Worth Remembering

Thursday 7th April

Day 351

I lie awake a long time in the night. I thought my husband would never stop snoring but he did in the end. I know I had complicated dreams but they elude me now.

I buy two pots of sweet peas in the market early this morning. The herbs look so fresh and tender I can’t resist filling my basket with big bunches of chives and coriander, rocket and sorrel. And radishes, white sprouting broccoli and red Russian kale - just stowing them away in the fridge at home makes me feel cleaner and healthier.

I will be out all day so I leave a blue jug of sweet scented narcissi on my husband’s desk for him to come home to after his homeopath appointment.

At 11 am in the Park and Ride car park opposite the Met office I meet up with two women - and a dog - from the Pick’s Disease Support Group. We drive to a pub - famous for good food - on the Cornwall border. Two more women join us and the sun streams in through the window onto our round table. We eat omlettes and creamed smoked haddock and oily green salad.

All these women have or had husbands in various stages of the same brain disease that my husband has. One is dead, one is in a nursing home, one is filing for divorce. They are brave and tearful and funny and they all say to me,

‘Take one day a time. Book holidays. It may not happen like this for your husband.They are all different.’

Back home we walk to the allotment where the weeds are growing tall between the raised beds and the garlic shoots are as thick as young leeks. We carry watering cans again and again from the tank to the green house and soak the dry soil where rows of little seedlings are longing for a drink.

We linger at the table, talking, after our supper - prawn curry and purple sprouting broccoli - the sky growing dark outside, a sliver of moon rising. I look into my husband’s dear face and I’m so grateful he is different from all those other women’s husbands. He may not remember the name of our next door neighbour but he knows who I am. And how to grow tomatoes. And that’s a good place to start. Worth remembering.