It's No Good Crying Either

31st July 2012 Tuesday

I discover I can make polite conversation over the dinner table while entertaining two nagging companions in my head - Mr Waiting and Mrs Worrying. I’m waiting for a phone call from our CAB advisor to go over the draft letter for the Tribunal.  And worrying I won't get it right. She said she’d call at lunchtime.

It’s luchtime an we are in a little village outside Marlborough. We are sitting in a big farmhouse kitchen with some lovely people whose house  - and dog and chickens and greenhouse and swimming pool - we are going to look after while they are away at the end of August. We have come to learn the ropes. I’m listening and eating lasagne but I’m tight as a fist  - my eyes keep flipping to my mobile. Maybe there’s no reception here.

I get through the lunch and the ropes and then later an elegant tea of drop scones and sponge cake with my husband’s uncle and aunty while my ears are stretched anntenae waiting for the phone to ring in my handbag.

At 5.30 on the way home in the car the call comes in under the strains of Handel’s Messiah on the CD player. Instead of reading the letter over the phone she will come to the house tomorrow - a huge relief. But she can’t represent us on the day. I feel about five years old and my mummy has left me at the dentist on my own.

It’s no good crying though. It just makes my head pound and my eyelids puffy. Waiting over, worrying intact.

It was my mother’s birthday today. She would have been 92.

It's No Good Being Cross

30th July 2012

It’s no good being cross when my husband does things that drive me mad.

Like buying the wrong Felix cat food which I know the pussy cat won’t eat.

Like drinking wine on a Monday when he said he wouldn’t.

Like offering his glass to me again and again when I’ve said no. 

Like putting the wet smelly black bin bags down on the mat so I have to scrub it.

Like asking the question What am I here for? and never expecting an answer.

Like giving up on himself when I know he’s still bright and creative and capable.

It doesn’t work to be cross because he already feels so bad about himself it’s like pouring acid into his wounded heart. It just hurts both of us.

This evening we wait for two hours for our lovely CAB advisor to arrive with the letter she’s written for the Tribunal next week so we can send it off in time. When she doesn’t come or answer her phone I worry something has happened.

We give up and have last night’s supper re-heated with pak choi and courgettes and watch  two programmes back to back about the government’s attempts to get people off benefits and back to work by using independent medical assessors. The system has gone mad. People with severe physical and mental conditions are considered fit for work, appeal against it and win and then are re-assessed a few months later as still fit for work.

My husband would like to work. It seems they don’t want to know what you can’t do but only what you can. And he can do lots of things. Except  gain access all the words in his head which connect him to the world and give his life brightness.......

Jam and the Dam

29th July 2012 

Saturday

I pack a picnic and we drive north into the folded green hills of Somerset. We walk round the perimeter of an odd shaped lake -  a dam which was once a deep valley. I think about the flooded trees under the water and remember another dam - Kariba  - on the borders of Zambia and Zimbabwe. A whole tribe of people had to be moved to drown that valley - the cost of hydro-electric power for two countries. My husband asks me what hydro-electric means.

We eat our picnic under white scudding clouds - smoked salmon bagels with strawberry jam and chillis for my husband and egg mayonnaise Ryvitas for me and a big box of salad. I worry about the strawberry jam  - does this mean my husband is losing it around food combinations? Somehow chilli jam works with salmon but  strawberry doesn’t even if it’s mixed with chilli. Maybe I’m just being a food fascist - my father used to eat sugar on lettuce.

Sunday

Today we walk on the windy cliffs above Charmouth -  the voices of holiday makers on the beach below us blown out to sea. The coast path is closed because of the recent land slides. So we take the high inland route but the ground is fissured with deep cracks and dry ruts. It feels precarious under my feet - this ancient terrain shifting and uncertain now.

Like my inner landscape - crumbling at the edges.

At least the pussy cat is eating and sleeping as if all is right with the world. Maybe the tumours inside him are dissolving. Or maybe all the love and prayers he’s receiving are healing him. And releasing me to accompany him on his  chosen path without falling into the deep shadows of guilt and grief  - my own drowned valley.

Melted Into Thin Air

26th July 2012 Thursday

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

On Tuesday night we sat in the Swan Theatre in Stratford and watched The Tempest. At the interval my husband said he might as well go back to the hotel as he couldn’t understand any of it. I asked him to stay. I was struggling to grasp some of the language too. When I first met my husband he would have been able to quote this speech verbatim. I used to lie on his bed in the horrible council flat where he lived and listen to him learning his lines for whatever Shakespeare play he was practising.

That part of his life is over now, dissolved  - melted into thin air.

This evening while the air is sticky as treacle we walk through deep shady woods and I’m sure I can smell the powdery blossom of the mimosa tree. My husband says he feels lost and  doesn’t know why he’s so tired.

I make Ratatouille for supper which we have with green beans and broccoli, sprinkled with walnuts and grated Gruyere cheese.  Someone told me the secret of a good Ratatouille is to fry the aubergines and peppers and courgettes separately before cooking them in the rich tomato sauce. Propbably too much oil but it stops it being a watery stew and turns it into a Mediterranean delight.  Especially with a handful of chopped fresh marjoram stirred in at the end.

We  eat in front of the TV watching the Proms - Daniel Barenboim conducting  Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. My husband knows it by heart - the language  of music he hasn’t lost.

Free In The Midst Of Suffering

23rd July 2012 Monday

Summer drifted in today on a clean blue sky while I sat with five gorgeous women, on a long bench in a cafe garden scented with mint and marjoram.

Later I arranged for the vet to come and put the pussy cat to sleep on Thursday afternoon.

Luckily I changed my mind and cancelled the appointment. I couldn’t have gone through with it anyway. My sister-in-law in Fiji emailed me. She knows from a deep and compassionate place about how animals die and their wisdom in their own passing which isn’t in our hands - unless they are in real distress. And how it is possible for us to be free or peaceful in the midst of ‘apparent’ suffering...

Which is what the pussy cat is trying to teach me in his wise, courageous way. If only I would trust and listen.....

Love Remains

20th July  2012 Friday

The pussy cat lets the vet feel his stomach, stick a needle in his neck and shoot a tablet down his throat without a squeak. I didn’t want this for him but I couldn’t bear the other option yet. Feels like we are buying him a bit of time  - its palliative now  - mild chemo to help him feel better - maybe kill some cells. We can only see if it makes any difference even for a little while. And if not decide otherwise. But not tonight.

Already he has perked up and has eaten small amounts of horrible Felix cat food, tuna, roast beef and parmesan cheese He sits next to me on the kitchen floor in radiant sunlight while I  roll out pastry, chop rhubarb, mix up flapjack, and boil beetroot.

I’m trusting now that he’ll let us know when it’s the right time. And maybe all decisions are right. Right to treat him and also right to let him go.....whatever happens the love remains.

Feeling Sad

19th July 2012 

I don’t know why I thought the pussy cat would somehow just get better. According to all the cat lymphoma websites he’s now showing signs of getting worse. No appetite, he’s only eating lickfuls, he looks so thin, withdrawing and sleeping all the time, diarrhea and lethargy.  All the alternative nutrition treatments I ordered from the States haven’t arrived yet.

Our pussy cat healer is sick  herself - she suggested I ask for help for him.  And I’ll talk to the vet tomorrow. I feel at a loss to know what to do for the best.  They say on the websites that your cat will tell you when it’s time..... 

I’ve just been talking to him curled up on the sofa downstairs. He purred a bit and wouldn't look at me.  I just feel really sad now.