Looking Back
I have been avoiding a grisly sort of anniversary.
Two years ago today Rosemarie was lying in a ward in King's and the staff were trying to start weaning her off the morphine they had been giving her. I was settling into some sense of routine and I started making daily notes of what was happening. The handwriting is urgent and scrappy, and somehow seems to convey the shock and panic I remember feeling.
Reading my notes again and re-reading my early blog entries brings on wave after wave of sadness and upset. The problems I am dealing with now are so different from what Rosemarie was going through then. Things now seem weighty and complex; then they were raw and intense.
I only faintly recognise the person I was then. I was all about getting Rosemarie out of hospital and back home. It had not occurred to me that she would not be coming home. I was worried about her eating and drinking enough, her falling, and what seemed at the time a major problem communicating, but I did not have the faintest idea that everything would shortly be changing utterly.
It has been a long two years. Sometimes the repetitive days make me feel like I am on autopilot. Sometimes I feel exhausted, as if for two years everything has been on hold. And I have been holding it.
Two years of waking up alone each morning. She doesn't let me cuddle her (she can't control her body enough to let me) and rarely lets me kiss her, but I still love her more than I have ever loved anyone in my life. It is an especially cruel loss when you see what you have lost right in front of you. Every day.
But hers has been by far the darkest road. Re-reading the blogs I am appalled by what this evil disease has done to her: the fear and panic in her eyes, the reality of losing everything that makes you a person. Bit by bit. One indignity after another, and the brutal crushing of hope. I think she is still able to make a little sense of the world around her from time to time, but not for long. She is emotionally raw and terribly vulnerable.
I remember when she was discharged I was told to think in months rather than years. She has confounded them, but at what cost! This brave, morally tall woman lying there fighting with everything she has to keep everything she has left for as long as possible. She may have lost nearly everything but I still see flashes and echoes of the courage and determination that define her for me.
Today is just another day of course. Nothing really different happened today. I visited her, held her hand, kissed her forehead, chatted to her, fed her supper and tried to bring whatever comfort I could.
But my mind has insisted on taking me on a dark and unwelcome journey.
That's all for now.
Two years ago today Rosemarie was lying in a ward in King's and the staff were trying to start weaning her off the morphine they had been giving her. I was settling into some sense of routine and I started making daily notes of what was happening. The handwriting is urgent and scrappy, and somehow seems to convey the shock and panic I remember feeling.
Reading my notes again and re-reading my early blog entries brings on wave after wave of sadness and upset. The problems I am dealing with now are so different from what Rosemarie was going through then. Things now seem weighty and complex; then they were raw and intense.
I only faintly recognise the person I was then. I was all about getting Rosemarie out of hospital and back home. It had not occurred to me that she would not be coming home. I was worried about her eating and drinking enough, her falling, and what seemed at the time a major problem communicating, but I did not have the faintest idea that everything would shortly be changing utterly.
It has been a long two years. Sometimes the repetitive days make me feel like I am on autopilot. Sometimes I feel exhausted, as if for two years everything has been on hold. And I have been holding it.
Two years of waking up alone each morning. She doesn't let me cuddle her (she can't control her body enough to let me) and rarely lets me kiss her, but I still love her more than I have ever loved anyone in my life. It is an especially cruel loss when you see what you have lost right in front of you. Every day.
But hers has been by far the darkest road. Re-reading the blogs I am appalled by what this evil disease has done to her: the fear and panic in her eyes, the reality of losing everything that makes you a person. Bit by bit. One indignity after another, and the brutal crushing of hope. I think she is still able to make a little sense of the world around her from time to time, but not for long. She is emotionally raw and terribly vulnerable.
I remember when she was discharged I was told to think in months rather than years. She has confounded them, but at what cost! This brave, morally tall woman lying there fighting with everything she has to keep everything she has left for as long as possible. She may have lost nearly everything but I still see flashes and echoes of the courage and determination that define her for me.
Today is just another day of course. Nothing really different happened today. I visited her, held her hand, kissed her forehead, chatted to her, fed her supper and tried to bring whatever comfort I could.
But my mind has insisted on taking me on a dark and unwelcome journey.
That's all for now.
posted by Other Kosh at 8:45 pm
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