Why now?

2 minute read time.

FormerMember

4 Jan 2017

5 Dec 2016

I have used Macmillan since the very early days but never before felt the need to write a blog. Partly, I think, I was just too busy being a carer as well as a wife, worker, friend, daughter, volunteer, person. Partly it feels more egocentric than the occasional posting - who am I to think my experience is of any interest or use to anyone else? Partly I suspected that if I blogged I would be more pungent and honest and unsaintly than in my postings, and I didn't necessarily want him to read it.

But now - he will never read anything I write, ever again. Even though I wanted to email him my draft eulogy to see if he could spot any errors, he has permanently retired as my proofreader, commenter, cheerleader. He won't see any of my professional writing again either. This is just one of the many ways in which he has inconsiderately absented himself from my life.

It is worse that he is absent from his own, of course - far worse. But wherever he is - and I really have no idea, and no belief system of any kind to cushion my uncertainty - it isn't anywhere I am, at least not now (and I am not planning to join him, I have not yet got to that point of despair). And I still have to do something with what I laughingly refer to as my life.

I have all this time - I'm not driving him to hospital, or visiting him in hospital, or running errands for him while in hospital. I'm not listening through the night for every quirk of breath. I'm not preparing light and nutritious meals. I'm not holding his hand while he throws them back up or wincing as he mutters in pain as the district nurse prepares the injection. I'm not holding back the tears of pity as I help the wraith who resembles him out of the bath or off the toilet. Shouldn't a part of me be glad to leave this behind? Is it really true that I would gladly give every day of my life to these hateful chores if only to have him back, or is that just what I'm supposed to feel? I do not want what he ended up as to be back in the world, for his sake not mine.

I have my life back, and the universe is laughing sardonically at my attempts to navigate it. I have never known anything like these panic-salted waves of grief which smack me in the small of the back with about ten seconds' warning. My home is crusted over with awful memories and gaping with his absence but the pain follows me out the front door. I really have only my counsellor's word for it that I can survive this. She has not been wrong about anything yet, but I am still not convinced.

FormerMember over 8 years ago

[Edit by admin - this comment was first posted when the blog was first published on 5 Dec 2016]

Hi Dizeat Sma, if not now then when?

I'm the sufferer rather than the carer but your post has touched a nerve. In the first place when diagnosed and operated upon I couldn't write about my experience and then posted under a pseudonym talking in the 3rd person. Now I keep a diary which often reads depressingly and I'm three and a half years post diagnosis. I've suffered complications and stuff so it's not been easy but I share all that doubt you reference and struggle to see where life, or living, fits in to what I have experienced?

My best trait is a philosophical mindset but even that doesn't remove the depressing changes that have been left like a shadow on my personality. When I write well in my diary it's usually due to either black humour or some profound recognition of what life is really like. In this post-truth world it is usually some darkly sardonic mockery that society, or at least those in governance, lay down before me. Adding weight to my yoke of suffering by way of some manifestly mean punishment, like a financial punishment for being so bold as to be ill with complications.

How do we go on? Because we can! Your world, your life, your writing, your reflections and every other thing that relates to you, whether by direct or indirect connection, is a reason to go on. Your counsellor may not have convinced you as yet but there are ways to continue. All the cliched comments and self serving remarks won't help but the abstract and the tangible might? For any awful memories I am sure there will be remarkable and fantastical ones and what recent tragedy you have suffered I imagine you will have shared glorious highs and long term satisfying relationships, whether professional or those more personal with your immediate family. As a professional writer you may be well equipped to delve deeply for inspiration or just to delve for those sublime abilities that might allow you to write openly, even if it's dark and frank to the point of being cathartic? Maybe your skills would touch others if you were to write about your experience with the prospect of helping others or just informing people of the reality of the difficulties we are burdened with when suffering is visited upon us?

I don't know in truth Dizeat Sma but you, like me, are here and why not now? Why not make going on a celebration of your life and a testimony to (whom I presume) was your partner. Why not look without with a new perspective and embrace what you have experienced in life so that you can look at it anew and maybe see this beautiful world, even in sight of all it's farce and tragedy, as a reason to go on?

I was touched by what you wrote and I hope you do write a blog and carry on! Kind regards and best wishes to you.
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