A couple of weeks ago I put the kettle on and it boiled and I made my morning coffee A bit later, I put the kettle on again for my second cup and nothing happened. Anthony’s 1963 stove died quietly.
Sigh … it is only three years older than I am, poor old thing!
Yesterday Ming and I went up to Perth for the pre-op. things – blood and urine, ECG, consent forms for bone graft and bone marrow, consultations with a nurse, a doctor and an anaesthetist and, in the midst of all of these exciting events, I opened the letter we’d been given on arrival.
Well I got a bit of a shock because his surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday, 17th December! This means he will come out of hospital on Christmas Eve, or may be in over Christmas. Ming is elated it is happening before the new year but, with such short notice, I am a bit panicked about organizing things. He has to be in the hospital at 6.30am which means we will have to go up to Perth the night before and stay in a hotel. I will probably book in for two nights so I can see him the next day but then he wants me to come home again (“so you have time to get my Christmas presents, Mum!”)
This revision surgery is nothing compared to the massive scoliosis op. last year so it should be a piece of cake (I hope!) I took his photo this afternoon after asking him how he felt about the op. His expression is difficult to read but to me it says, “Fine!”
While we’re in Perth, these two guys will look after the farm!
After weeks of feeding Ola special grain and replenishing her water, and looking forward to her two goslings hatching, I went out this afternoon to find that she had abandoned the nest and there was only one egg there. So I brought the warm egg into the house and put it in my shirt pocket and googled goose hatching whilst stroking the egg and saying little mothery things to the gosling inside it. I found enough information to warrant going outside again and slightly cracking the egg so it could get out.
Well, guess what? There was no gosling; it was just an unfertilized and beautiful egg with a massive yoke – not a chick. And to think I was stroking this stupid egg for two hours when I could have used it to bake a cake! Argh!
Ola is frolicking without those eggs and I am feeling like a goose!
25 years ago, before Anthony and I were married, I would often travel the two hours from Perth to the farm to spend the weekend with him (he rarely took a day off). I would turn into Paradise Road – the short, narrow road leading to the farm – stop my car and quickly refresh my lipstick, powder my nose, spray the perfume he gave me onto my neck, fluff up my hair, then zoom the remaining half mile with my heart beating madly in anticipation.
I would arrive to a shout of “JULES!” the scent of a chicken roasting in the Aga, and a hug that would nearly crush me. There would be beer, maybe a visitor or two, willy wagtails flitting here and there, and the beautiful, comforting smell of cow dung in the outside air. There would be Anthony’s bellowing laughter, my latest anecdotes about university and the nursing home where I worked, a lesson in gravy making, a beautiful meal, a favourite comedy on television and lots more hugs.
We were in love.
Now, I head in the other direction up Paradise Road to go into town to pick Anthony up from the nursing home and bring him to the farm for the afternoon. Even though I retain a tiny shred of that anticipation of 25 years ago, it is tainted with a kind of exhausted dread because I know the afternoon will be difficult. There will be no bellowing laughter, very little conversation and there will be a lot of dangerous occurrences when Anthony tries to do things he can’t do anymore – like chopping wood, washing the car, mowing the lawns, fixing the gate. I will secretly (through the kitchen window) watch him try and give up, then I will watch him stand outside, swaying slightly whilst leaning on his walker, then I will ask him to come back inside. If I hover over him it makes him feel inadequate, so I don’t but as he has had so many falls, I get anxious. I watch him struggle for half an hour with things I could do in minutes (like opening a gate, washing the dishes), and I try to breathe slowly and patiently. If he begins to do something ludicrous (like wind a clock with a knife, drink from the sugar bowl, talk to people who aren’t there) I sometimes intervene and not always gently! And he has no idea how absolutely exhausting these days at home are, no idea of the guilty relief I feel when I can take him back to the nursing home, no idea of how much my heart breaks when he says, “But why can’t I just stay here with you?”
During the drive back it will be the same halting conversation:
Me: I can’t manage you at night now – you know that, Ants – you’re too heavy.
Anthony: But I’ve lost so much weight.
Me: I know but you are still too heavy and Ming isn’t supposed to lift either.
