This End And This Beginning - And Still The Loss Of Him

Robin sits on the perching stool in the paddling pool at the kitchen sink -  I wash him for the last time.

While I'm feeding him mashed up banana and coconut yoghurt lovely friend arrives with mate and pick up truck. They load up the computer and all its tangle of wires, the table and lamp, the little chest of drawers and the huge heavy riser recliner chair. They have to work around the other 2 lovely men dismantling the hospital bed and taking it out in parts to the other pick up truck also parked on double  yellow lines in the street.

Lovely P.A. arrives, gives Robin the last of his banana and then takes him for a drive with the instruction not to arrive at Lucerne house before 11 am where I will be unpacking his suitcase and hopefully they will have put up the bed.

It's like a miracle when I arrive in his room and it's all set up - computer working, chair in place and bed being mantled. I unpack Robin's things....put up photographs and the clock and his diary by the bed so it's familiar like it is at home.

When PA brings him perfectly on time, all he wants to do is get into bed and sleep. The lovely nurse J and another carer help him and I have to translate about how he insists on taking most of his clothes off..... Then we leave him with the curtains drawn and I say I will come back later ...( with his double duvet and sheets as their bedding isn't quite up to what he's used to.)

I call in at the house of a dear friend who lives very close to Lucerne house and she restores me with  frothy coffee and the best chocolate brownie in Exeter.

I buy salmon steaks and light bulbs on the way home as if it's just an ordinary day.

Back home I start clearing up the mess in the upside-down dining room...then suddenly it all hits me...this ending and the loss of him ....this beginning and still the loss of him.....this  new relief and still the  loss of him....and I hollow myself out with crying ....tears soaking the carpet. Then I get up and start sweeping up the dust balls smudging the empty space that was occupied by his bed.

When I return to the House Robin is still in bed, although he has had lunch and tiny walk outside, and I switch on the computer, play him songs recorded by the choir he used to sing in which  he loves and which makes me cry some more and makes him sing Poo Bum Willy ( but not very loudly) to the tune.

Then we drive off to Mortonhampstead on Dartmoor with Beethoven's ''Emperor" piano concerto streaming out through the open windows, startling the sheep and  remembering my mother who loved  the waterfall sound of this piece and took me to listen to it at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens when I was a schoolgirl.

And although it's still really annoying  - Robin's constant teeth grinding - I don't let it spoil anything because I know that in a little while I will take him back ....and someone else will get him into bed....and take care of him ...not like I do...but well enough....more than well enough...

And then I will drive home where my sister is waiting with a gorgeous supper for us ....and we will watch The Great British Bake Off...right to the very end with no interruptions and no-one calling me....and then I will go to bed in my big empty silent house... breathing into this momentous end and this unknown beginning all at the same time.

And now, tonight, there is no rustling of a baby alarm and it's only my own quiet breath sighing into the air in the bedroom.

My sister's gorgeous supper.