1. Ming finally passed his driving test!
2. Someone wants to buy our old car for more than the price we wanted!
3. I got my new bike!
4. A blog friend is sending me a gift!
5. Ming and I saw Anthony this morning (after two days of not seeing him) and he didn’t get all down in the dumps when we had to go!
Details to be blogged soon – I am too busy grinning!
Oh yes, and Gutsy9 (baby peacock, for those who don’t know) is thriving!
I never intended for this blog to become so personal and I certainly didn’t intend for it to become so sad. It was a blog about our adventures with birds – a way of cheering the three of us (Anthony, Ming and me) UP!
How was I supposed to know that Anthony’s Parkinson’s would escalate, then collide with Ming’s spinal surgery? How was I supposed to know that we would have to find a nursing home, that I would have to resign from my job, that I would have to figure out Ming’s post-op. requirements, that we would lose many of our birds to foxes?
How was I supposed to know what last year would entail – Ming’s anger, Anthony’s sorrow, my despair? Obviously I don’t have very good foresight.
I do, however, have pretty good hindsight and tonight I have realized that enough is enough, that I am not going to allow myself to die because Ants is dying, that I am not going to allow myself get angry because Ming is angry, that I am not going to allow myself to sink into this self-pitying quicksand of despair.
Apologies for recent posts.
Enough is enough!
It is nearly 1.30 in the afternoon and I haven’t yet rung Anthony. This is very unusual.
Usually, I ring him multiple times per day beginning with the morning phonecalls. When I say multiple times, I mean multiple attempts. The big, easy-to-use mobile we got Ants goes to message bank after exactly 13 rings, so my system is to let it ring 12 times, hang up, and do the same thing a couple more times. I usually get him on the third try.
But, even when he answers the phone, he often can’t hear me because he is forgetting how to hold the phone to his ear, so I have to yell my side of the conversation. And sometimes, he starts pressing numbers on his phone and unintentionally cuts me off, so I have to begin the whole ritual again. I often have to ring the nurses to help Anthony answer his own phone.
I do this phonecall thing in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening regardless of whether I am visiting him or not (an average of every second to third day now).
When it works, our morning conversations are light-hearted (Ants is lucid), our afternoon conversations are mournfully hopeful (he is sad and wants to come home), and our evening conversatioms are bizarre (he is confused).
It is nearly 1.30 in the afternoon and I haven’t yet rung Anthony. I will wait, with my hand poised near the phone, with his number carved into my brain, with my heart splintering, until 4pm.
Why?
Because otherwise I will go stark, raving mad.
This is a very heavy love.
Yes it is!
This morning, I rang Anthony to let him know I would get him taxied out here this afternoon and he said, “So I can be taken away like a piece of garbage again?” Lucid, sarcastic, uncharacteristically nasty.
Ït wasn’t my fault the taxi came an hour early, Ants!
Well whose fault was it, Jules?
Long story short, a wonderful nephew of Ants brought him out to the farm at around 11am and was willing to take Ants back but Ants wanted to stay longer. Okay.’
Once the nephew had gone and Ming wasn’t within earshot, I sat with Ants in the kitchen and asked him calmly why he was so mad at me.
Because I want to stay home!
I lost my temper! We had a humdinger of a row during which I ranted about him being selfish, told him that I couldn’t cope with this new nastiness from him and, finally yelled what I have tried to gently say for nearly a year on a daily basis – YOU CAN’T COME HOME TO STAY, ANTS!
He finally accepted it and I got him outside to the front veranda to wait for the taxi. We shared the beer we missed out on yesterday and reconciled with lots of loveydovey conversation.
We cleared the air, apologized to each other, hugged and kissed and held hands and I explained how I am suffering too. Ants understood finally and I realized that it was okay to have been so angry with him.
Oh and the taxi arrived an hour late this time – argh!
I have never before been so attentive to, and appreciative of, a single moment. Moments are much more pleasant than hours.
Anthony was taxied home this morning and, even though his 11am drug hadn’t quite kicked in, Ming and I managed to get him into the kitchen because it was too hot outside.
The three of us had a rollicking time with a little bit of champagne thrown in. Then Ming’s two best mates dropped in to see Ants. I knew Ming had invited them, but I was heartmelted that they bothered, these two amazing young men! Ants was delighted to see them and we all spent an hour or so, still in the kitchen, bantering, listening to Triple J, and eating vegemite on toast.
By this time Ants was just able enough to go for a drive with Ming in the new ute so the friends left and Ming took off with Ants. By this time Ming’s demeanor had altered from grinny to grumpy. By this time I knew I would have to order the taxi for 3pm, not 4pm, which I did.
Ming and Ants got back and I helped Ants out of the ute and walked him to a chair on the front veranda. He was okayish and suggested a beer! I went into the house to find Ming fuming that Ants had dribbled in the ute (drooling is common in Parkinson’s Disease). I bit back and we had a rather nasty altercation.
And then, just as I was about to join Ants on the veranda for a beer, a taxi arrived – one hour early – 2pm! The shock and disappointment was terrible for Ants and the only way I could make it okay was to say we’d do it again tomorrow.
So it was a bit of a mishmash of a day. On the other hand, the good moments far outweighed the yucky ones. And the best moment was when Ming made Anthony smile!
I am half elated and half deflated in anxious anticipation of Anthony coming home for the day tomorrow.
It will be a difficult day, and no amount of positive thinking will change that because the Parkinson’s Disease owns him now.
Two nights ago, I rang him and he said ‘they’ were going to blow him up and I wouldn’t be able to find his pieces. I could hear a nurse calming him down.
One of our best friends is going through the ordeal of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer.
Several of my blog friends are battling severe health issues and one has just lived through the death of her daughter.
I am scared because I dón’t want Anthony to come home tomorrow because he is so heavy with illness.
It’s the old Ants I want – and so does he – ironic.
When I arrived home this afternoon, from my 3-day holiday at a resort, something went a bit skewy in my mind.
Despite a wonderful reunion with Ming and Gutsy9, there was a thudding crash of disappointment because Anthony doesn’t live here anymore.
It isn’t home without him.
It is the beginning of my third and last evening at the resort and I have only just stopped ‘hearing’ Gutsy9’s little chirp in my imagination!
Home tomorrow.
jmgoyder 