jmgoyder

wings and things

Feb 21

Ten more minutes

by jmgoyder

Tonight, I went to see Ants later than usual because I had a party to go to later that evening. I arrived at 6pm to find him in bed, propped up comfortably and watching television. I pulled my chair close to the padded rail on the left-hand side of his bed, muted the television, kissed him and grabbed his hand.

He was very blank to begin with and, because he hardly blinks, his eyes were wide and a bit  confused. Our conversation wasn’t particularly animated because his voice was a whisper

Me: You look like a stunned mullet!

Anthony: You are ….

Me: Are you tired?

Anthony: Yes.

Me: Well I am going to a party soon but you can stay put. Is that okay?

Anthony: Yes.

Me: It’s L’s party; she’s graduated and now has her PhD. You remember L?

Anthony: I think so.

Me: May I change the station to the food channel?

He didn’t respond so I did so anyway and we watched a chef put together a delicious meal.

Me: This is making me hungry, Ants.

Anthony: Is there any chocolate?

Me: Yes!

One of our closest friends, M, provided a massive amount for Christmas and he has only gotten through half of it. So, one by one, I popped a few treats into his mouth because his hands weren’t working. (Around a year ago Anthony seemed to partially forget how to feed himself so, if I were there at mealtimes, I would feed him. We would joke about this and I would exclaim, “Feed yourself for goodness sake!” and he would say, “It’s more sexy when you do it.” I would laugh and laugh and he would smile.

Anthony has now become one of those residents who often (mostly?) has to be fed. But that’s okay because at least he still has an appetite and can still swallow adequately enough that his food doesn’t have to be mushed.

My plan was to leave the nursing home at 7pm, drop in to see my friend, N, on the way to L’s. I told Anthony this a few times as I was saying goodbye to him, then N rang to say she was running a bit late.

Me: Ants, I can stay another 10 minutes.

Anthony:  I am enjoying myself.

Me: Can you enjoy yourself when I’m not here?

Anthony: Yes.

My heart relaxed and I put my hand into his again and squeezed it and he took my hand up to his mouth and kissed it.

Ten minutes later, as I got up to go, he looked at me, his eyes wide, but no longer blank. I looked back, kissed him goodbye, and told him I would see him tomorrow.

Anthony: Ten more minutes?

Me: Yeah we’ve already had those. I love you so much, Ants!

Anthony: I love you too, Jules.

I have been so terribly sad lately that blogging seemed too hard, and responding to others’s blogs even harder, but I think I might have my writing voice back now. I hope so because I really want to write about this experience with Anthony, and Ming too; I really want to re-experience and express how beautiful ten minutes can be.

 

 

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Feb 15

Candy

by jmgoyder

Yesterday I wrote a post which I later edited because my grief sometimes interrupts my sense/ sentence structure. And I get worried that I might unwittingly upset someone good in Anthony’s family.

Candy is one of Anthony’s many nieces; she is also his god-daughter and Ming’s god-mother. But she and her husband live a long way away, up north on a station that suffers frequent droughts.

Her brother (the nephew who visits Ants every weekend), often brings Candy’s letters to read to him. I keep these in Anthony’s top drawer and often re-read them to him, which always makes his day!

Maybe this is an idea that could work? Maybe friends and relatives could email me these letters and I could read to Anthony?

Every time I read a Candy paragraph, he smiles. Thank you, Candy.

 

 

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Feb 3

Gentle

by jmgoyder

The other day I felt the whiplash warning of a storm,

but it passed!

I had my armour on, I had my family protected; I was ready for the storm,

but it dissipated!

I sharpened my sentences with full-stops so that they wouldn’t ricochet back as semi-colons,

but nothing I wrote/said had the slightest effect on the storm-brewer.

I’ve become like a cartoon character of the lioness/mother bear who protects her family.

Overly sentimental posts about Anthony are simply an expression of ongoing grief, disbelief that he has lived so many years post prognoses. Ming has been absolutely amazing in every way.

Ming has a way of unravelling the bitter-and- twisted yarn into a coherent thought and, today, I thank him so much for reminding me to be gentle.

