Tonight on the phone Anthony asked me when I would be coming to join him at the Captain Stirling for a beer.
The last time we were at this pub I was pregnant with Ming – 19 years ago.
Tomorrow, when I bring Ants home for the afternoon, I will ask him about this because who else can I ask? He is my confidante and likes me to talk to him about him – weird but good too, I think!
I have now spoken to two of Anthony’s doctors about the possibility of him going on antidepressants or some sort of medication to lift his spirits. The trouble is, of course, that when asked, “Are you depressed?” he immediately says no, without the slightest hesitation. Despite his inability to smile or laugh in the ‘normal’ way anymore, he still has the most amazing ability to remain relatively stable emotionally (it is me who zigzags constantly from one mood to another!) However, it is becoming more and more obvious that not being home is making him constantly sad, and longing for us – Ming and me – is making him even sadder. His head is always bowed right down now (an effect of Parkinson’s and his spinal condition) so that when he stands he is almost bent double and I have to kneel down to look him in the eyes.
When I thought about telling Anthony about my weird dream (see previous post), I anticipated he would laugh his head off because I keep forgetting he can’t laugh at all. Every time I see him I get a shock all over again at how deteriorated he is – and how quiet, sometimes sullen. So this week I am going to organize an appointment to get some happy pills – after all, what harm can it do now? I realize this post may elicit mixed opinions and that’s probably a good thing. I don’t know what else to do.
I’ve been wondering why I continue to love Godfrey the gander, despite the way he bites me all the time (even when I am giving him bread!) and I think it’s because his confidence, his boisterousness and his strut all remind me of Anthony when he could stand up straight.
Every day, whether I visit Anthony in the nursing lodge or not (this is now every second day, and I bring him home twice a week for the day), I ring him. If I am not coming into town, I ring him an average of four times – morning, afternoon, early evening and bedtime.
The trouble is he has difficulty answering the phone and often can’t work out what button to press, and sometimes he accidentally locks it. So my method now is to dial his number and let it ring 4 times, hang up, and repeat this several times until he finally answers. This saves the phonebill from skyrocketting, it gives Anthony time to answer the phone, and it drives me insane.
Ming and I spent the morning with Ants today, recharged his phone and put it within reach. Ants said to ring as soon as I got home and I have now been trying to for nearly 3 hours. I know he is in his room, warm and comfortable and watching television, with the phone right next to him on a side-table. I also know he is sad because he will think I haven’t rung him when, in fact, I have tried a zillion times!
Argh!
Anthony loved to run. He didn’t need a horse or a motorbike to round up cattle and get them from one paddock to another; he just needed his own legs. Sometimes he would get me to help by yelling, “C’mon, Jules, run!” But I could never run as fast as he did, which was a bit embarrassing.
He had the most muscly legs I have ever seen – huge calves, massive thighs – and he always wore those footy shorts, you know the black ones, and he always wore football socks too. So he kind of resembled a football player I guess – big, strong, energetic and, in my eyes (and his own!) perfect.
Sometimes I would just watch him run because it was like watching someone glide through a mirror, or a window; it was like watching magic.
……………………………………
Now Anthony’s legs are bony and often he can’t even walk.
Platitudes make me puke; cliches catch at the corners of my eyes like rogue eyelashes.
Too much crap stuff is repeated, disseminated and shared until it’s like the worn out elastic that actually stinks when you finally pull it out of some old piece of clothing.
For example:
She’ll be right, mate!
Tomorrow is a better day.
Patience is a virtue.
God doesn’t give you any more than you can endure.
The grass is greener.
The grass isn’t always greener.
Chin up!
You will be rewarded in Heaven.
Suffering is good for the soul.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Smell the roses.
On the wings of a snow white dove ….
I would much rather read something like this:
Patrick Overton reflects in his poem “Faith”:
When you come to the edge of all the light you have
And take the first step into the darkness of the unknown,
You must believe one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or you will be taught how to fly.
The only thing he forgot to mention was that there is actually a third possibility:
You will might fall.
Over the last couple of years as Anthony’s Parkinson’s got worse I would be amazed at how, when anyone visited, he would suddenly transform from being slumped and silent into a walking, talking marvel. As soon as the visitors left, he would revert back to being unable to walk etc. which annoyed me intensely because it was as if everyone else was getting the ‘same old Anthony’ and Son and I were getting the ‘leftovers’. I also found it frustrating because visitors would inevitably say to me, “Oh he’s so much better than I though he’d be.” In other words I felt I was being perceived as a liar or, at least, an exaggerator.
Assuming it was some sort of adrenaline rush, I once asked one of Anthony’s doctors about this (oh yes and Anthony would always ‘perform’ very well for them too). This doctor told me the famous story of a nursing home fire where the Parkinson’s patients, all wheelchair bound, were trapped on the third floor. As this was being reported by nursing staff to firefighters, someone noticed that all of these patients were standing outside the building, staring up at the fire. They had all run down the stairs and escaped! The doctor said that this phenomenon had been termed ‘paradoxical kinesis’, where the faulty brain suddenly does a kind of U-turn.
