Every day I look forward to going in to the nursing home to be with Anthony. His room has now become home to me; Ming throws his big self onto the bed, my mother knits, friends and relatives visit us here, and staff are welcoming with cups of tea and jokes. I love being in this room.
Confusion
Yesterday, a nurse and her husband visited the nursing home with their beautiful newborn in his pram. I bumped into them in the hallway outside Anthony’s room and was absolutely thrilled to see this beautiful baby and asked them if they could wheel the pram into Anthony’s room so he could see the baby. Of course they were delighted to do so.
But then everything went wonky. For the entire afternoon, Anthony was distressed about the baby.
Anthony: We already have one; we don’t need another baby.
Me: He isn’t our baby, Ants! They just wanted to show him off to you!
Anthony: Where’s the baby?
Me: He’s gone home with his parents; he isn’t our baby, Ants!
Anthony: I’m worried about our baby.
Me: Please, Anthony, he is not our baby; they were just visiting!
I was with Ants for the whole afternoon and, every time he woke up from dozing, he became anxious about the baby. I have never seen him this confused before so I guess we are entering a new phase.
Just being there
One of the things I’ve learned over the last year or so is that I don’t need to do anything, go somewhere, think of an activity, plan an event, force Anthony to converse, figure out how to get loved ones to visit him more, stress myself wretched with ideas of how to make his life better … I just have to be there.
So that is what I do now – an undoing really – a breath-saving realisation of how simple it is. I sit next to this beautiful husband of mine, with my hand on his shoulder, or stroking his head, watching television, talking about the past, sharing secrets, rejoicing in our son, Ming, smiling at each other, joking about silly things ….
We are so conditioned to do, do, do! It is such a great relief to simply be there, to embrace the long stretches of silence when Anthony is dozing, to quietly rejoice in the fact that our love has not been diminished by his disease, to just be.
Unfinished….
Such a strange realisation!
An ‘aha!’ moment!
The inability to get to the ‘finish line’ or the ‘punch line’ was making me utterly miserable (as well as my inability to understand/implement Tolle’s NOW concept, cope with a depressive episode, watch myself grieve for Anthony in a way that seemed premature).
But it wasn’t any of those bracketed BIG things that were bothering me; it was the fact that the few remnants of weeks and weeks of decluttering, finding history, reorganising the house/farm etc. were still here.
It was the remnants!
Old books, doilies, Anthony’s school report from when he was little, old photos of my dad when he was young, bark paintings from our years in Papua New Guinea, a thousand buttons, a pile of costume jewellery, a silk corset and bra wrapped in newspaper for 100 years, bits of china that would be valuable if not cracked, old instruction manuals from before I was born, and a whole lot of bits and pieces that must have had sentimental value for someone before Anthony was born, and maybe even before Gar, his mother, was born.
So today I began this last phase by going to the dump with Ming and unloading a very full ute-load of rubbish; then I proceeded to use a knife to cut up a very big carpet mat underneath my bed (it had to be cut up to be manageable) and Ming helped me. The dust that came out from beneath that ancient carpet was justification enough to get rid of it – wonderful!
And now I have contacted the heritage park people to come over for a final browse, I am going to advertise the gramophone and other items online (once I figure out how), and I’ve already boxed up historical material for the relative who is interested.
Every single photo/photo album in now in Anthony’s cupboard so I just have to do the scanning bit by bit by bit whilst being with him.
And my point in this ridiculously self-indulgent post?
I was stuck at the ‘unfinish line’ and now I’m not. Full steam ahead!
Very grateful for comments and am going to reply to them now. I don’t even ‘get’ why I had such a downer when my new neighbour/hairdresser, Camille, made my hair a wildish red, I met my beautiful mama for lunch on Friday and laughed my head off, met with my best friend Tony yesterday for lunch and Ming bought me Dylan Moran tickets for my Mother’s day present – so many great things.
Oh and Dina is coming for dinner in a couple of weeks (well, she is coming to cook risotto in her thermomix) so I better get finished with these remnants asap.
My conversation with Ming a few seconds ago:
Me: I’m over my blah finally, Ming.
Ming: How’d you do that?
Me: Got a few things done I guess.
Ming: Jobs, jobs, jobs!
Me: Well we had a lovely time at the dump today didn’t we? [At the dump Ming had yelled out, ‘Mum, this is glorious! We’re not fighting! What a beautiful dump run!’]
Ming: It’s probably due to Sontime.
Mmmm – that is definitely an unfinished conversation!
I miss Anthony so much ….
