jmgoyder

I started writing these on Facebook but am now wondering if I should retrieve these little conversations for the blog. Anthony is beginning to lose his ability to speak, but the other day he whispered:

Anthony: You are so big and strong, Jules.

Me: Are you calling me fat?

Anthony: Meaty.

Me: How DARE you!

Anthony: I am small and weak now, Jules.

Me: No, Ants, NO! Do you want some of my mother’s Christmas cake?

I wish now that I had written down every single word Anthony spoke in the prelude to this impending silence. He keeps trying to speak, but he seems to have lost the ability to speak. Ming saw his father today and came home to tell me he was out-of-it.

Tomorrow, I will go in and try to comfort him. I think Ants will live for a long time so I have to figure out how to cope.

At nearly 80, Anthony’s Parkinson’s symptoms have reached a new dimension. He is uneasy with certain people/animals/things: sometimes it is a new carer; sometimes it is with the unruliness of a rogue calf that he remembers naming ‘Reject’; mostly it is to do with his slightly younger brother.

Advanced Parkinson’s disease – accompanied by dementia, and the medications -often leads to delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, nightmares. I can still remember Ants yelling in his sleep in the night-years prior to his admittance to the nursing home four year ago.

I have tried, tactfully, personally, and publicly, to stop all visits to Anthony from the younger brother. These visit aren’t often anyway but, apart from being awkward, they always leave Ants with anxiety.

His nearly 80-year-old perspective, his paranoia, his tolerance …. Bravo, Ants.

The other day, Anthony and I had the oddest conversation (in a black humour kind of way). To give it a bit of context, “Eric” died over two years ago; and the ‘house’ Ants refers to is the nursing home. Oh, and another thing: when I thought Ants didn’t remember that “Eric” had died, I presented to him that “Eric” wasn’t very well. I did this because I didn’t want Ants to experience the shock of this again….

Anthony: Is Eric in this house?

Me: No, I don’t think so.

Anthony: So where is he?

Me: Well, he hasn’t been very well lately.

Anthony: Is he okay?

Me: Not really, but he might get better, Ants.

Anthony: But he’s dead, Jules!

PAUSE

Me: So, if you already know he’s dead, why are you asking me if he is in this house? Are we all in heaven now? You are doing my head in!

Anthony: Settle down – I was just wondering.

These kinds of conversations, whispered now, sometimes quickly, sometimes over a whole afternoon, absolutely fascinate me. I realise that sounds awful, but I am so glad now that I have documented these years in this blog.

My recent posts about how my beautiful husband was so mistreated by his closest family; how he is now construed as near death; and the fact that some visits cause him distress … all of this makes me want to tell the perpetrators to please stay away.

But to kinder friends and family, visits are welcome. Anthony can’t speak very well any more but he is still on-the-ball. I spent the afternoon with him today and he told me (as usual) that my hair needed some attention!

Anthony is much more alive than dead.

I am going to the seaside for a couple of days – yeah!

As the young girl grew into a young woman, she and the dairy farmer maintained a close friendship. Her nursing student friends would casually dribble phrases like “father figure” and “big brother” but she would recoil from these suggestions, her cheeks crimson with embarrassment.

Her grief at losing her father was relentless; it stormed into her dreams so vividly that she began writing clumsy poetry about sharks and salvation. On her days off, she would travel home to the countryside, to see her mother. On her way back to the city, she would visit the dairy farmer and his younger brother’s family, who shared the farm.

The younger brother’s family consisted of a wife and four children, all startlingly blonde. The eldest daughter was only a few years younger than she was. The second eldest daughter had never forgotten the day she and the young girl had first met over a mixing bowl in the dairy farmer’s kitchen. A nine-year-old at the time, she had taken great pleasure in instructing the young girl in cake-making.

And outside, in the paddocks, the dairy farmer and his brother could easily be spotted via the bright white light of the little boys’ hair. The young girl would stand at the window with the dairy farmer’s mother and observe the scene, smiling when the children’s giggles filled the hot summer air and wafted into the house.

The young girl didn’t just fall in love with the dairy farmer; she fell in love with his whole family! She became especially fond of the dairy farmer’s youngest brother’s wife, a tall, shy woman who she looked up to. This fondness was reciprocated when the young girl was asked to become a godparent to the littlest of the blonde children.

‘In the meantime’ became a constant in the young woman’s absolute certainty that the dairy farmer was the one and only person she would ever marry. Her certainty matched his uncertainty in equal amounts:

Him: I’m too old for you.
Her: I don’t care.
Him: You are too beautiful; find a younger guy. It wouldn’t be fair on you.

Her: Okay then.

Those years threw snakes into the sky and plunged crows underground, but they also carpetted a future path of moss. Okay, too many mixed metaphors, sorry. They saw each others’ feet and both exclaimed ‘yuck!’

PS. I need to give names to these characters.

That’s all I have to say!

ps. The extra ingredient is another ham hock, so it kind of changes into ham and pea soup. But it still looks like muck ha!