Just when you think, hey....a little thing happens, and you think you've been hit by a truck....

My friend Annti knows me so well, somethimes too well, I think. And she can see procrastination 5ooo miles away... and more or less ordered me to get off my bony arse... and go visit Peter. Or I would be very sorry later... maybe... or something. With examples... very graphic... of things she regrets.



Since the last time, I keep telling myself, and telling myself, GO, scrimp ... and it was so sad... I couldn't get up the resolve to do that day trip. And it is one given the bad connections with the öffies.. public transport.

Well, he still knew me... or I think he did... sometimes it's hard to tell. Juliana, who is in the admin office, came out to greet me... you can't smoke in the building, you can't smoke on trains any more, so once I get there.. I sit on the bench outside, and light up and try to steel myself for what I might find.

I asked her how he was doing, she said, 'Fine'... I recounted what he'd said last time, and hadn't known it was me for several moments. She said, 'He just gets confused sometimes'... Well she can tell that to others who want to assuage their feelings for putting their loved ones in a home, and sugar-coat it, but there is no way I was buying it.

The picture above? Taken this afternoon... about two minutes before the hammer came down. Again... I was being inane, and said, 'So what was for lunch? Was it good?' And I could see he was thinking and thinking really hard... and then he suddenly looked defeated, and stretched out his hand to me, and it was trembling, it frightened him because he didn't know. He looked so terribly sad. I took it and said 'hey, it really doesn't matter.' He doesn't know what is going on... but it frightens him at times. And it tore me apart inside, but kept it in. I asked him if he'd gotten a card from my cousins. 'No, but they called.' Uh-huh.. I told him he might get a card from Annti, of whom he is fiercely jealous... and he said, 'I feel so sorry for her, she's been through so much.' And that I should wish my Dad a Merry Christmas and everything good. Which was new...

It was one of his more apathetic days, and he didn't have much to say. So I was stuck there for over three hours, and he was tired, but didn't want to sleep, and I sort of just 'made conversation'. He doesn't remember the big cook off bet with my boss any more... erased in his memory.

And when I mentioned Marion and Bill, he said, 'How are they? Have you heard from them?'

That is like getting run over by a truck and having it back up on you as well...


I gently explained that they are no longer among us.... which he'd known before. It was like seeing fresh grief... new to him.

I said, 'I know Marion LURRVED to go shopping with you...' when he was squandering his fortune, and he said yes.. 'She really did love doing that...' he'd pick her brain for what's sensible and in good taste, and EXPENSIVE. She understood him maybe even better than I did, and it amused her... but she didn't know a lot of what was going on in the background.

I don't know... but there are lots of holes in his long-term memory as well as not being able to tell you what he'd eaten a half-hour ago. And he was so TIRED... spent three quarters of an hour with his back toward me in what is his most comfortable position in the bed... which is a wonderwork of hospital 'beam me up, lower me down' technology. The way I feel tonite... I'd want one and never ever want to leave it.

And I said, 'Listen Peter... wouldn't you like to turn over and face me? I've MASSAGED your back often enough, and ditto seeing your backside. It would be nice to look at you. I didn't pay out forty Euros to look at your arse.'


And then it hit me... it was the side he always took in our bed, when he held me, and often watched me sleep... At least he didn't cry like a lost little boy when I left... it exhausted him.




The home is nicely decorated for the horridays... Outside everyone's door is some sort of photo of the patient, and nice Christmas decoratons the capable made.





Everything is tasteful. Some people may wonder why I don't take pictures of other patients or halls full of them in wheelchairs, and so on. I will and CAN not do that. It would be an invasion of their dignity and privacy, and ghoulish. There was a man on a gurney out in the corridor today, and after I'd gotten in Peter's room, he started yelling 'Es tut mir so LEID! Es tut mir so LEID!' (I'm so SORRY'....) It went on and ON... Took them about half an hour to calm him down, and did I mention he had shins and calves that resembled a Biafra baby? And I said, 'Y'know.... I'm beginning to wonder what he's so sorry about.' 'Oh him.... he yells all the time... it's worst at night.' A year ago, he would have been agressive about it. For him... I guess it's just 'a day in the life'...

I got home... somehow. Emotionally drained.

Angry, agressive, and so I linked onto my game to get rid of it. And my guild was full of the youngest members saying 'gawwd, I had such a shit day!'

And I lost it... said, 'You wanna know what a shit day is?' And summed this up in five sentences.

That shut them up.

On the other hand, and it was clear to them that my partner is a man... it was 'oh gawd, was he in an accident?' (I assume they meant 'with brain damage or something?'). It was from the youngest members. And I said, 'No, diabetes, and I'm going 'off' now... my heart is too heavy. Nite.'

One shouldn't spread gloom during an 'event'. Have met nice people.