I have had a really horrible week – restless, agitated, depressed, apathetic, confused, overwhelmed etc. Partly this is to do with beginning (again!) to read Eckart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, and subsequently failing in my attempts to stop thinking which is much more difficult than it sounds. It is also due to Ming’s near accident the other day and my psychosomatic reaction. I miss Anthony so much. I do understand that a racing mind can be detrimental to overall health, especially mental health, but the more I try to stop my mind racing, the more it races – argh! I miss Anthony so much. Also, after many months with being/feeling okay about Anthony being so debilitated, and spending many hours of most days with him in his nursing home room, I have suddenly been struck with a new sensation – loneliness. I miss Anthony so much. I’ve never felt lonely before: I love being alone, and I have so many friends, so the reason for this new lonely sensation only hit me today, and it hit me in a storm of hail-stone memories. I miss Anthony so much. Perhaps, Tolle is right in that every single moment I spend with Anthony in the nursing home becomes the new now and, yes, those moments are wonderful. But I miss Anthony so much.
The party
Last Saturday I invited a wonderful friend, Mike, who has done the painting in this house over many decades, for drinks at the nursing home at 3pm and my lovely friend, Mel, and her daughter, Emily, also joined us.
Of course it wasn’t the sort of party we might have had years ago when Anthony’s mother was alive, where the drinks were over flowing and the nibbles plentiful: champagne, pink gins, cinzano, cocktail sausages, oysters, assorted cheeses, pate, and other savouries. Neither was it the sort of party we had in Anthony’s pre-marriage-to-me bachelor days: lots of beer, roast chicken, steak on the barbecue, and, seasonally, crayfish.
It was a much simpler affair with just the five of us and the unexpected addition of a nephew from Perth, but this small number of people easily fills Anthony’s nursing home room and seems like a crowd. Also, despite the fact that none of us could drink much (or anything at all) due to having to drive home, and my bowl of almonds wasn’t popular, the open bottle of red wine, the wine glasses that I had ready, and a few bottles of warm beer, simulated a real party-of-old. We were all quite lively and attentive to Anthony and, thinking about it now, it wouldn’t have worked with any more people because it would have been too overwhelming for him.
After everyone left and Ants and I were talking about how lovely the occasion had been, I felt I’d hit on a great idea for the future. I could invite a handful of his many friends for the same kind of party every now and then; I might even be able to get a few of his friends and relatives that are a bit nervous of the nursing home to come along. Yes! I need to take the initiative here and do a bit of old-fashioned planning and inviting.
The next day, Mike emailed me this message:
Hey Julie, just a thank you for yesterday at the nursing home with Anthony.
I was happy to see Ants in a great frame of mind he is looking so well as to when I last saw him. I was laughing to myself all the way home with his comments to me when i told him that he waited until he was 55 then got married at 57, and he replied ” you’re an arsehole” he definitely hasn’t lost his sense of humour. I thought he was extremely bright also yesterday.
I’m thinking that the nursing home has done him the world of difference in knowing that he is being looked after so well in his stage of life with old age and all that goes with it.
Sadly yes he would still like to be home with his Julie and Ming on the farm but that is not possible now. We all realize that he is in the best possible care .
Family and friends can still get to visit him there for however long they have time to spend with him so long as it doesn’t tire him out, I noticed yesterday that he does tire out.
I will come see him again soon to stir him up or he to me.
It was good to see you again you are looking bright again since I last saw you on the farm the afternoon you brought Anthony out for afternoon visit.
Today, it was very easy to conjure Anthony’s newfound smile by reminding him of the party. This was our conversation:
Me: Wasn’t it great to see Mike again!
Ants: The food wasn’t good.
Me: Okay, so what do you want next time?
Ants: Hors d’oeuvres, you know, the ones ….
Me: That your mum used to make – yes I get that!
Ants: Is she all right?
Me: Who, Mel?
Ants: No, Mum.
Me: She’s fine, Ants.
Thanks so much, Mike, Mel, Em, and nephew Michael for being part of last Saturdays party!
‘The doll thing’
In yesterday’s post I rather clumsily referred to “doll therapy” as ‘the doll thing’ so here is a short explanation: it is simply the provision of life-like baby dolls for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Doll therapy, sometimes called “baby doll therapy”, has been used in the care of people with dementia for over 20 years but is still controversial. http://www.dementiacareaustralia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=81 This morning I did some online research in the hope that I would find some life-like dolls that were less than hundreds of dollars each; alas, they are very expensive. In the dementia house where I work there are two baby dolls that are semi-life-like but, as there are more than two women who love these dolls, we need a few more. Pros and cons: In my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons of this kind of therapy because I have seen how comforting it is for someone to have a doll in her arms that she sees as a very real baby. However, it can be quite confronting for relatives and even new care-givers to see this kind of simulation unfold and the most common complaint is that it is demeaning and undignified. Now that I have formed a very strong opinion on the pro side, I would ask the person who said the other day, “What’s with the doll?” in front of the woman holding her ‘baby’ in the wheelchair I was pushing, to justify this insensitive comment. But now I get it – I get how ‘the doll thing’ upsets people; it is a sight (mother and baby) that hits the core of the beginning of uncertainty. If Doll Therapy comforts your mother, grandmother, friend, then why do you criticise it? And if you do, at least have the decency to dignify your criticism with a more than once-a-month visit to her. The dolls are more reliable.
jmgoyder 