No Gold Medal Day

9th September 2012 Sunday

I watch the shining smiles of the Para-Olympians holding up their gold medals....feel so inspired by what they must have overcome to reach this point......

The mean part of me says if it’s a physical disability you can find a way round it - like having a false leg....and if it’s a mental disability  - like my husband’s  - you can’t halt its downward spiral however slow.........

I asked him today when we were walking by the river if repeating a word a lot or trying to find a way to remember it like weaving a story around it, helps to fix it in his mind. It doesn’t.  Especially if we are talking about places or people eg. Tiverton Canal, it will only stay for a few minutes or less in his mind. 

And sometimes it’s like all the wires in his head have got re-routed. We are sitting in a cafe garden. He orders a date slice. When it comes I say,

It looks more like a date crumble.

He’s quiet then he says,

What’s a date?

What you are eating, I say pointing to his plate.

Oh, I thought you meant like going on a date and it all falling apart..... 

 We laugh but the trouble is is that I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like for him. I want to see the gift in it all. Maybe the equivalent of a false leg for my husband is discovering his big open heart and living from that instead of from his head.

I do want that  - but today I didn’t remember it and I just felt impatient and irritated and tired of explainig everything and sorry for myself.  Not really a winning formula for a gold medal.