It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Another week in my life as a parcel. Back at home in the Holme Valley. Home, home and deranged, as the old song says. Back in the old routine. Back in what the church would probably call “Common Time”.
In the end, my leave-taking of “Broadmoor” was a surprisingly low-key affair. After I posted last week’s Epiblog, I turned off the laptop and unplugged everything, then packed up all of my kit into about half a dozen large carrier bags (it’s amazing how you seem to accumulate stuff, even after just four weeks) and only then did I wonder how I was going to get it all downstairs and to the front door in time for Debbie’s arrival in the camper.
As it turned out, it became a self-solving problem, with the materialisation in my doorway of a very able young carer called (rather improbably, for Huddersfield) Natasha, who had come to see if I needed a hand. In the twinkling of an inkling, she had assessed the problem and magicked a patient transfer wheelchair (not a self-propel jobby, one of those with the four little wheels) loaded all my carriers onto it, and it was time to bid farewell to Room 39, and we were trundling down the corridor in convoy, through the dining room, round the corner towards the lift, pausing only briefly to say goodbye to Vince and Clive, my erstwhile dining companions at mealtimes, and down to the front lobby, to sign me out and to pay for my phone calls (a massive 69p) then out through the automatic doors and into the car park.
I’d like to say I symbolically walked out of there, but I didn’t. Like the parcel that I have become, I was handed over to Deb, who then pushed me up the ramps and into the camper. I made a brief fuss of Tig, who was snoozing on the camper bed, before sliding across from my wheelchair onto the passenger seat, the engine started, I belted up, and we were rumbling home in the bright May sunlight.
The remaining days of this week have been taken up relentlessly with picking up the threads I left dangling when I went into Oakmoor, and trying to effect the repair of things which have gone wrong in my absence.
The garden has undergone an amazing transformation in the four weeks I was away. Actually, I say “amazing”, but it happens every year, I suppose. I don’t know why I should be any more amazed this year, except that this year I’ve had it presented to me as a finished piece, rather than seeing it as a daily work in progress. The tracery of bare branches that crisscrossed my bedroom window all those cold winter mornings is now a lush, waving, nodding, sea of green leaves, ruffling in the breeze and reflecting in the sun. The squirrels (and “beasties smal of gentyl kinde”) are busy too, but these days I no longer see them skittering about doing their high-wire act, I merely hear them scampering, rustling and bustling somewhere up high in the leafy canopy.
Debbie’s work in the garden has been mainly concerned with clearance, so far, though we have briefly discussed what we could do about altering it to make it more parcel-friendly, if we decide to go down that route, and if I ever get out of the house under my own steam again. Russell’s mosaic has acquired a patina of moss, that will need grubbing away before it gets a hold in the grouting, and, sadly, Nigel’s memorial stone, which we brought back all the way from Arran in 2009 to mark his resting-place, and which I painstakingly painted with acrylics and then varnished, with an effigy of him and suitable Latin inscription, has been wiped clean by the mighty hand of the last epic winter. The stone remains – it’s probably already a few million years old, and it will take the frosts of a few million more to reduce it to sand – but the iconography is gone. So I made a sketch of a design for a putative mosaic for him, too, though it will have to wait until I can afford the smalti.
The animals (the domestic ones, I mean) have largely ignored my homecoming. To be fair, though, in this hot sunny weather, Tig has been taking advantage and sprawling out on the decking at every opportunity, where of course I cannot follow her or venture. Kitty, having ignored the existence of my downstairs bed all winter, and having had to be virtually crowbar-ed out of her little nest in the hearth, has now, paradoxically, since we’ve let the stove go out, apart from a couple of nights when we burnt a few logs just to take the chill off, taken to coming and sleeping with me, so that on a couple of occasions I have woken in a panic thinking I have totally lost the use of my legs, when in fact the problem has been caused by a heat-seeking cat who has managed to swiss-roll herself up in the duvet in the early hours, and who, despite what my physio calls my “increased bed mobility” I don’t have the strength to shove out of the way. In fact, shoving only makes her purr all the louder.
