Mad Cows and Roses

16th January 2012 Monday

8.30 am - I sit with my husband in the Endoscopy department at the hospital. The lovely male staff nurse is explaining the procedure he will have to go through. When he talks about the possibility of cauterising a polyp with a snare I interrupt him and translate it for my husband.

The staff nurse looks put out and says,

‘Are you a nurse then?’

We tell him about the semantic dementia.

‘You should have said and I would have taken it into account’.

‘I thought it was in his notes,’ I say.

One of the questions on the consent form is about CJD. The staff nurse recounts the story of Mad Cow Disease in this country. My husband says he’s never heard of it.

Later, when my husband is in the theatre this man comes to find me and says,

‘When I talked to your husband about his work he was completely fluent’.

‘And he used to know all about CJD,’ I say.

‘He seems like a lovely man,’ he says.

‘He is,’ I say.

‘I’m sorry you’ve lost that part of him,’ he says, and I look down at the magazine I’m reading so he doesn’t see my tears.

By the time I arrive at the cemetery the sun is already low on the horizon, the sky glazed with orange and red behind the sillhouette of the trees. I’ve come to clean up my mother’s gave - to welcome my father on Wednesday. I wash the grass cuttings off the oak cross, wish I’d brought some oil to feed it with, polish the brass plaque with my mother’s name on, but it doesn’t shine, and arrange a bunch of roses and tulips the colours of the sunset in the pincushion flower holder set in the plinth. They flop and swivel and look a mess but my fingers are frozen and it’s dark so I drive away and trust they will survive the night.

And I realise it so doesn’t matter if they don’t.