TONE DEAF

WHICH?

Veronica now lives in a nursing home. Yesterday I visited her there for the first time. I do not intend to write directly about this matter again.

Not because the subject is too raw, too difficult or too personal. I’ve written for a living and I’ve tackled those adjectives before. Rather, because it would be pointless.

At the present core of our 65-year-old marriage is a dilemma, a word that’s often misused. Too casually. It is much more than a sticky how’s-your-father. Google puts it rather pungently:

A challenging situation requiring a choice between two or more equally undesirable, unfavourable, or mutually exclusive  alternatives… often… a  ‘no-win’.”

Occasionally, at three o’clock of a morning, I reckon I’ve cracked it. But it’s fool’s gold. One cannot do anything about the passage of time, whatever H. G. Wells postulated. To explain the dilemma would be easy enough, if wordy. But, as I say, pointless. And that’s what Brits call a full stop and North Americans a period.