Today I assembled this brunch for VR. The tomatoes are San Marzanos (shaped like, but not tasting of, tiny squashes). Below are slices of cucumber, dabbed with vinegar, on Ryvita spread with Philadelphia cream cheese. A barely unvarying meal which symbolises – unexpectedly - life as an invalid. VR and I are enduring ailments which will kill us off. Probably quite soon. No need for sympathy (Not that I’m presuming, y’unnerstand!); we are both in our eighties and there are worse ailments.
I shop, on foot and by car. Generally we stay in. Apart from intellectual divertissements days don’t differ. A routine sets in and one may hate this repeated pattern. That would be a grave mistake. Routines act like skeletons in our bodies, they hold the flesh in an upright position. Routines give our lives a metaphorical structure.
Note the pillbox; a fortnight’s supply for VR; each compartment labelled morning and evening for each day of the week. Like the brunch it represents one of a sequence of tasks I regularly perform. Forgetfulness is a concomitant of old age and I need reminding of my obligations. Collecting The Guardian, washing up, ordering stuff online, laundering, drying the laundry, watering the garden, renewing prescriptions, regularly interrogating VR about her preferences, searching Netflix and Amazon Prime for bearable entertainment (more burdensome than you might imagine), opening and closing windows according to the weather, washing myself more frequently, staying alert for deliveries, forcing medical sources into conversation, maintaining the flow of family birthday presents. There’s more but you get the idea.
Some might regard routine as a prison. I am reassured by each Job-Done tick, a happy progression now in the past. Bed at 11.45 pm always seems well earned. No variations? Our talk does that.
I enjoyed this post for making me feel part of the real world and not alone. Strange comment I know but I am not that well and there is something comforting in finding a kindred spirit in being down to earth about health and life. I am watching Le Weekend on Netflix at the moment, with Jim Broadbent. I recommend. I watch it regularly for a bit of relaxation.
ReplyDeleteRachel Phillips: It's all very odd. My present state of health - ill-health I suppose I should say - dates back to June 2021 with an op on my mouth. A further op, on my bowel, occurred at Christmas that year. From other people's similiar experiences it would seem that the normal reaction to surgery would be to start reflectimg on its future implications. Gloomily.
DeleteNot for me, however. Since the age of 16 until retirement in 1995 I have had the job I have always wanted and was best fitted for - journalism. Or, avoiding the abstraction, asking questions and forming prose from the answers. The impulses behind this activity have turned out to be stronger than I ever imagined. Hospital wards, chemo departments, scanners, operating theatres, etc, often seem to generate fear. It wasn't that I had to push fear aside, rather that it was automatically replaced by my sole professional skill: curiosity. Manifesting itself not just as questions asked but in establishing relationships with the people whose knowledge (in this area) exceeded mine and who could provide answers that interested me.
I don't expect anyone to appreciate this. Journalism isn't a sort of secular priesthood but it may be a low-level calling. I want to know things. And because this has always been the case my persona has evolved into the ultimate journalistic cliché: I know a little about quite a lot. Thus my questions tend to be informed. Also I enjoy the act of putting one word in front of another and coming to written conclusions. If possible, original ones. To journalism I have added other variants: a handful of completed novels, about fifty short stories and - to my astonishment as well as to everybody else's - some fairly bad verse. Plus a blog.
Whatever. Ill-health has proved to be a rich area of research. It's much more engaging than reflecting gloomily. Not everyone will be driven by my urges or find comfort in my solutions. I'm sorry about that. In fact the above explanation might well be alien to many members of the British middle-classes; I have been told that asking questions is impolite. Hence Avus's perfect justifiable characterisation: that I am often blunt. Ah well...
Your daily routine now, a firm structure which holds life together, reminds me of the last years with my own wife. Was this a burden, a duty? No I felt it as a great priviledge, an outward expression of our love for each other as we were not usually a demonstrative couple, accepting without question our enduring partnership. "In sickness and in health"...
ReplyDeleteWhen Margaret died part of my grieving process was that complete disappearance of that firm skeleton of routine. A skeleton that has needed rebuilding in another form to keep my own life on its path forward.
Although I have had prostate cancer, a heart attack and two strokes they are in the past and my daily pill intake helps keep health alive. Unlike you I do not have that sense of death's imminence although I suppose it could happen to me at any time (stroke or heart), but really we could all say that all our lives since birth is a death sentence. So "carpe diem" is now my motto.
You ask for no sympathy Robbie but I do fully understand your and VR's own position and feel for you both.
Avus: You may find my lengthy response to Rachel Phillips (above) of some interest. My version of Apologia pro vita sua. and it may explain - possibly - why I hardly deserve synpathy.
