A Question of Time

Today she turns 78.  Chances are this will be her last birthday.  Yesterday we were informed that she’s on an end of life pathway (from the last time she was discharged from hospital).  My parents are devastated, as am I.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad express as much emotion in my entire life as he has done at her suffering and treatment.

Such a brilliant, funny, headstrong and caring woman; and now she’s wasting away in a care home.  She managed a care home for years.  She knows how they work.  She doesn’t want to sit in the day room because ‘they all talk twaddle in there’.  So she stays in her room, barely awake.  She’s given up and I am sad.  She had been so strong.  She fought through every single thing that life threw at her, and then some.

And now, she’s basically lost to us, depressed and lonely and sad.  She’ll go to her grave not knowing her house had been put on the market by people who, had they waited a couple of months, could have legitimately done so rather than doing it slyly and without her knowledge.  But enough of that, I suppose.  I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore.  Now is just a question of time.  I don’t want her to suffer.

I’ll raise a toast to you later on; I love you with all my heart. 

"That Little Glimmer of Hope"

We had a good day yesterday.  Yesterday we talked and laughed.  Yesterday she recited poetry (from memory) to us.  Yesterday she mischievously asked my da whether he wanted his nails doing, as she was going to be having hers done: “Ah no, you’re alrigh’.  I do me own with the clear nail varnish” he says, that joking smirk on his face. 

She’s having visitors this week, her daughter is coming from the US and her baby sister is coming from Ireland.  She’s excited. 

Spending time in her company makes me love her more.  She’s a fighter; she’d been written off by some, and is still being written off by others.  Yesterday she mentioned her house a lot.  She wants to go home.  And this is where my heart begins to break because she can’t go home.  Her home is on the market, at a knock down price as well.  I’ve been informed that even though it is on the market, it cannot be sold because it’s her house.  This makes absolutely no sense to me. 

I want to cry.  No one has told her it's for sale, still.  Me, my ma and da haven’t the heart to tell her; and anyway, it isn’t our place to.  Mumblings have been heard that it should come from a voice of authority, like her GP.  That is utter fucking bullshit; it should be someone she loves, a family member or better still, the ghoul who decided to sell the house of a woman who is STILL ALIVE.  But then the phrase ‘we can’t take that glimmer of hope away from her’ was uttered and it made me want to vomit. 

The Ireland flag my ma brought for her room has vanished.  We have our suspicions about what has happened to it.

And I’m dodging FB messages trying to explain why her house is on the market, or why she’s been written off.  It’s killing me.  It’s killing us all.

And we’d had such a good day yesterday.

 

Background Noise

She’s better than I’ve seen her since it happened.  Lucid, talking, the mischievous twinkle in her eye when we mention taking her out for the day, getting her a brandy down the pub “Now you’re talking my language” she said.

Her room is not as sparse as it was; there are photos and gifts of a tin butterfly and a ceramic guardian angel that I hung on the wall yesterday. 

Chattering away to her, there are seemingly confusing flights of fancy that she tries with us (she has had a brain injury so this is understandable), but we talk her down and remind her that she’s still here and she needs to fight.  The fight and feistiness is still there, albeit muted, but something was stirring within.  She barked at us she wants to see her own GP, she wants to know what’s going to happen next.  She wants to go home.  And we all feel sad because her home is for sale and she doesn’t know.  A guilty silence falls between us, she doesn’t seem to notice.  It isn’t our place to tell her about her beloved home being on the market.  She’s getting better and stronger, we can’t tell her.  It’d destroy her.

 

Before we leave, I hug her and warn her to not let anyone write her off.  Da tells her to keep fighting and mammy tells her how much she loves her.

We all love her which is why it breaks my heart about what’s happening in the background.

A life lived.

She’s a people person.  She loves everyone, and everyone loves her.  A devout catholic in a close knit parish although I’d seen her welcome in her local Jehovah’s Witnesses for a cuppa.  They’d call on her for a catch up and a cuppa, such was the person she was; the person she still is.

And now she’s alone, with intermittent spells in hospital.  After four months of bed rest, her legs are not strong and so she keeps falling.  But she’s alone, reliant on visits from friends and loved ones.  Her next of kin have advised the staff she is to stay alone in her room; she is NOT to mix with others in the day room.  This is the same next of kin who threatened her best friend, an 84 year old priest, that if he continues to question, It will bar him from being able to visit her.  The same next of kin who has placed her on the dementia wing of the home, even though she doesn’t have dementia.  This force of evil, this next of kin, has placed her out of sight, waiting for her to die so It can cash in on her.

No one knows where her mementos are.  Her keepsakes, photos, proof of a life lived.  When she was her younger self, beautiful and full of life.  She is of course still beautiful, but now she looks weary, and frail, and old. 

There’s a mixture of despair and melancholy deep within me mixed with the fires of anger and rage.  I veer wildly between nails through the palms fury and despair.  How could anyone treat a human being like this?  Can someone answer this, because I just don’t know. 

