Slippery Slope
Sometimes you stop and realise just how small your world has become. Spending this time with Barney has given many insights which I am grateful for and then sometimes its just total exhaustion from 24/7 care, broken sleeps and hot humid days. He is slowly losing and more of his memory and becoming too frail to do his walks the way he did before. But the problem with losing memory is that he cant be left alone at all as he forgets any instructions and forgets that he is not able to do things he remembers being able to do, like climb a ladder to get something out of a top cupboard. My life seems to have evolved to be just support for him and I am beginning to feel burned out and all I want to do is sleep for a week… or three. Thank goodness for my morning coffee escape and the wee balm business that at least gets me talking to people with real lives and the feeling that at least I am doing something useful. The hospice nurses and carers have become my social life and I am so lucky they are such delightful characters. I constantly plan to do so much and the bigger the plans the more likely the unexpected will completely demolish them – some sort of inverse relationship I have never been able to figure out.
Christmas and New Year came and went in a haze of medical emergencies and its like waking up and suddenly its March. We are going to take a trip to Whangarei at the end of March for Barneys 98th to see his family and I am looking forward to the change of scenery and the chance to get my old real camera out again and find some new ways to look as what’s around me. It’s so easy to slip into always being on alert always looking for what’s wrong and forgetting to spend time focussing on what is wonderful. Music helps and special songs bring memories close and clear keeping me smiling and inextricably linked to happier times when possibilities felt unlimited.
The Traveling Kiwi 