DeleteYes, you and I have both found another way of considering routine. At first glance the work is hardly ennobling but it's the results that count. The continuation of normalcy insofar as this can be achieved. Alas, you have moved beyond my experience, and the sense of privilege has been withdrawn. I have only the faintest of recommendations. In seeking another form of routine is it possible to try a new field of endeavour? Newness has its own benefits; revelations are more likely. Taking up singing at eighty now seems incredibly prescient.
As my "apologia" explains I don't dwell on death. It's not concrete and it's facts I'm after during my medical interrogations. I do, however, appreciate your understanding.
Neither my wife nor I are heavily medicated (she more than me) so we don’t have any ritual attached to pills or potions, but there are frameworks in our lives, nonetheless. Trite as it may sound, we break for coffee each morning at 10am and enjoy whatever baking she has done. She makes a fine blueberry bran muffin, an exquisite banana bread and an apple cake that should be in the baker’s hall of fame. Some people may can it habit, we call it tradition! Sounds quite grand, put like that! As for the approach of the Grim Reaper, let him come at a time of his choice. I suspect by then I might be quite happy to meet him.
ReplyDelete….may call it habit not may can it habit.
ReplyDeleteDMG: My response to Rachel Phillips (above) may be of interest.
DeleteThe viewpoints of our two families are inevitably different. Both of you are in good health; we are to a greater or lesser extent invalids. Although my "apologia" explains how I'm able to bypass some post-surgery disadvantages it's impossible to divorce oneself entirely from physical defects. They nag and nagging tends to be cumulative.
As to death it doesn't seem interesting enough to accord it even a literary tag. Bergman's The Seventh Seal shows death as a disregarding force having little in common with being human. Hell, it cheats at chess. Like you I'm after facts and my medical experiences have opened up a rewarding vein of exploration. Also, my ex-profession (I've always wondered if journalism deserved this five-dollar categorisation) has equipped me to take up a spade. Second thoughts, make that an excavator. Drudgery is never uplifting.
That is a lovely brunch for your dear wife. I'm concerned about your health, and VR's, but I'll give you a break and not get maudlin, and as an American - you KNOW I can. Your litany of routines is oddly reassuring, and interesting. Ask questions. Be impolite. Please. Make all this interesting to yourself, or at least as interesting as it can be.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, "regularly interrogating VR about her preferences" made me smile.
If you'd like to edit that super long second sentence, go ahead.
DeleteColette: I'm utterly flabbergasted!. I've been so in the wrong yet I willingly admit to this.
ReplyDeleteParenthetically and for years, I held the view that Americans were incapable of using irony as a means of literary expression. And yet within this last year, within Tone Deaf comments, I've been forced to realise this was not the case. Americans can use irony creatively and I was about to confess my error.
But this is as nothing compared with today's discovery that Americans can base humour on self-mockery. I never thought I'd see the day. Didn't think they had it in their DNA. Yet here we are:
I'll give you a break and not get maudlin, and as an American - you KNOW I can.
Beautiful! Concise. Witty! A fictitious admission of weakness that is - in reality - a hidden claim of strength. I laughed my head off. My dear, you've gone straight to my mischievous heart. Needless to say I must organise some kind of defence. Could it be you developed this very unusual skill as a result of communicating with me?
Whether or not this supposition is true or not, I'm going to run with it. Let me know if you're thinking of re-employment and need a reference. Let blessings rain down on your authorial head.
In fact, I have learned a lot from you. There! I've said it. Don't make me say it again. Ha!
DeleteColette: But nothing good, I suspect. Nothing that'll put dough in your pocket or joy in your heart. The impression I left behind when I finally embarked on the SS France (the funnels seeming to come worryingly close to the underneath of the Verrazano Narrows bridge) was that if I was typical then most Brits in the US were there as panhandlers.
Deleteit looks a perfect little brunch to me. we all have routines in our lives and they change as we get older and are done with certain stages of life. my days of the week may vary but not the weeks. each day is a little different but each particular day, as in every Monday or Tuesday or etc, is the same. I'm amazed that your bedtime is so late, 11:30. at 73 I can barely make it past 10 PM.
ReplyDeleteEllen Abbott: In my case I require a fixed routine for two reasons: to get me through the day and as an aide memoire linking all the tiny jobs that I must do. Yesterday, for instance, I washed the towels, dried them and put tthem away - but I forgot to put out new towels in the bathroom and the ensuite.
DeleteUnfortunately there have to be some breaks. VR, not wanting to put me extra work and/or to test my imagination, is prepared to eat the brunch you see ad infinitum. But she's a human being and I worry about the dullness of this regime. Yet suitable variations - that are easy to buy for and to prepare - don't come readily to mind. Nor am I keen to add on another tiny task to the schedule: the reading of cookbooks. I need time to write and to practice singing. I too am a human being.
Going to bed is one of the genuine unalloyed luxuries of the day; I sort of swish it round my sensitivities as I would subject a 1968 Latour to my palate..