For Sale

For Sale.

 

Her house was always full of love and comfort.

She and her house helped me get through depression, the familiar surroundings, the photographs on the wall of her in her younger days, the pictures of the kids, family and friends.  I always felt at home there.

The extensive collection of books that were in her house.  As a kid, I’d stop there over some weekends and voraciously read through all the Dahl books, the Garfield ones, ignoring the classics. You can stick your Jane Eyre, your Oliver Twist.

She always had a welcome for everyone in her house.  She’d make you feel as though it was your own home.  It had been a family home, but she had lived there alone for years now.  As a student, I’d pop by and stop for a few nights, a few glasses of wine, putting the world to rights in her living room.  Every inch of the house was hers; holy pictures were a particular favourite.

The fall had been a shock.  Four months in and out of hospital, then into a nursing home.  I pondered her house, wondering if it missed her as much as I know she missed it.

The house no longer belongs to her, everything that made it hers have vanished.  Possibly into storage, maybe into a skip.  It looks so cold without her, unwelcoming.  It could never be home without her there.  She’s back in hospital and it’s questionable whether she’ll come out.  But the house is now For Sale, definitely not hers anymore. 

 

I wept.

Tears for Paris

I don’t know if I have the right to feel how I am feeling.  I was there, yes, but not close to where the attacks took place.  We were in Les Halles when everything kicked off.  In an Irish pub (story of my life) I got a BBC news alert telling me there had been a shooting in Paris.  David and I sort of shrugged it off as maybe a lone gunman or whatever.  We even joked that no-one would be in touch to see if we were okay cos it was Friday night and everyone was out getting wrecked.  Watching the Ireland/Bosnia match (terrible fog, even worse game), I went to post on Facebook that the owner had given me free Guinness due to my Irish heritage only to discover  my phone had died.  I thought nothing of it, happens all the time.  I sat and watched the game, eating my Taytos and drinking my Guinness.  David was watching the France/Germany game.  We had a bit of an argument about stopping out for ‘just one more’ (those who know me know full well it’s never ‘just one more’).  David wanted to go back nearer to our hotel in Montrouge as we weren’t too familiar with the centre of Paris he’d feel safer nearer to where we were staying.  We got the Metro and popped into a restaurant/café/bar nearer to our hotel for a last drink.  Both phones were now dead, so we had to resort to talking to one another… Imagine that.

 

Glancing at the TV in the bar, the news was on.  Everything looked a hell of a lot worse that we could have imagined, there were scenes from the France/Germany game, and a number that seemed to be rising all the time.  We drank up as quickly as we could, and briskly walked back to the hotel, passing several police cars and ambulances, their sirens wailing in the dark night.  We arrived to the hotel, plugged in our phones where they both promptly exploded with texts, emails, Facebook messages and voicemails, one in particular from my mother sounding severely distressed shouting in the background to my dad ‘She isn’t picking up her phone…’  We checked the BBC news website to see the full atrocity that had been committed in Paris that night, people out celebrating, just having a Friday out at a restaurant or a football match, or a gig attacked for no good reason.  Murder and rampage; Panic on the streets of Paris.  Obviously we got in touch with everyone and let them know we were okay.  Hundreds of people, people I don’t even know that well, just concerned that we were alive and safe.  It was overwhelming and we felt guilty for having that little joke earlier on.  I spoke to my dad and I’ve never heard so much relief in a single person’s voice.  Turns out he, along with Tom and Fran and others had phoned the bar we had been at to check we were okay.  We watched the French news in complete shock.  There was a state of emergency in France.  We were due to travel home on Saturday, what if we couldn’t? 

 

Well, as you all know, we got back safe and sound having spent the ENTIRE day at Charles De Gaulle airport (just as boring as you think it would be).  We’d intended spending our last day in Paris seeing things we hadn’t seen like the Arc de Triomphe and walking down the Champs-Élysées but it seemed safer to just go straight to CDG.  An uneventful tube ride from Heathrow to Euston and then a cab from Coventry station to Pie Bash and things seemed right and okay with the world again.  But I think that with the adrenaline of getting out of Paris and back home to Coventry had got me through, because on Sunday evening, the tears started and they’ve been on and off ever since.

 

The tears are a mixture of sadness, fear, rage and guilt.  Sadness because of the sheer loss of human life and devastation to so many families and to Paris herself; the fear has literally just hit me over the past few days; anger manifests itself in the question of why the fuck did these cunts think it was okay to attack and kill innocents?  And the guilt?  The guilt is that I lived but many others didn’t.  There should be 129 more living breathing beautiful humans on this planet but there aren’t because murderous cunts stole their lives.

