begun to ring the bell for the nurses. A lot! Good on him.
How interesting! I just sussed out the recent statistics for this blog (something I don’t usually do – really!) and found that pain is much more popular than pleasure. I don’t have these two pps as categories in this blog, but it is obvious that more people want to read about sad stuff than happy stuff.
Why?
I do understand this because, when I was teaching Creative Writing at the local university, I used to talk to the students about this writing conundrum (this was before my husband got so sick), and this is what they came up with at the time:
I miss those students and their wisdoms.
And I would like to know why pain is so pleasurable – over to you…..
Why?
Photo courtesy of Shaam Burley
Today, this gorgeous niece is visiting Anthony at the nursing lodge with her children. She lives in Perth (2 hours away) and is going back this afternoon. This is her with my ma awhile ago.
I wrote the following poem for her some time ago.
Mandy, Full of Grace
She’s one of those people whose face doesn’t change
Her baby face is her adult face
A beautiful face
A face to trust
When she was 12 and I was 18, I wanted her to be my little sister
I wanted to look like her
I wanted to look after her
I wanted to be her
I watch the way her children watch her
Their admiration of her is bright crimson, deep yellow, ocean blue
Their long-limbed bodies are just like hers
Poised, gracious, smiling, strong
I didn’t know she was suffering
And now I know
But she knows how to run
She runs and runs and runs, but not away
She runs into and around the blood-air of her life
Her breath ragged, her shoulders straight
Unflinchingly strong
And beautiful
She’s one of those people whose face doesn’t change
Her baby face is her adult face
A beautiful face
A face to trust
This is Mandy….
Full of grace
I sometimes wish I had a sister called Mandy. So this is ‘us’ – Mandy on the left and Julie on the right. When I call Mandy, she takes the bread and lettuce from my hand with a small chirrup of joy. When I call Julie, she yawns!
She loves Anthony and Anthony loves her.
Oh yeah – I love her too!
Mandy.
Well it was. It’s a blog that keeps misbehaving and deviating from its initial stance, which was cheer-upish!
So, let’s get back to the birds. The following is one of my favourite pictures of the peaceful peacocks trying to break up a fight between the pheasants.
Unfortunately their interventions didn’t work!
Jane, Anthony’s niece, took these photographs while the rest of us just watched the unexpected drama unfold. Yes, I have possibly posted these before and, no, Phoenix 2 has never come back.
‘Alas’ is rather a good word which resembles ‘aha!’
My post about Anthony coming home yesterday elicited a few encouraging comments for which I am appreciative, but also humbled, because I am not this hero I have somehow cast myself as, so I need to remedy that impression. No, I am much more the anti-hero, regardless of my good intentions. So this post is about honesty.
When Anthony comes home and wants to be the workaholic he once was, and draws attention to the things Son and I haven’t kept up with (lawns, garden, sweeping pathways, cleaning out the washhouse, washing the car), I become bitchy and resentful and say things like, “I’m doing my best. Why do you always have to find fault?” and sometimes I add a few expletives for good measure.
When Anthony comes home and can’t walk properly, I sometimes hurry him along and then (because he is heavy) thrust him into his armchair in a way that is not gentle and he says, “Why do you have to be so rough?” and I retort, “It’s the only way I can get you into the chair!” and he says, “Well, do you have to throw me?” and I snap, “Yes!” Sometimes we both then collapse into laughter so it’s okay, but sometimes we don’t.
When Anthony comes home and is in the armchair, asleep or semi-conscious, I sneak away and do other things because if he doesn’t want to watch Black Books or look at my blog or do anything except slump, I avoid him – yes I avoid him.
When Anthony comes home, I count the hours before I can take him back to the nursing lodge because he has somehow transmogrified into a job, rather than a person who I love and, even though this is difficult to admit, I love him more at a distance (both geographical and temporal). In other words, I love him the way he was and I find it difficult now to reconjure that.
He and I talk about these things which I realize probably seems strange, but he has always been my mentor, my confidante, my best friend so sometimes I tell him about how difficult he is as if he is another person, and he gives me advice.
“You will always be my hero,” I say, “but now Parkinson’s has got you.”
“I can get better,” he always says.
“No you can’t,” I say.
“But I love you,” he says.
And, just as I leave him at the nursing lodge, I say the words too – “I love you” – then I drive back home, sometimes teary, sometimes nostalgic, but always relieved, guiltily relieved to hand him over – my hero.
The picture below is of our two male golden pheasants who nearly fought to the death over a female and the one on the right, Phoenix 1, won the battle and now Phoenix 2 has been banished. I don’t know why, but it seems an appropriate picture for this post.
I didn’t want to cram any more winners into the previous Hot Potato Award post and I would really like to give these two amazing bloggers (who also happen to be people!) the HPA. Once again, this is not an award that has any obligations attached to it – you just take it and copy/paste it to your blog, or not.
The first blogger is a daughter who cares for her mother who has Parkinson’s Disease. She does this with a mixture of glee, energy and humour, but she is also very honest about how hard this can be.
http://camsgranny.wordpress.com/
The second blogger is a sister who cares for, and lives with, her brother who has Parkinson’s Disease. Her daily blog of the ups and downs of this journey is both heart-breaking and inspiring.
http://terry1954.wordpress.com/
Jo and Terry are both wonderful examples of selfless heroism. I take my hat off to them and hope they will accept this award!
Anthony was home for most of today and, for a couple of hours, he was okay and mobile and trying to do some jobs, and he and Son got the Aga lit. Eventually! Teenagers (Son) and geriatrics (Husband/Anthony) don’t always agree on these things. And, it struck me, as I withdrew from their Aga-lighting tiff, how amazing that my two ‘boys’ – this father and son who look exactly like each other but who have an age difference of nearly 60 years – can communicate at all.
After a lunch of doner kebabs, which Anthony used to love but couldn’t manage because his hands don’t work so well any more, everything went a bit downhill and Son withdrew as Anthony became more and more crippled up. His morning drugs for Parkinson’s seem to work well, but by early afternoon it became a predictable downhill slide and by 4.30pm he was more than ready to go back to the nursing lodge.
None of the things I had planned eventuated. I wanted to show Anthony the latest blogposts, which he usually loves, but he said he was too busy for that even though he was just sitting in the armchair near me, drinking a cup of tea. He wanted to sweep some of the bird crap away from the back door, even though Son and I had already done this, so I walked him outside very slowly with his walking stick, saying ’1,2,3′ which usually gets his legs working. Eventually I put the straw broom in his hands and told him that if he fell over I would kill him, and left him out there to try. And while I watched through the window, he did a little bit of a sweep and then froze, head down, unable to move; this is Parkinson’s.
On the way back to the nursing lodge, Anthony was a bit incoherent and seemed to be having another ‘turn’ but then he suddenly said, “Jules, when you bring me home tomorrow, can’t I stay the night?” and I had to, once again, say it was too hard, he was too heavy etc. He accepted this and my guts twirled with how horribly humiliating for this man who used to be such a macho machine to have to ask me if he could sleep in his own home.
So, tonight, having rung Anthony to say goodnight, and having fed Son who is now milking cows again for the beautiful neighbours, I am unpleating the day and wondering if I could have done it better, wondering if I should be crying, wondering and wondering and wondering….
