I wake with my usual/ sometime 4 am headache ( though not quite so usual now , you tend to realise when it re appears that there has been a wondrous spell when it has been missing . A bit like the early morning greyhound starts . )
I edge slowly downstairs to avoid waking said greyhound and take a syndol and fall back to sleep using my insomnia technique of old ( see previous post) . At five I wake again and read The Wild by Esther Freud . I hate the William character with a vengeance and hope Jake shoots him . I'm not a violent person but ....( I suppose this is how all violence gets started ) .
I am up at 6 45 and in the shower for work when I realise there is a sensible plan waiting to happen here . I hatch it and switch my work day to Saturday when I was planning to go in to clear my desk in any case .
My head is hurting too much to partake in the morning walk but I am eager to avoid falling asleep again as the head will get worse . Texts from here and there let me know that this is likely to be some kind of bug as I am not the only sufferer .
I watch tv downloaded from last night for the first time on my laptop hardly believeing I am doing this . TV in bed ? Me ? It feels like luxury .... " Mum and Me " a documentary shot by a daughter, Sue in her fifties and her daughter, Holly , seventeen , making monthly visists from London to Ayr in Scotland , a round trip of some four hundred miles , to visit Ethel Bourne , in her eighties , who has Alzheimers and has little if any memory . Although she seems always to know Holly at times she has no idea who her daughter is , mistaking her for her grandmother or her sister . The thing that strikes me is the warm welcome Ethel always gives her daughter . At some level she does know who she is and is delighted , full of joy at her arrival and at contact with the outside world . She makes no complaint about her plight in the nursing home , seeming to be unaware that this is where she is living . The three women laugh and joke and smile much of the time . It makes me think of myself ... will I be as gracious in old age ? Doubtful ?
And it makes me reflect that my mother is always pleased to see me , presumably to see all of us , her three children . We always get a warm welcome . I never hear her complain about anything , however she is feeling . Maybe I will be the same , in old age with my daughter , always delighted to see her , and this delight and pleasure in her company will overcome my grumpiness about my situation ? Sue talks of the improved relationship between herself and her mother at the start of the programme and as things progress we start to see some of the more negative aspect of things , when after three of four days away together things start to wear thin . Its painful to watch and Sue is brave to portray herself warts and all . She comes across as the villain of the piece and yet how easy to slide downhill there very rapidly oneself when faced with the loneliness of cancer ( which she doesnt feel she can burden her mother with ), and the exhaustion of all that she is doing .
My mind wanders .....
My own grandmother lived alone in her own home until her death in her mid nineties . Suffice to say she was in very good mental health , no sign of Alzheimers there !
When we said goodbye on our regular Sunday visits we rarely made specific arrangements about our "next time"( always at the back of my mind that awful , will this be the last time I see you ? ) but on my last visit to her , in June 94 , I said I would see her in a fortnight if I could make it and her last words to me were " Well , if you can . Its always a pleasure to see you " . She spoke so steadfastly , using my name which she rarely did , and stroking my three month old baby 's hair , and when I got there , on the Sunday , two weeks later she had died in the early hours of the Saturday morning .
The post arrives shortly after these reflections announcing that I am indeed a lottery winner and have won ten pounds for the third time ! The first was the very first week of the lottery , the second was soon after I took out a monthly subscription and here we are again .
I fall sleep and dream that I am in attendence at an international conference about sex offenders , sitting next to Karl Hanson no less . He is both on the stage , giving the keynote speech and sitting next to me , in the audience , watching himself quizzically . It is a scene from Six feet Under no less.
I look on in amusement .
He makes a joke against himself ( from the stage ) and I giggle ( in the audience ) , and he( his audience persona ) reaches down and tickles the heel of my foot so that my sandal falls off . This is highly sigificant for me , not that Mr Hanson ,no less, is messing with my foot but that I am wearing sandals not boots . Anyone who knows me will understand . I find the giving up of my boots in Summer nigh on impossible but here my dream self had made the transition with ease .....