 

It’s been odd seeing the reactions to what happened in Paris on Friday 13th: such sympathy and solidarity with the French populous, the simple act of changing one’s Facebook profile picture so it is the colour of the tricolore has been derided by many as slacktivism but fuck that, people have a fucking choice to change their FB photo just like those who didn’t change theirs (myself included) also had that choice.  It’s a sign of solidarity so take your derision and shove it right up your arse.  I am also very much aware of other atrocities that took and continue to take place and I am able to feel sadness for all of those things.  I am expressing myself about Paris because I was there, so it kinda hit me a little harder.

 

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this blog piece is, truth be told.  Probably catharsis, most likely.  I started back at work today and was dreading it because I was expecting the third degree about the whole thing; I was in tears last night when I was trying to go to sleep because I didn’t want to have to talk about it to anyone at work.  Thankfully, save for one person*, they’ve all been fine when I said I didn’t want to talk about.

 

I just can’t help but feel though that it isn’t right for me to cry, to have this grief or whatever it is.  I wasn’t directly affected, other than being in the city when it happened… I don’t know… I didn’t lose anyone, I didn’t get shot at, I wasn’t near an explosion… why do I feel this way?  It can’t just be because I’m a caring individual, David is a caring person and he hasn’t reacted this way… it’s caused me to take a break from one of my volunteering posts because if I’m in this state, I can’t think about being there for someone else completely.

 

This is the end…I’ve sort of tailed off… my mind isn’t in its usual (just about) working order.  Oh, and may thanks to Carl for the call this morning…I’m sorry you had to hear me cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Me: I don’t want to talk about it

Them: Oh why, how close were you to it all?

Me: Not that close but…Excuse me *rushes to bathroom to cry*

 

 

Hello blogger, my old friend

Hi.  Me again.  I know I only ever write when I’m upset or something catastrophic has happened to me and for that I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get this out.

I hit 36 in May of this year.  I’m getting on (in dog years, I’d be dead).  As every media outlet seems to delight in telling me, I’m not getting any younger, so I should probably start a family or something.  Well dear readers, I’ve tried (not like the Immaculate Conception, obvs) actually, I should probably say WE’VE tried, and nothing is happening.  And it’s probably all my fault.

I’m morbidly obese, according to the BMI scale.  And I’m shocking trying to do anything about it.  Sure, we both try to eat healthier, but as with everything, that falls off during the month until we’re just eating junk and crap and getting takeaways instead of cooking.  And each time, I beat myself up, each time, I fall back there.  And I’m not an emotional eater; if anything I’m an emotional starver.

To add to things, I can’t exercise at the moment due to a stupid trip down the stairs that’s fucked my hip up (I can’t tell you how excited I am to have a man jam a steroid injection into my hip joint – but I don’t know when that’s going to happen – could be a fortnight, could be November).  So my movements are very restricted, walking can be agony at times, so treadmill running (which I actually enjoy) is way out of the question.

So being a fatty isn’t conducive to conception, it certainly also means that IVF isn’t an option either.  I’m so desperate to lose weight AND have a child that it’s all I can think about.  If I wasn’t such a great big fucking fat mess, then we’d be swimming in kids now, probably.  I’ve even enquired about a gastric bypass so that I can’t eat the world.  My circle of close friends, bar one, have at least one child.  I’ve jokingly said to my friend who has four that should she pop out another, could she just let me have it instead?  It’s easy to try to laugh it off; it isn’t so easy to hide the pain and the tears regarding a situation that is ultimately probably my own making.

I know I probably shouldn’t be whinging on about how I’m fat, I’m well aware it’s my own fault, it’s just losing weight isn’t easy, especially when you suffer with depression, low self-esteem and that nagging feeling that you’re an embarrassment to your friends and loved ones due to your size.  I grew up with the mind-set that fat cannot be attractive, although there are hundreds of THOUSANDS of exceptions to this rule.  I found myself perusing ‘pro ana’ sites as I browsed for which VLCD was best.  And that frightens me, but then again,  I’ve felt like a failure for not being able to develop an eating disorder for fucks sake – how screwed in the head am I?  Like that is how any normal person thinks.  I’ve downloaded a ‘virtual gastric band’ hypnosis app, knowing that it’ll just be mumbo jumbo bollocks and won’t help me a jot (still going to try though, I have to). 

I suppose this is heading, ultimately, to the fact that I am just terrified that I am never going to have a child of my own, I’m never going to give birth, hold nine months’ worth of work, blood, cells, love; nine months’ worth of David and me mixed together into a teeny tiny mewling pink ball of new human.  I know there’s adoption which is something that we’ve discussed in the past, but to me, right at this moment in time, I want to feel how being pregnant feels, the tiredness, the puke, the ankle swelling, the constant need for weeing, the contractions, all of it.

If I start dieting now, I don’t know how long it will take for me to get to a weight where I can actually realistically conceive, assisted or not.  I’m scared I’ll be too old; I’ll be 40 or over.  But Christ knows, I have to do it, I have to try.

 

Try harder, you stupid critter.