In amongst all the plumbers, couriers, wheelchair bods, postmen and would-be ramp builders this week (don’t ask about the ramp, there is more chance of the two-state solution being enacted in Palestine than there is of Kirklees building a ramp, right now) one of my other visitors was Jo, my physio from HRI. She confirmed more or less what I suspected, that despite my improvements in Oakmoor, I was now going to be referred to the Community Physio Team. Basically, we’re talking about preparing for the possibility that I might be a permanent parcel, fit only for the “Tragic Steve Appeal” on Look North. True, I will still have the self-administered standing hoist, when it comes (there seems to be an issue with the sling for it having gone AWOL) and Jo is going to look into the possibility of getting me some bars, but basically, the onus is now on me to use those things to get strong again, or at least to get strong-er, to the extent that I could then, eventually, be referred back to them for physio.
If I don’t do this, of course, or if (a more likely scenario) the many, varied, and myriad distractions of trying to correct the errors of the DWP, organise the plumbers, feed the cat, feed the dog, feed Debbie (now that Summer term is going full blast, and she’s teaching every day) and write, edit and sell books, all conspire against me, then I will quickly lose what muscle tone I gained in Broadmoor, and be right back where I started from, or worse. Use it, or lose it.
So, it’s a pretty grim prospect. Jo asked me how my bottom was holding up (I kid you not – they have to ask, in case you are developing sores or anything – it’s called a Waterlow assessment, for reasons which are unclear) and I was able to assure her that, physically, my bottom was in fine fettle, despite the promised pressure cushion never having materialised from Wheelchair Services. I told her not to worry, that I was far more likely to break down mentally rather than physically. Which is very true.
I have never seriously contemplated suicide before, no matter how bad things got, and I don’t suppose I “seriously” contemplated it this week. But the stark fact remains, that is the ultimate choice left to me. Accept the fact that I have to spend the rest of my life as a parcel, an unclaimed one, overlooked, gradually gathering dust in the great courier depot of irrelevance, or unwrap myself and post myself to the great beyond.
Often, in the past, I’ve taken solace from Karine Polwart’s song about “The Sun’s Coming Over The Hill”, but this week I’ve been thinking more about the line where she sings (split infinitive notwithstanding)
“You get what you’re given and then it’s all gone
And you are lucky if you are sufficiently strong
To daily decide not to die”
So far, I have been sufficiently strong, but as Yeats once memorably observed, “too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart”.
As far as my religious life is concerned, this week has been such a jumble of miscellaneous crap I have hardly had time for a shit or a shave, let alone anything as contemplative as reading or prayer. So I must admit I gazed with blank and largely uncomprehending eyes on this week’s offerings as decided by the Lectionary, and only today for the first time. Much of it, to be frank, passed me by. I suppose it must have been strangely thrilling to have been part of Christianity when it was still new and radical, a bit edgy, a bit “underground”, but at the time it probably just felt, well, dangerous. Often, with these things, it’s only afterwards that you look back and say with a quiet satisfaction that you were in there at the start. These days, it would be like being one of the first people to follow Jesus on twitter, a sort of @jesus hash tag, or whatever the terminology is.
The only bit of the scriptures for this week that did lodge in my brain for longer than the time it takes to read it, was the Apostles on the Road to Emmaus, in Luke 24:13-35
And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
I quoted it at length because I like the story, and because I am hoping it’s strangely apposite. I’m hoping that I haven’t gone and done what I said I mustn’t do in my last Epiblog, that is to nail my faith (such as it is) to the idea of getting up and being able to walk again. I’m hoping it’s not lost altogether, it’s just that as I travel through the courier system of life, God is my router, my PDA my track’n’trace, and my bar code. Jesus was here, but he just left. Or Jesus is here, but I didn’t recognise him. Then he vanished again. We attempted to nourish your soul, but you were out, so we took it back to the depot.
If I am to be a parcel, I can only hope he carries me through my downs as well as my ups – or, given the extended metaphor, should that be my UPS? I can only hope so. Deliver me, Oh Lord.
And that, even if my intended final destination isn’t available, I will at least get left in a place of safety, and not out on the doorstep in the rain.
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