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.]
When a young woman marries a man who is 23 years older than she is, the term ‘gold digger’ tends to fly through country towns such as this one, and sometimes insinuates itself into the gossip of all and sundry.
Ming was conceived on our honeymoon (March 1993) and born a very decent 9 months later (January 1994) but, by this time, I had already been labelled as a gold digger. I wasn’t happy about this but there was nothing I could do about it. Anthony laughed the gossip off, and so did I, eventually.
So imagine my shock when my friend – JL – informed me yesterday that she had recently heard a story from her brother-in-law (who is friends with the bus driver at Anthony’s nursing lodge) about me!
Me: What?
JL: Well the bus driver told N that they sometimes take the men’s group for a visit to a farm that has peacocks.
Me: Yes – it’s a wonderful arrangement because they bring tea and scones and feed the birds and it’s a great way of getting Ants home for a couple of hours.
JL: But the bus driver said that every time they come to the peacock farm, the young lady who owns the farm starts kissing and cuddling one of the residents – a bloke called Anthony – and she is all over him, obviously after his money.
Me: What?
JL: It’s okay, N. told him you were Anthony’s wife.
Me: Oh thank goodness – what must they have all been thinking!
I’m guffawing too much to go out for my daily gold-digging expedition!
I seem to be developing an unintentional talent for slapstick comedy especially when it is a wheel-chair taxi situation.
This afternoon, Anthony came home for a few hours and it was great until he became ‘wobbly’ (that’s our word for when the Parkinson’s disease gets the better of him).
Anyway, the taxi arrived to take Ants back to the nursing lodge and there was a flurry of activity as Ming and I got him into the wheelchair, and the taxi driver and an apprentice got him into the taxi, and I tried to find my elusive wallet.
Once all of that was okay, and I’d said goodby to Ants, I thanked the driver, shook his hand and closed his door so he could drive off.
He was such a kind person so I thought he was yelling at me (over the sound of the taxi engine) that I was such a kind person too, but he just kept yelling.
I had slammed the door on his foot!
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.]
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 