How to help old friends

I have a dear friend; she and I have been friends since we were 13, I introduced her to the man she married, and we stayed close even when we lived far away. 

We knew each others family (I had a crush on her older brother, but nothing came of that) we went to the same school, the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Halifax, danced at the same Teen Club and shared many of the same friends.

She and her husband, Jean-Guy, had some hard times: Jean-Guy had two heart transplants, their only daughter died young, leaving her two children to be raised by their grandparents, and her husband died at 64. Dave and I were there for many of these times.  After his death, she became ill herself, and has been mostly bedridden for 7 or 8 years.

As a part of her illness, her speech became difficult to understand, and because I'm hard (read hard) of hearing, we don't spend as much time together as we did.  Dave took over the place I'd had in her life, and has been with her on at least one day out of every seven, doing her shopping, attending her doctor and hospital needs, lawn-caring, banking and helping with maintenance of the house she's lived in for over 40 years.

She needs to be somewhere where she can be cared for but she is not ready to accept that, and continues to live in the main floor of her house, which she's had adapted so that she can walk, with difficulty, while holding onto bars on the wall.

Last Thursday she had 3 falls during the day, and on the last one, she fell into or on top of her wheelchair, leaving her scraped, hurt and helpless.  She has an alarm, which for some reason, she didn't use.  She called me, and with the help of my brother I could hear that she wanted me to come over but from her voice and the calls to God and the Blessed Virgin, I could tell that she needed medical help, which she didn't want. Dave who wasn't reachable, has a key to her house, but I don't and she was upset that whoever came to help would have to break down her door. I finally made her promise to call the paramedics, but she didn't and instead called someone who drives her to hospital and doctor appointments when Dave isn't available.  Luckily, he called the paramedics, he had a key, and off she went to hospital.

I hate it that my second thought after hearing she was sore but doing well in hospital the next day was to be overjoyed that she would now have to accept her situation and that we would help her move from her house to a care facility.  She did accept it, for a few hours anyway, but now refuses to go anywhere but home.

When I think about it clearly, I know that we are assisting her in her determination to stay in her home.  When I see her, I remember her pride in her place and know how much she worked to get that house and make it exactly what she wanted.  Dave and I try to be as practical as we can, and when that's done, we talk about how we can't understand why she is so determined (but we say"stubborn").

Boy, could I ever give someone else in the same position some good advice!

On this 15th of November

It gets harder and harder to write posts, which is very weird because I have so many random yet compelling issues I need to work through. Having said that, I caught myself wanting to make a list, and here it is:

• nothing I can share
• little I can fix
• much that I can mull over to keep from making decisions

When will I learn?

I remember writing a post a few years ago about my dilemma.  If you wake up at 3 o'clock, do you have a cup of coffee to start your day or a glass of wine to finish it off?

At that time, I almost always chose, in vain, to have a glass of wine, and maybe a Pirouline biscuit.  Then I would read for a couple of hours and go back to bed around 6.  This of course, only added to my time-management problem because I'd wake up around 9, starving, but unwilling to consider breakfast as an option.  
I'd do all the houseworky things I needed to do until I felt I'd punished myself enough to have coffee, which I would have loved to have had in bed had I not just arranged all 5 of the sparkly cushions in that very place.

Looking back it seems nothing like a dilemma and everything like a privileged yet guilt-ridden life.

I'm at it again.

The Whole Truth and Nothing But

Another gray day....it matches my wardrobe this year.  and my hair.  and my mood.

Why didn't I just eat a couple of spoons of peanut butter?  That usually cheers me up, but today, getting at the peanut butter meant changing the beautiful yet precarious arrangement of things on the top  shelf of the pantry.  I'm not feeling lucky enough for that.

I've been in full domestic persona today and arranged shelves, washed floors, wrote an inspired shopping list and threw away anything in the freezer that was unrecognizable.  That sort of used up my luck, so I'm sitting on the couch waiting for karma to join me.

While waiting, I'm looking at the books I bought yesterday. This is what I should have done with them immediately after paying.

Baaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!

INSTANT HUMAN

Just add water

Drip and sip

That is exactly what it said.  And that was exactly what I wanted

I came home with books and 3-D dragon bookmarks and other stuff for our Christmas stockings, ready for that cup of coffee.

Part of the problem of course was that because Dave is on holiday in Nova Scotia, with our car, to get to Chapters I had to borrow Emily's car.  It's new; it has screens, I needed young men to help me start it, align the mirrors and find the radio; so of course my jaw hurts.

Here's the thing.  You can't just add water then drip and sip because you need #2 paper filters to make it work.

I feel so fleeced. 

As it should be

A week or so ago, my brother sent me a box full of "mementos" he thought I would like to have, as the family house, in which he has lived for a while, has been sold.

Mementos have always been able to provide sharp images for me of the owner, the position of the item in the room, and who gave it to whom.

I wasn't feeling particularly strong emotionally that day but knew my brother would want to know I'd received the parcel, so I opened it and immediately was totally overcome by the items inside.

Many were pictures that had been up on various walls, others small glass birds and eggs, both of which my mother and I were drawn to.  There were things I'd made for Mom and Dad years ago and other gifts we had given them. Touching these familiar items was magical.

Sean is a careful packer, and he'd included a fragile item wrapped in soft pink fabric, which when I saw it, brought me to tears.  I can't remember a time when that cobalt blue swan wasn't perched on a table or shelf in the many houses we lived in.  What I'd missed on first look though was that the glass swan was wrapped in my mother's bathrobe, which had been hanging on the bathroom door since she died ten years ago.

Even though it was too small for me I couldn't resist wearing it for the next couple of hours, and now it's hanging on our bathroom door.

A test of fortitude and friends

Two days ago I decided that 15 glasses of wine in a week was shocking, and possibly harmful.  I had just bought my usual box, that does indeed last me the 6 weeks it claims to hold its wineliness.  I put it near the door, with the receipt still stuffed into the top, and for 3 days it's been sitting there, waiting to be taken back.

Dave thought I was acting precipitously, and that given I enjoyed wine, having a glass a day couldn't hurt.  Strangely, I found myself drawn to his suggestion.

Wayne Gretzky makes unoaked wine.  Bless him

It took me a day to launch into the new regime.  While I still have the white, I have bought a bottle of non-oaked red, and intend to stick to the single glass per day.  When you read about how a glass of wine per day can be good for you, they're talking red, and I'm hoping the redness of it all will keep me on the plan.  

Leaving the white boxed wine in the hallway is genius.  You can't drink white wine at room temperature, so I'm not even tempted, although I have just written 200 words or so about it.  And soon, one of us will take it back.

One of my friends told me not to be ridiculous---I'm retired and stay around the house a lot, so who's going to know how much I drink and why it should matter.  Emily says that person doesn't care about me at all.