I keep trying to embrace the idea of death, but I can’t imagine Anthony gone.
So I’m beginning to understand this kind of grief via the blogs of friends who grieve for loved ones.
It might be my turn next but I’m not sure…. Death-defying?
My best friend – Anthony.
I have been trying so hard lately to be positive, but tonight, a nurse rang me asking me to try and convince Ants to take his pills. Eventually my voice on his phone worked and the nurse was able to give him his pills.
Ants was distressed and confused and aggro: this scared me.
What a wonderful nurse to ring me like that. I am so relieved to know that Ants is okay in this nursing lodge, but I am constantly anxious for him now that the dementia is happening.
Ants is coming home for the afternoon tomorrow so I’ve invited a few friends. Oh I so hope it all works out!
[Note to blogfriends: I can’t keep up with reading blogs at the moment, but will catch up soon.]
My mother has now been in hospital for 12 days since falling off her bicycle and fracturing her pelvis in two places and her wrist in three places. She will be in hospital for at least another week – maybe more.
I want to go back to the moment my mother got onto her bicycle and I want to yell NO! After all, she’s 78, and had only just recovered from a hip fracture from a fall just before Christmas.
But I can’t go back and stop her from getting onto that bicycle. Instead she and I are going forward, step by step, to recovery. It has been 12 days of pain for my mother, stress for me, and hatred for that bicycle.
Good news: My mother no longer minds being blogged about and says thank you to those who wished her well. I echo this.
Bad news: Tomorrow I am going to stop arguing with my mother’s bicycle and simply smash it up!
If you care for a loved one who has an illness, your good thoughts might sometimes be criss-crossed with bad thoughts like the following:
– I’m so sick of you and this situation!
– You aren’t who you were and I loathe the way you are now.
– Thanks for ruining my life!
– Please stop needing me!
– Thanks for giving me the guilts!
– Why can’t you just die instead of suffering like this?
– I hate loving you.
I told Anthony that sometimes I felt like this and he hugged me close and let me cry.
Yesterday was our 20th wedding anniversary and Anthony forgot.
So did I.
[Actually, we always forget for some reason but I thought ‘So did I’ was a rather good punchline – ha!]
My mother usually reminds us but she’s in hospital and will be for some time. It was only when I was collecting stuff from her house to take into the hospital that I saw her note – ‘March 27-Ants & Julie anniversary’.
Ants is coming home for the day tomorrow – Good Friday – and I’m not sure whether to tell him about our anniversary or not because it might make him a bit sad and nostalgic.
20 years! Aren’t I supposed to get some sort of present?
[Note to other bloggers – I am having difficulty keeping up with your posts and comments – will catch up asap.]
Laugh out loud
Leaves on lawn
Listen or leave
Loser of lottery
Lonely or lustrous
Lovely old leprechaun
Lack of love
Limping on limestone
Lard of lamb
Like or leave
Leaking old lesson
Leaning on legs
Laundering of loss
Long or lengthened
Lazy ornery llama
Lost or loved
Libido of lipid
Lecherous old lion
Lost or least
Lots of love
Laugh out loud!
I tend not to use LOL very much because, after all, it might be misinterpreted.
Yes, it’s been one of those days. LOL!
I found some old socks –
the football socks you once wore
to get the cows in.
Your favourite socks!
But you never played football –
you just liked to run….
I put your socks on
and now I will go to bed
With you warming me.
I’ve been trying to find a word that means the same thing as ‘stating the obvious’ but, apart from ‘duh’, there doesn’t seem to be one in the English language. ‘Redundant’ doesn’t quite cut it, ínanity’ only just comes close, so ‘duh’ it is.
A close relative of Anthony’s, who only visits him sporadically, and has baulked at my suggestion of getting him wheel-chair taxied to their place, sent me an email the other day. In the email it was stated that they had visited Anthony but didn’t have time at the moment to arrange for a taxi visit. The irony and inanity of the email’s concluding sentence astounded me:
We notice that he is very lonely.
Duh!
In advanced Parkinson’s disease, it is difficult to predict how any one day will unfold. PD is the kind of disease whereby the timing of medications is almost as important as the medications themselves.
Over the many years since Anthony’s diagnosis, the medications have been changed repeatedly to ‘keep up’ with the progression of the disease. The various timings have also been altered here and there because it’s so difficult to get it right.
In some ways, I quite like the idea of unpredictability – unexpected visitors, for example. In other ways, I don’t like unpredictability -unexpected visitors, for example (ha!)
With PD (especially when it includes a bit of fresh dementia), the unexpected visitors come in the form of constant unpredctability. Today, for instance, I visited Ants at the nursing lodge just after lunch. I predicted that he would have the usual post-meal droopiness but instead he was lively, lucid and he made me laugh.
This was just as unpredicted as the arrival of four wild galahs who seem to have made this place their home recently. So I guess there really isn’t much point attempting to predict the unpredictable, and I am going to stop trying, happily!
Anthony was wheelchair-taxied home for the afternoon yesterday and I was excited about showing him what Ming and I have just discovered – a nest of guinnea fowl eggs behind the wash house, with a mother in attendance.
When Ants arrived he managed to walk unassisted from the taxi to the front veranda after Ming and I helped him out of the wheelchair. But 15 minutes later, when he had to go to the loo, he couldn’t move without my help and it was another 15 minutes before he and I were sitting down again. I knew then that there was no point trying to get him around to the back of the house to see the nest. Oh well, maybe next time.
The guinneas were the first birds we ever got and Ants loves them. If all goes well, we will have another flock soon!
jmgoyder 