It’s still September. It has seemed a very long month and it’s still only the 29th, we’re not done yet. An imperious spring indeed.
The famous Anglo-Irish actor Peter O’Toole was noted to have remarked that he knew he was getting older by the number of funerals he was going to and while I haven’t attended any in person lately, I have watched a couple online over the last couple of weeks. My brother remarked to me on the phone the other day that we are running short of uncles as we have lost two maternal and one paternal uncle in recent weeks, my mother’s two brothers within a week or so of each other and Dad’s younger sibling the week before last so it’s been a tough run. And yes, it makes me feel that life is rolling on inexorably.
In fact, the same could be said for the last few years. I always felt that I had lived a fairly charmed life but the last three years and a bit have certainly tried my patience and confidence in the world, and that’s just on a personal note. My sister Joanne passing away in early 2022, Linda developing incurable metastatic breast cancer, a few little personal health problems for myself and extended family have made life seem a bit more fragile than it has ever seemed before.
I watched the service last Friday for my Uncle Laurie who was buried in Cobram where he grew up. He passed away after a long battle with cancer in Melbourne and was interred in the cemetery of that little North Eastern Victorian town, with three of his own brothers and parents close by.
Most funerals nowadays have a nice little interlude where slide shows featuring snaps of the deceased’s life are shown, accompanied by emotional and poignant tunes and it has been quite evocative at any funeral I have attended and the slideshow at Laurie’s farewell was no exception. There were many pictures of him that I had never seen, both of him as a child and a younger and older adult, with his own children and grandchildren, black and white, colour, and of different vintages. Of course, there were a special few that caught my attention. Photos of my grandparents and uncles and aunties gone before us, memories of another time, another life, and chapters that are closed never to be reopened. Like sand through your fingers. We can never go back.
I’m sure many who have a Facebook account have noted the “On this Day” section where you can see photos posted on your page on this day in years gone by. Currently, this section on my account is showing photos from the trip Linda and I took to Europe at this time 12 years ago, many showing Linda, strong, vibrant, healthy, the life force almost bursting out of her at the Palace of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, in the streets of London and other notable spots we visited on the continent and in the UK during that time. They make me happy as these sorts of memories generally do but there is a tinge of melancholy I can’t shake when looking at them. We can never go back. I wish I could bend that big hand of time to my will and find myself with Linda on a big red double decker bus again, touring central London, not a care in the world, just happy to have it at our feet. But we can never go back. And that grieves me.
But life has to go on as does Linda’s treatment. She is currently in an “off’ week, no chemotherapy, just some time to recover from the big hits she has taken from the poison circulating in her body. Her last chemotherapy session was Tuesday last week, and she had been a little off colour leading into her appointment and we were surprised that her blood test results were quite sound despite a feeling of light headedness from which she was suffering. Low blood pressure alarmed the chemo nurses, so low in fact that they were worried about her going into shock and it was obvious to them that she was dehydrated and needed to eat more. Just another little detail on this journey that we often overlook. The need to eat and drink even when you don’t feel like it in order to keep your body ticking over well enough for treatment, and survival. The nurses soon had driplines going and revitalised her enough to get her therapy underway but had made sure they had got the message through about maintaining hydration and food intake during the week.
So, all things considered, she is going okay. She often feels odd at times, her bones tingling and fatigue overtakes her regularly. Side effects of chemotherapy or just a general malaise from her illness, we don’t know. She has woken this morning with some mouth ulcers, another side effect from her treatment and of course she has lost her hair which is the least of her worries at the moment.
We go on but life certainly maintains its challenges and there are plenty more to come. The treacherous road stretches out before me, and I continue to wonder where it might lead.
Until next time.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 