These Foolish Things

In my mind the flat is still Rosemarie's home. I know that in practice she lives in the Care Home but for practical purposes (I tell myself) I leave it as her home address for Tax, Pension, Bank etc. and indeed it does make it easier to deal with what little mail she gets. But if I am honest it is a sign that I am clinging on to something that maybe I should let go.

Rosemarie is not coming home.

I may win the lottery and have enough money to pay for plentiful private care 24 hours a day in a specially designed environment that caters to her every need. But it would not be our home. It would not be the small and rather cluttered top floor flat I am looking round right now. No way could she come back here in anything like her present condition.

It is of course theoretically possible (though even more unlikely than winning the lottery) that in the very near future a way will be discovered to completely reverse the disease and Rosemarie will get her speech and cognition and movement and everything else back and we will be able to continue where we left off when this hideous thing happened.

I know these are both dreams.

But it is remarkably hard dealing with the things of hers that fill the flat. I have some mementos of my parents that I brought from their home after they died and from time to time I will look at these and remember them warmly and fondly. 

But Rosemarie is not dead, and when I see her stuff it reminds me that the wreckage of the person I love most in the world is alive a few short miles away. Sometimes it sends shivers down my spine picking them up. Dealing with the reality of her disease when I go to see her each day is hard, but it is a present problem. This seems more like having to deal with the difference between the present and the past. Constantly.

Some things are easier than others. 

A while ago my son helped me clear out rented storage we had been hiring for too long. One of the reasons I had been postponing it was that I knew most of the stuff there was hers - stuff dating back to her childminding days mostly. Why we kept it, even before the Alzheimer's struck, I am not sure. For the cost of storing it we could have replaced everything with brand new stuff if she decided late in her life to return to childminding and none of  it was valuable enough to keep to pass on to grandchildren.

Yet it was very difficult to throw away (my son and I tried charity shops but they were not really interested, and playgroups only want new stuff for health reasons). In the end I was able to rationalise it by convincing myself that I couldn't afford to keep paying for storage and if I could discuss it with Rosemarie she would agree with me.

But there were also books in storage, many of them hers. Both Rosemarie and I belong to a generation that holds books as sacred. If you have read and enjoyed a book you don't throw it away, even if you know you are never going to read it again. Maybe someone else will. I think we encouraged our children to read by the sheer critical mass of books we surrounded them with.

These were books we moved to storage because we had no room to store them in the flat so either I had to dispose of them or start stacking piles of books on the floor of our already cluttered living room. In the end I could be ruthless with my own books but it was really hard to dispose of Rosemarie's.

I felt I didn't have the right. They were hers.

As for her possessions in the flat, that is a guilt trip on its own. I am not talking about ornaments or mementos or presents - they are part of our shared history and they have less cruel influence on me. I am talking about the things that are entirely hers and that she has no realistic use for.

Some things are easy. Her nail varnish is beyond its use by date so throwing them away is just housekeeping. Her bubble bath and toothbrush...for some stupid reason it starts to get harder.

Rosemarie loved clothes and I built a wardrobe down one wall of the bedroom to accommodate them. It was bulging long before the disease started. I used to have to hang my ironed shirts untidily elsewhere, and keep my jeans and trousers in piles. One day I was looking at the wardrobe and took a deep breath and started removing her clothes so at last I could hang some of mine up.

These are expensive clothes and very beautiful but totally unsuitable for the Care Home, They are difficult to dress her in and she does not love clothes now - she shows no awareness at all of what she is wearing. 

I piled them on the bed. What was I going to do with them now? Rosemarie wasn't dead. What right did I have to give them away to a charity shop, or throw them away? They were her clothes.

I put them in black plastic sacks and piled them on one side of the bedroom. 

It probably sounds silly but I continue to have a problem with this. I can leave everything as it was on the day I helped her down to the ambulance, but that makes me feel like one of those slightly obsessive people who turn their homes into shrines to their missing loved ones and keep everything exactly as it was in the hope that they will miraculously return.... which is really not facing up to reality. Every time I look at her things my heart burns and my eyes prickle. I see her not coming home.

Or I tidy things away but keep everything in boxes or bags. That seems an even more bizarre way of avoiding reality.

Or I throw it away. Which I have no right to do. Which seems some kind of heartless betrayal.

I have a feeling I will probably read this again in a few years and shake my head sadly at the confused, illogical person who wrote this. 

But for now I occupy part of my life writhing around impaled on this particular spike.