Gentle

 

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Jan 31

A new idea

by jmgoyder

Okay so my new idea is to visit Ants later in the day, like I did this afternoon. That way, I can get other stuff done (writing, picking tomatoes from my garden, having heart-to-heart conversations with Ming, researching PDD, feeding the peacocks, vacuuming the house, finding the iron etc.)

My mother visited and fed Ants his lunch today but, by the time I got there, he was in bed, propped up ready for tea and he thought my mother’s visit was yesterday. I threw myself onto the bed and hugged him, much to his amusement, and lay there beside him for a bit, kissing him ferociously on the lips quickly, until he grinned.

Maybe I should visit later in the day so that he has a good memory of seeing me before he goes to sleep. That might be a better way for me to venture forward – dunno! That way, I could deal with daily life stuff, go into town to feed Anthony his tea, then come home and chill.

Over the years, lots of people have advised me to look after me, but I don’t buy into that whole ‘me’ thing because it’s so weird; after all, a ‘me’ can’t be isolated from a ‘we’.

I think I have now resolved various issues to do with family politics and, having spoken to Anthony’s only remaining brother yesterday, we have a tenuous agreement that he will ring me before visiting. I stated the reasons, he rejected the reasons, but at least we had a dialogue. My feistiness sought refuge in a compassionate sinkhole. Futile, of course. Silly me.

But none of this matters any more – none of it. Anthony is the best person I have ever met in my life. He was my friend for over a decade before he became my husband; he was a middle-aged, bachelor dairy farmer, a workaholic, a person who liked to run in the paddocks just for the fun of running. He was loud and, like his mother, liked to party; he was crude and respectful at the same time; he was snobby and/or ‘common’ simultaneously; he was my absolute hero.

So, perhaps, when I feed him his tea tomorrow, I will remind him of these halcyon days!

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Jan 13

Moments

by jmgoyder

Today, as I fed Anthony his lunch, he took my hot hand into his cold hand, and kissed it over and over again until I laughed hysterically.

Anthony: Shhhhh! You are so loud!
Me: I was always softly spoken until I met you!
Anthony: Shhhhh!
Me: Are you ready for your next mouthful? OMG you are like a starving dog!
Anthony: I’m hungry.

Anyway, after I fed him his lunch (he seems to have forgotten how to use cutlery – normal in cases of PDD) I got my mother’s amazing Christmas cake out of the cupboard and he pretty much vacuumed it all up!

Lately I have become a bit haphazard with visiting Ants. For example, when he is in sleep-mode, I don’t stay very long; but if he is in wide-awake mode, I stay. It’s a kind of loose arrangement whereby I try to spend at least a few hours per day with him. I should probably turn this into a more regular, regulated routine, but, since I stopped working at the university (and that is a few years ago now), I have lost any sense of daily routine. I suppose I have just been kind of going with the unpredictable flow of Anthony’s PDD.

When I take a day off from seeing Ants, I simply summon Ming or Meg to do so.

Almost every time I enter Anthony’s room, he looks at me and says: “How did you find me?”

Almost every time I leave Anthony’s room, he asks: “You won’t forget where I am?”

This afternoon, he whispered something a bit more poignant: “Jules, don’t forget about me” and I reassured him, of course!

His verbal antics aren’t so acrobatic anymore; his sarcasm is subdued, but the way Anthony stares at photos of Ming and me and him – especially the ones in which Ants is still healthy, I am young, and Ming is a little child – are particularly moving.

Now that Ming has converted a couple of videos into dvds (of wedding and baby Ming), I can see clearly how this nearly 40-year-old relationship has impacted on all of us in various ways.

And this is probably the moment in which I begin to cry (unless I find a good movie).

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Jan 12

Anthony’s hilarious sarcasm!

by jmgoyder

Yesterday, when my mother visited us at the nursing home, she asked me how one of her friends was; her friend is in the dementia cottage where I worked for awhile last year. So I said, “Let’s go and visit her!” So we did. I love going there to see the wonderful women (residents and staff).

I told Ants we’d be back soon as the dementia cottage is just around the corner from where he is – in the high care section.