And on the subject of Alzheimers I flick to my telephone calender and realise I have forgotten my nephew's birthday ... oh dear ....
I edge slowly downstairs to avoid waking said greyhound and take a syndol and fall back to sleep using my insomnia technique of old ( see previous post) . At five I wake again and read The Wild by Esther Freud . I hate the William character with a vengeance and hope Jake shoots him . I'm not a violent person but ....( I suppose this is how all violence gets started ) .
I am up at 6 45 and in the shower for work when I realise there is a sensible plan waiting to happen here . I hatch it and switch my work day to Saturday when I was planning to go in to clear my desk in any case .
My head is hurting too much to partake in the morning walk but I am eager to avoid falling asleep again as the head will get worse . Texts from here and there let me know that this is likely to be some kind of bug as I am not the only sufferer .
I watch tv downloaded from last night for the first time on my laptop hardly believeing I am doing this . TV in bed ? Me ? It feels like luxury .... " Mum and Me " a documentary shot by a daughter, Sue in her fifties and her daughter, Holly , seventeen , making monthly visists from London to Ayr in Scotland , a round trip of some four hundred miles , to visit Ethel Bourne , in her eighties , who has Alzheimers and has little if any memory . Although she seems always to know Holly at times she has no idea who her daughter is , mistaking her for her grandmother or her sister . The thing that strikes me is the warm welcome Ethel always gives her daughter . At some level she does know who she is and is delighted , full of joy at her arrival and at contact with the outside world . She makes no complaint about her plight in the nursing home , seeming to be unaware that this is where she is living . The three women laugh and joke and smile much of the time . It makes me think of myself ... will I be as gracious in old age ? Doubtful ?
And it makes me reflect that my mother is always pleased to see me , presumably to see all of us , her three children . We always get a warm welcome . I never hear her complain about anything , however she is feeling . Maybe I will be the same , in old age with my daughter , always delighted to see her , and this delight and pleasure in her company will overcome my grumpiness about my situation ? Sue talks of the improved relationship between herself and her mother at the start of the programme and as things progress we start to see some of the more negative aspect of things , when after three of four days away together things start to wear thin . Its painful to watch and Sue is brave to portray herself warts and all . She comes across as the villain of the piece and yet how easy to slide downhill there very rapidly oneself when faced with the loneliness of cancer ( which she doesnt feel she can burden her mother with ), and the exhaustion of all that she is doing .
My mind wanders .....
My own grandmother lived alone in her own home until her death in her mid nineties . Suffice to say she was in very good mental health , no sign of Alzheimers there !
When we said goodbye on our regular Sunday visits we rarely made specific arrangements about our "next time"( always at the back of my mind that awful , will this be the last time I see you ? ) but on my last visit to her , in June 94 , I said I would see her in a fortnight if I could make it and her last words to me were " Well , if you can . Its always a pleasure to see you " . She spoke so steadfastly , using my name which she rarely did , and stroking my three month old baby 's hair , and when I got there , on the Sunday , two weeks later she had died in the early hours of the Saturday morning .
The post arrives shortly after these reflections announcing that I am indeed a lottery winner and have won ten pounds for the third time ! The first was the very first week of the lottery , the second was soon after I took out a monthly subscription and here we are again .
I fall sleep and dream that I am in attendence at an international conference about sex offenders , sitting next to Karl Hanson no less . He is both on the stage , giving the keynote speech and sitting next to me , in the audience , watching himself quizzically . It is a scene from Six feet Under no less.
I look on in amusement .
He makes a joke against himself ( from the stage ) and I giggle ( in the audience ) , and he( his audience persona ) reaches down and tickles the heel of my foot so that my sandal falls off . This is highly sigificant for me , not that Mr Hanson ,no less, is messing with my foot but that I am wearing sandals not boots . Anyone who knows me will understand . I find the giving up of my boots in Summer nigh on impossible but here my dream self had made the transition with ease .....
And on the subject of Alzheimers I flick to my telephone calender and realise I have forgotten my nephew's birthday ... oh dear ....