Anthony: I’m better than I was Jules.
Me: Yes, but you still have Parkinson’s disease.
Anthony: I miss you so much – please never leave me.
Me: Idiot! Of course I won’t leave you! Ever!
Anthony: That’s good then.
We are in love.
When Anthony was home yesterday he kept talking to the television. I would come in and out of the kitchen where he was sitting (his favourite spot) and enter an already-there conversation. I was busy with washing and other chores (something I continue to do even if Ants is home, just to keep things normal-ish), but every time I came back into the kitchen he would be talking to one of his deceased brothers, or to the now-dead stove, or to the dogs on the table (hallucinations).
Ming cannot stand it – he just can’t. He says, “Mum, I love Dad but I just can’t tolerate him!” I understand his point of view; after all, he is only 19 and his dad is nearly 78. On the shy side of 50, I am in the middle of this all the time so, when Ants comes home – and I do this as much as possible – I leave Ming with him while I go to the toilet to cry. No, not self-pity – just so hard to remember how good it once was and how bad it is now.
I miss all of our wonderful yesterdays just as much as Anthony does. But Ming doesn’t remember and he has no recollection of Anthony ever being well. Every day, lately, he has asked me for a hug and every day I have given him a hug, even after our ferocious arguments, about the car accident, about many things….
Sometimes it is hard to be positive but I have enormous faith in both Ants and Ming and I think that is reciprocated to me. I hope so.
Anthony has a lot of antique clocks – a magnificent grandfather clock, three carriage clocks, two mantle clocks and one cuckoo clock. All of them chime on the hour and some on the half hour.
Well they used to.
Ever since Anthony went into the nursing home, all of the clocks have stopped. Mostly this is because Ants always did the clock winding and he never really taught Ming and me. Also, once Anthony wasn’t at home any longer, there didn’t seem any point any more, and letting all of the clocks stop seemed a natural reaction to his absence. My love of their chiming diminished in equal proportion to my increasing grief (if that makes sense, which it probably doesn’t!)
I finally got my act together a few months ago and invited a clock man over to have a look. He serviced all of the clocks, got them going again and showed us how to wind them without overwinding them and pronounced one of the carriage clocks as too far gone. Well, Ming and I lasted a week, so all of the clocks have once again stopped.
Oh the guilt. And the silence! If you are used to the constant chime of clocks, the silence is like a thrum of nothingness. I miss the noise of the clocks, the complaints of people staying with us who said, ‘how can you stand it?’ I miss all of those hundreds of Sundays when Anthony wound each clock with such joy until he forgot how to.
The other day, when I brought him home for the day, he tried again with his favourite clock.
It didn’t work.
Tock tick (no, that is not a typo).
Tomorrow, Ming and I will go up for our final appointment with the spinal surgeon before corrective surgery is scheduled for the titanium fracture Ming caused by lifting something too heavy for his ‘new’ back. (He had surgery last February to correct a 75% scoliosis).
I am in two minds about further surgery. Okay the titanium fracture was a shock (mainly because I/we didn’t think titanium was breakable), but also because Ming has been in pain ever since – not agonizing pain, more crampy, achy pain if he has to twist, turn, lift etc.
Ming wants the corrective surgery, to hopefully solve the pain problem, but he also wants to be straight again. After the scoliosis surgery, his spine/scar/back looked almost straight and he was delighted in a double-whammy way; he was tall again and his asthma abated. He was amazingly accepting of the fact that he could never play football again, or go trail-biking on his motorbike. In fact, he has been told not to run, cycle, or even play volleyball or badminton because of the jolting effects these activities might have on his wonky back.
Now he is crooked again and he doesn’t want to be crooked.
The surgeon has already said that corrective surgery may not work so tomorrow I will be ready with some specific questions. Maybe we will opt out of further surgery – I don’t know. It has to Ming’s decision now that he is 19 – not mine.
I’m not sure….
![390845_2866562262569_1215165788_33328343_23186296_n[1]](https://jmgoyder.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/390845_2866562262569_1215165788_33328343_23186296_n1.jpg)
jmgoyder 