Post 216: A Busy Day and happy tears.
Getting up for counselling isn’t a chore, and after Mr Vicious was fed, he was informed that his dinner might be late tonight due to the CT Scan.
He replied — quite reasonably — that it was fine because he had a neighbourhood-watch meeting at number 8 and wouldn’t be home till late anyway.
———
I can’t remember whether I’ve mentioned funeral planning recently.
No — don’t panic — I’m not sinking into gloom.
I’m simply circling back to something I began thinking about three years ago, before being firmly told to stop by my Darling.
Here a little aside for you to ponder:
Q: After your diagnosis, how long did it take before your mind wandered to your own funeral?
Be honest.
I know exactly when it happened for me:
On the drive home from the meeting where I first heard the words Prostate Cancer.
Strange… or organised?
I mentioned to my darling the funeral directors I preferred, and I even visited them the following week.
That’s when my Darling put her foot down:
“Enough is enough. I can’t do this now. Can you leave it till later.”
So we left it, and life carried on.
Yesterday, with the long drive to and from the city hospital, we finally had time to talk — properly talk. It felt like she had loosened a knot inside herself. And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I realised:
I’ve got a fairly complete plan in my head now.
A fabulous plan but one I’ll never get to see carried out.
A strange thing to accept… but also grounding.
Back to this morning.
We arrived at the hospice to find the entrance doors wrapped in scaffolding and workmen stripping mountains of moss from the roof. Twenty-odd years of British weather and common gull droppings — enough to fill a massive skip — was coming down in great clumps from the roof, inside the bendy dustbin hose that looks a bit like a toy snake I had as a kid.
Last time I visited, it had rained for the first time all year and flooded the atrium with puddles. I guess that’s the reason for the workmen. Funnily enough it’s nearly December and we still have a hosepipe ban. The local reservoir never caught up with the dry summer, even now.
But I digress. Again.
The frost had delayed us.
And with no
scraper to be found, I deployed the garden-centre loyalty card from my wallet — don’t worry, no moths were killed in this enterprising enterprise — and scraped off the thick frost.
My Darling, all five-foot-not-very-much of her, scraped her side of the windscreen where she could reach.
A joint effort.
A slightly late arrival was now ensured.
With nearly an hour of counselling done, where I had poured out months of tangled thoughts I thought I was finished. And then, with three minutes left, I finally touched on a raw nerve — the thing I’d been skirting around unknowingly.
And I broke.
After this hour of tidy, articulate, mostly cheerful talking, I suddenly fell apart and cried like a baby.
The trigger?
This forum.
This blog.
I told her I have had extraordinary replies lately to my blog — supportive, kind, thoughtful, and sometimes sob-inducing. I told her people take the time to read my ramblings, to send strength back to me, to say they feel touched. Some even scold me lovingly when I go too far.
And there, in that quiet room, I could do nothing but sit and quietly whimper while I tried to breathe again.
It’s your fault — you who read these posts.
You who reply with warmth and honesty.
You who somehow turn my rambling mind-clearing exercise into something that matters to someone else.
When she eventually asked why I had reacted like that — it was difficult to speak.
It goes back to school.
To English lessons.
To being hopeless at reading books.
To spelling that made teachers sigh or laugh.
To feeling stupid.
To being made to feel it, useless.
So the answer was this:
I don’t feel worthy.
Not of the kindness, not of the encouragement, not of the compliments about something I spent my childhood convinced I was useless at.
And that admission — that old wound — is what finally cracked me open.
“Food for thought”, my counsellor said.
———
I’m exhausted now. The tank is empty.
I’ll come back to the plans I started to talk about when I can.
Good night.
