How odd!
I couldn’t understand why I was getting comments about a post I wrote a while ago – the dreamchild one – so I went to look and there is was again.
I know I am still having wordpress problems but this seems very strange.
The dreamchild
During the uncertain years before Anthony and I were engaged, I had a very strange certainty that twirled around in my mind, and whirled around in my stomach. So, one day, I sat down in my little bedsit and wrote about our son-to-be. I sent the poem to Anthony:
THE DREAMCHILD
He waits in a misted capsule
At the corner of my mind
And my thoughts scatter
Through him
Warming cooling him wrapped
A wisp
A fingerbreath of being peering through
Door ajar
A bloodlight outline here
Out of veiled velvet space
The colour of him blinked
Inked in jagged clear
An extension of you
Joined at this corner of misted mind
Seated crosslegged child
A particled preconception
Of something certain
And certain now he waits
For you
His strange cry smiles sunwashed
Into the beating
Beating silence marking time
Timeless
And silence like blue blue air
Sponged cool
His patience a single crimson flame
Poised
Dancing pivot
Of something certain
And certain he waits
Waiting now
We wait
For you
He waits at the corner for you
My child to be
And a few years late, the dreamchild turned into Ming!
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The wonderful incongruence of friendship
Odd friendships (Emery 2 and Baby Turkey)
Intimidating friendships (Bubble 1 and Uluru)
Alliance friendships (Tapper and one of the guinneas)
Fashion friendships (Tina Turner and Phoenix 1)
Uneasy friendships (Queenie and Phoenix 1)
Terrifying friendships (Doc with the two Bubbles)
Supervised friendships (The Bubbles, Baby Turkey and Jack)
Childhood friendships (Zaruma 1 and Bubble 1)
Avocado tree friendships (Phoenix 1 and King)
Sorrow is not as scary as it seems
Okay, in case it isn’t already obvious from recent posts on this blog, I am/we are experiencing sorrow due to my husband, Anthony’s physical and mental deterioration (courtesy of Parkinson’s disease). Ming, our son is also experiencing sorrow but from a sensible distance and that is fine and understandable.
So the bulk of this sorrow is mine alone – of course it is and I can’t, and don’t, expect anyone else to take it on because why should they? All of our friends and family have their own lives, their own joys and challenges and, sometimes, their own personal sorrows.
Even Anthony himself doesn’t feel the intensity of sorrow I feel and that is a good thing – a wonderful thing. And, as for me, this is my own deep sorrow that cannot be alleviated by invitations to dinner or movies or lunches or all of those suggestions from my beautiful friends, because this sorrow is not self-indulgent – it is a simple reality and it is inescapable. It doesn’t plunge me into a pit of despair; it just is and it somehow stills my soul.
This kind of sorrow doesn’t want or need cheering up; it doesn’t need distraction; it needs to be felt in its entirety, to be embraced and acknowledged and never avoided. It sits on my shoulder like a half tame bird who might fly off at any time – unpredictable.
Sorrow needs to be faced without fear and, strangely perhaps, it also needs to be embraced, accepted, absorbed and, for me, this is (despite the openness of this blog), deeply personal. I need to do this sorrow thing by myself. So for my beautiful neighbour-friends who care enough to want to rescue me from this sorrow, please let me be for awhile – let me figure it out by myself because I know that I can and will.
I am no longer afraid of sorrow.
Six new chooks!
In the interests of equalizing the male/female ratio here, I have now purchased six pullets (‘teenage’ hens about to lay eggs) and have confined them to the original chook pen where they are adjusting with a mixture of trepidation and delight. Surrounded by peafowl and guinnea fowl – who fly in and out of the pen whenever they feel like it – the six new chooks are experiencing a kind of culture shock I guess. All four roosters are not allowed into the pen yet so they cockadoodledoo outside the pen constantly but they don’t seem particularly amorous, more curious – maybe even alarmed.
One of my BFFs (being acronymically challenged, I didn’t even know what this meant until last week) helped me pick the new chooks up and gave me some chook advice, as she has had chooks for years.
Daffy wants to join the newbies since Dotty, his ‘wife’ seems to have disappeared. I suspect she is sitting on eggs somewhere but have not been able to find her and Daffy quacks all day for her – his loneliness is gutwrenching. I hope she hasn’t been taken by that fox.
So – another new poultry mini-chapter. Let’s hope it all works out because I want eggs again!
