Time to move on

In the spring-time. What better time? New beginnings, new growth... Oh yeah, yeah, etc. etc.! It’s April.

But it’s April! Ruined by man just as surely as he would ruin God Himself, if he could (planet Earth is a good start). And the whole month has become thrall to Mammon, god of this world.

Tax forms for all our American friends [I’ve seen people asking for prayers for help with those things!] and gosh-knows-what financial hiccoughing in this country [it’s all keeping me very busy – one claim and check-up for Social Services after another! (Defeats the object if you ask me, the stress is awful!)].

And - I expect you guessed it - Tom left! Deserted, like a rat from a sinking ship. Gone. Off to sow his wild oats (oh, I hope not!), living with an old school-friend (known him 16 years – nothing strange for Tom!) down the road.

So for me, of course, everything seems wrong. Incongruous. Surreal. I’m having a bit of a bad time.

And it’s getting warm in my horrible west-facing sitting-room (I told Tom to bring a compass when we came to look round, he didn’t realise the necessity!) which is making things [MS not good in heat] even harder.

However... God is with us, Pope Benedict XVI is in America as I write (thereby cultivating what his predecessor, John Paul II called a “spring-time in the Church”), and I have joined a great Catholic social networking site (4marks). So I’m making new friends. All is not lost.

Tom comes and helps (and eats, showers, does his washing, stays nights!) and tries to keep it as familiar as he can. He even comes in the mornings when he doesn’t stay the previous night to make me coffee and feed Lucy. Ah, he truly is a good lad – I must stop shouting at him!

But I’m missing him like crazy. And Lucy is [and no, we haven’t got over those builders upstairs yet – I know my nerves have been very unsettled and dear L. is not quite as good as she has been]. I hate his friend for kicking the poor dad into sheltered housing and using the house for rent-paying lodgers!

Still, back to ‘all is not lost’!

I just needed to get my writing self back on track to feel right. So that’s what this is about. I hope you will bear with me and, when it comes, be tolerant of that nasty, pointless, self-pity thing.

I’m going to aim to get a spring into my step for spring. Yes I am!

Thank you for keeping me going and caring (especially you, Daffy). It’d be a lot worse without my blogger friends!

Time to move on...

P.S. I forgot to mention (probably because she’s on another week’s leave and I’m trying not to think about it), H., my social worker, has been working towards getting me live-in care (after all – perhaps she read this blog! [the Kent Care Home looked very nice but she and I agreed: “not yet”]). I’m meant to be filling-in a Registration Form. But, oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to do something – for Tom’s sake.

P.P.S. For the record (mine?!) Tom left on Saturday, April 5th 2008!

Magic boxes [last post of three!]

They keep disappearing, the boxes that my son has been packing and stacking in his room, oh, for over a year.

Just a couple at a time. But I’m sure there were about a dozen at one point – maybe more. Now only four sit on his bed where they’re easier to lift than prostrating themselves on the floor. He had a hernia a few years ago, learnt his lesson with the weights. His mates didn’t even come and see him after the op.

And he’s lifted these cardboard hold-alls, taken them, obviously, while I haven’t been looking.

Either that or there’s a magician in the house, or the elves keep coming in the night to help him get away. Urge him on his way. Away from the mother who has outstayed her welcome in this world. No more use. Only a dead weight to carry.

Better a hernia from a box of belongings than a break-down from a life of missed longings in servitude.

Oh, I understand. Nothing planned. You don’t set out to be a cripple in a wheelchair. It just happens.

And isn’t it always the way that it’s easier for the victim/patient in these cases? Because they have no choice but to learn to accept, adapt and maybe even find some good in the situation? Beyond the imagination of the other.

So that the carer just feels its wrongness compared to the rest of the world. As they see it - in their own very tired eyes.

And their friends - in this culture of “choices” - espouse materialism and a freedom from responsibility [while frantically chasing the imagined pot of gold at the end of an invisible rainbow].

Following the way of the Self.

Which is what my dear son has been hearing and learning to believe in. Because it’s more comfortable than living with the sick.

And no one would disagree with that. Not even me who is hating watching the boxes disappearing – he’ll be gone soon, days probably. I’ll be alone.

Praying to the ‘good in the situation’ which is God.

PANDEMONIUM!

My skull is fragmenting like a hatching egg-shell -splitting, splintering, falling away from the sponge of my brain.

And I know Lucy’s is too. Poor, little, toy poodle, whose whole head fits smaller than a tennis-ball in the palm of my hand. How can she understand when she has no experience to relate it to? When all she knows is the discomfort – the audio pain – and that her human won’t stop it. There is no concept of ‘can’t’ in her canine mind.

Especially when her human – the one she’s with - is the one who’s brought her every pleasure and comfort before. And stopped everything that’s been wrong. Taken the pain away.

Wasted days with nothing but the trying to survive.

The human, spastic with disease. Just sitting.

The poodle (“Never call them ’dogs’, they don’t like it!”*) lying in her igloo bed, unsure, waiting. Hoping for some attention.

As the human hopes for love.

And all they have are the hammers and drills of upstairs neighbours wrecking lives for the sake of Mammon. No care. No consideration. For the short space of time left to the creatures below them.

Who only have each other for a minute.

I hold Lucy’s floppy ears tight to her face, so that, for a heartbeat, life feels good.





* I don’t know who coined this phrase about poodles but it’s so true: they really are like humans and far too dignified to be d-o-g-s!

Self-indulgence, self-pity or both?

Before the “fun” piece I spoke of, dear reader, I ask you to humour me for the next two, short, posts [or ignore them – I wouldn’t blame you!]. The thing is, I got into looking at writing forums and emags. while the noise upstairs was going on and these are the result. Just some self-indulgent. self-pitying prose, slightly incongruous for this blog but, nevertheless, worth holding on to (to me!) for memory’s sake.

The mayhem eased on the 19th day. I won’t say ‘ceased’ for fear of tempting fate and, anyway, I doubt that it has.

And the reverberations (in my head, at least) continue, i.e. there must have been nerve damage and I feel weak, still a bit nervy and have been depressed.

But I promise I’ll move on soon.

Okay: ignore next two if you like...