ME: Ants, we’re just going to visit some of the neighbours.
ANTHONY: What about me?
ME: I’ll be back really soon, okay. You stay here.
ANTHONY: I suppose I’ll see you in two or three weeks then.

He has a gift for sarcasm – always has!

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Jan 11

WordPress ‘like’ problems

by jmgoyder

Whenever I read posts, I can make comments but there is no facility to simply ‘like’. Is anyone else having this problem?

blogging

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Jan 11

Bright eyes!

by jmgoyder

I feel compelled to record these updates on Anthony’s health, so that I will remember in the future. The unpredictability of his daily condition is just that – unpredictable. After days of silence and sleepiness, today his eyes were wide open (one of the many symptoms of PD is not blinking, so this makes his eyes very wide!)

Me: You look like an owl!
Anthony: I …
Me: Clear your throat – c’mon, cough!
Anthony: Coughing.
Me: So what did you want to say?
Anthony: Where is your mother?

Okay, so a little background information for those who don’t know. My mother is 81 and fighting fit despite numerous health challenges (cancer, broken hip, pelvis, wrist). She lives independently in a town not far from here and she is the epitome of maternal/grand-maternal etc.

The fact that she visits Ants so often – around twice each week and more if I need a break – is testament to her amazing love for me, her only daughter.

Today, she and I joked with Ants, and his eyes lit up several times, with mirth and affection and, of course, confusion.

Thanks, Mama!

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Jan 8

Once upon a time 4

by jmgoyder

The young woman was employed as a ‘nanny’ to two angelic-looking monsters, aged 2 and 3. She had thought her London job would be somehow exotic but, instead, she found herself dealing with a young, professional couple of parents who, despite having produced two children, didn’t have a clue what to do with them. The mother’s passionate advice to the nanny was “Don’t ever use the word ‘no’. I don’t want them to know about ‘no'”. The father, on coming home from work to find his two boys climbing the ceilings with an abundance of no ‘no’ energy, would weep freely into the reluctant shoulder of the nanny.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that this situation would distract the young woman from her love for the dairy farmer. Instead, it had the opposite affect and she became intensely homesick for Australia, for her mother and brothers, for the dairy farmer (of course!) and for the dairy farmer’s brother’s family.

That Christmas, the dairy farmer’s tall, shy sister-in-law decided to leave a cassette tape recorder on so that the young woman/nanny could share, in retrospect, the buzz of that day. When the young woman/nanny received this tape recording she was in the midst of preventing and/or throwing the angelic looking monsters out of her attic window. But when she pressed ‘play’ it all changed, as she and her two charges listened intently to the voices of gleeful children opening presents, messages from each of the white-haired children, the kindness in the tall, shy woman’s voice, the gruff affection in her husband’s. And then there was his voice – just four words: “Hi Jules, happy Christmas!”

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Jan 7

Auto/biographical risks

by jmgoyder

I was very fortunate to have once been a student of Elizabeth Jolley. She wrote fiction that was heavily laced with fact; she changed names to protect the guilty; she took risks.

The primary reason that I have hesitated over the years (decades actually!) to write what I think is a rather spectacular love story, is due to the yucky bits of the story – the betrayals, conflicts, mysteries and agonies in and amongst its success.

By writing increments of this “Once upon a time” story, I face the challenge of writing about how Anthony and I dealt with the disapproval of our relationship from both sides – from both families – and from well-meaning friends.

Over the last few weeks I have blogged outside the “Once upon a time” story, with tidbits of information about a recent event that traumatised me, and reminded me of some of the yucky stuff from the past. These posts, some now deleted, or edited, are, privately, an avenue into the complicated past of my relationship with Anthony.

When I say rather dramatic things like ‘spectacular love story’ I only mean that it was against all odds – a 41-year-old and an 18-year-old (the beginning), and now (the ending?), a nearly 57-year-old girl/woman sitting in a nursing home with her hands hugged by his nearly 80-year-old fingers.

My recent truthful tidbits have earned me the angst of one family member and, conversely, the support of many others.

I remember, years ago, Elizabeth Jolly speaking to me about one of my short stories:

EJ: This is far too painful, dear. Rewrite it.

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