I’m no scientist so I don’t know, but, with Anthony, it seems to be triggered by a kind of fear – almost like a performance panic that works in his favour. With people he sees a lot of and is comfortable with it doesn’t happen, but with people he hasn’t seen for awhile, or for any professionals (doctors who visit him in the nursing lodge, for instance), he rises to the occasion with great skill and ease.
When he was living here at home, he would sleep for hours after a bout of paradoxical kinesis and yet our visitors would go home thinking he was fine and dandy. Mmmmm!
I keep trying to keep trying to keep trying – to be funny, to be positive and all that – but sometimes there is just no point in trying to keep trying when it’s all downhill anyway.
Parkinson’s disease is an absolute shit of a disease; it sucks all of the joy out so that the laughing stuff is knifey, cynical, brave but hopeless.
When I went to pick Anthony up today, I hoisted him up off his chair but then somehow lost him and he slid to the ground. I had to get a nurse to help me pick him up and for the rest of the day (we went to my mother’s for lunch) he kept saying I made him fall in a half-jokey way – barbed wire.
By the time we’d had lunch at my ma’s, seen Arthur, and gone back to Anthony’s nursing lodge, I was ready to fight someone, anyone, but there was nobody to fight. So I just drove home to the farm, thinking about my conversation with Anthony in which I said, “I haven’t abandoned you – you have abandoned me!”
Apparently you are not supposed to ask why? You are supposed to ask what? Well, as far as I’m concerned, the what can get over itself because it is the why that makes my heart beat so thunderously.
Why does this Anthony, pictured only 18 months ago, not resemble the Anthony I see now? Why?
Unbearable.
There is nobody like this son of ours – nobody! I never stop feeling lucky to have such a wonderfully weird kid. Menzies. (Don’t worry, I think weird is wonderful!)
This morning he made me laugh my head off because he sounded just like John Cleese in Fawly Towers when he was trying to get all of the birds to stop coming to the back door. “Why do you have to come so close to the house? WHY? Go away!” At the time he was wearing a black dressing gown, a black hat, and thongs, and he resembled someone who might have escaped from an asylum a century ago. Menzies.
This afternoon (after I had visited Anthony in the nursing lodge), Son and I had a dreadful argument during which we both bashed our heads against the kitchen door. Menzies.
This evening, Son convinced me to sit down at the kitchen table and talk things through (instead of our usual tactic which, lately, is to avoid each other). Menzies.
We talked about the past, present and future; we talked about Anthony; we talked about everything and, each time I felt we had said enough, Son would ask me to sit down again so we could finish the conversation and reconcile. Menzies.
Anthony named him after his his mother’s brother’s middle name, Menzies, a Scottish Gaelic name that is pronounced Mingus. Menzies.
Everyone just calls him Ming. Menzies.
He is my hero, my conscience, my muse, my prison, my freedom and everything else.
But always, for both Anthony and me, Ming is the best thing since sliced bread!
Menzies.
And he is an expert at turning a bad day into a good day.
Ming
Today was Anthony’s best friend’s 50th so I went into the nursing lodge and picked Anthony up to bring him to the party early, before the throng arrived, so that we could have a quiet drink with Barry (Baz).
A lot of things went wrong:
A lot of things went right:
Happy birthday Barry, and I wish so much that Anthony could have been there properly – not like this sick, old man, but like the life of the party he used to be – oh well!
Here is a typical little scene of when Anthony/Husband comes home for the day:
I hear yelling outside as I am preparing lunch. I hear the slow chopchop of the axe. More yelling – Son to Anthony. I hold a grrrr tight in my chest.
Then, like a constant re-run of an old episode ….
Son (running into the house in a panic): Mum – Dad is trying to chop the wood again! He won’t stop!
Me (stirring the fish mornay for lunch): Is he okay?
Son: Yes, but what if he chops his leg off?
Me: If he chops his leg off we will deal with it. Just stop yelling at him. Let him do it – please – let him do it.
Son: Well do I supervise or what?
Me: Only if you don’t yell at him.
Son: Grrr!
Anthony usually manages to chop enough wood to start a fire in the fireplace before exhausting himself. Before he moved to the nursing lodge we would have a fire going 24/7 because he feels the cold so badly. But, when he isn’t here, Son and I don’t bother because, until next February, when Son’s spine is totally healed from the operation, he is not allowed to do things like chop wood, lift heavy objects, ride his motorbike.
So, except for when Anthony is home, that pile of wood remains unchopped and the fireplace unlit.
The warmth of Anthony’s presence is much more than metaphorical!
jmgoyder 