When life holds its breath
When life holds its breath
And the rubbish bin hasn’t been emptied yet
And the dishes haven’t been done again
And you hope for the unthinkable
That you will only be able to breathe again when he can’t
When your friends either overwhelm or discard you
When your family pities you and can do nothing to help, no matter how hard they try
You can always smash the lung balloon of life and make it breathe again
Or not
You can remember every single moment of your life with the person who is dying
Loud, boisterous parties in the kitchen with the stereo blasting
Discovering little bits of each others’ stories like drops of sweat or dew
A single perfect camellia
A cheeky half moon
A baby, now grown as upright as a karri tree
A child who doesn’t remember, but knows his father was not always as ill as now
A teenager who doesn’t remember our holidays, our joy, our frivolity
When life holds its breath
All you can do is wait for the inevitability of death
And hope the slow motion can be fast forwarded in order to skip the bad and boring bits
So that your own breath will come back
So that things will not be endlessly paused
A story with a definite resolution
A bird dead or alive but not dying, not dying
When life holds its breath
You have to tap it on the shoulder
Make it see what you see
Give it mouth-to-mouth
Kiss death, kiss life
Brandish humour like a sword
Overcome fear with love
Embrace the influx of crows
Stop wondering why
Stop crying and crying and crying
Take the white peacock feather from the ground and put it behind your ear
Wrestle the dreams of falling by becoming a giant
When life holds its breath
You have to make sure you can breathe for yourself
You have to hold the hand of your dying husband
You have to candle yourself into a glowing smile
You have to flap your wings like an angry gander with no tomorrow in mind
You have to remember and love all of the people you once knew who were dying and you did nothing
And understand the why of the fear of impending death
The loneliness of now and the absence of then
When life holds its breath
A letter of thanks
I have decided to write a letter of thanks to the wonderful staff at Wattle Hill Lodge so that they know how much they are appreciated. This is a first draft!
A letter of thanks to all staff looking after Anthony
Thank you for being so kind and considerate, way beyond the call of duty.
Thank you for being so gentle with Anthony, for liking him, for talking to him and listening to him.
Thank you for tolerating my uncertainty and ignorance of various rules, like signing in and out, coming in when there was a gastric outbreak, forgetting to fill out the satisfaction survey.
Thank you for your friendly smiles and greetings when you are rushed off your feet.
Thank you for putting up with my phonecalls to you when I can’t get through on Anthony’s phone.
Thank you for not minding our son Ming’s loud cheekiness.
Thank you for telling me that some of Anthony’s clothes were a bit shabby, to bring him socks that had treads on them, to bring him long pants (which he has always hated, but is now okay with).
Thank you for not minding when I accidentally interrupted your lunch breaks, or handover, or couldn’t remember the code to get out of the door.
Thank you for accepting that I can’t sew so all of Anthony’s clothes are labelled with a texta.
Thank you for not telling me to get lost when I wanted to help you help him with the toilet.
Thank you for so quickly realising I was not his daughter.
Thank you for telling me how disappointed Anthony was when I altered arrangements to bring him home.
Thank you for adjusting his phone, ringing me on his phone, recharging his phone when it was flat.
Thank you for making him feel safe, secure and fine at night now.
Thank you for tolerating the various doctors’ alterations of medications.
Thank you for the fact that Anthony thinks/knows you are all wonderful.
Thank you for being so kind to me too.
Thank you for not noticing that underneath my smile, my heart is ripped apart and the floor of my life is covered in the blood of loss.
Thank you for telling me I shouldn’t be lifting Anthony on my own.
Thank you for telling me that you had also noticed he was becoming more confused.
Thank you for talking to me, chatting to me, making me feel normal – making us feel normal – in a comfortable, cup-of -tea way.
There are so many more thankyous to you guys. I used to be an enrolled nurse and I mostly worked in nursing homes or with multi-handicapped people, so I know what you are all having to do to help Ants as he deteriorates, and I salute you.
So, thank you from my heart – all of you. I haven’t mentioned names here because I don’t know everybody’s names yet but I will work on that.
‘The Happy Wife’
Today I met some friends for lunch at a place called The Happy Wife.
I have been there before and the name of this little restaurant is an interesting thing to discuss. It could be assumed, I suppose, that it means that a happy wife is one who is out to lunch rather than making lunch? I don’t know. Anyway, the place has taken off like a rocket ship and is very popular.
After lunch, I went to see Anthony and spent a couple of hours with him. He didn’t bring up the subject of coming home for the weekend, so I didn’t either, even though I was ready to say it is now impossible. He was more physically mobile but also a bit more confused (the hardest part of this confusion is he doesn’t think he’s seen me, or spoken to me for ages, so a whole lot of yesterdays have been vaccuumed into oblivion and I have to convince him otherwise).
He wants me to get our bentwood chairs fixed and even gave me someone’s name so I am going to do that and all of that made sense, but in the next breath he asked what had happened to all of our furniture, so our conversation was a mix of real and surreal. I asked if I could bring a couple of pictures in and a clock (the cuckoo clock I bought him for Christmas) and he said yes. A few weeks ago he wouldn’t agree to anything from home being brought in so I didn’t because I didn’t want to hurry the sensation of permanency for him and with good reason because today he said it again: “I didn’t think this was going to be permanent.”
I decided not to respond to that and instead said, “How come you are so good at grimacing these days but you can’t grin?” so we bantered a bit. Of course I didn’t tell him I had been out to lunch at The Happy Wife because it only hurts him to think I might be doing something unnecessary when I could be with him.
I was such a happy wife.
Note: Yes, yes, I need to get a scanner! On the other hand, a photo of a photo can make a handful of years look like aeons and that’s what it feels like sometimes. Look how happy we were.
jmgoyder 