No longer leukaemia…. but isolation, Day 15

My alarm clock rang, and I snoozed it. Twice. Then, a voice in my ear said, “Your Mum’s here,” so I lifted my head, bleary-eyed, and looked towards the door. Yep. Sure enough, there she was. “I’m not very well,” she said. “Oh, dear! What’s wrong?” said I, raising myself up on one elbow. “I’m not very well.” she stated more firmly. Clearly, that was as much as I was going to get.

It turned out that she was having one of her ‘turns’ where she feels a bit dizzy and that affects her innards, one way or another. And dang! I had totally forgotten to bring her emergency tablets from her flat for such an event. As it was so early in the morning and I could go in the back way, I risked an outing and sped along in the car to collect her tablets, washing every surface I could find when I got back, just in case the pesky virus had been lurking anywhere. Didn’t see a soul.

I put her back to bed, having dosed her with a tablet, and with the security of a bowl ‘just in case’, and she slept like a log for another three hours. Hubby, his duty done on the line: ‘Your Mum’s here’, also fell back to sleep for nearly the same amount of time.

That left me to potter about, fiddling with this and that, and really not getting an awful lot done, but paying attention to those little things that normally one glosses over, like cleaning up a coffee stain on the carpet, emptying the dust out of a trinket box and re-filling it with clean clobber, and sparkling up Mum’s rings as she slept.

In no time at all, lunchtime arrived. John was up already, then Mum was up and padding into the kitchen, unsure as to whether to have breakfast cereal or a lunchtime sandwich. We opted for the sandwich and a cup of tea, which went down OK with no ill-effects.

Exhausted by my efforts with the trinket box in the morning, I felt it absolutely necessary to take a rest, drink tea, and sit and watch TV for an hour after lunch with that legal entertainer, Judge Rinder, again.

Afterwards, the weather, being pleasantly mild with very little wind, prompted a little walk round the garden. We visited John’s ‘Man Cave’ at the bottom of the garden where he was in residence, and Mum duly admired his handiwork to date. She also duly admired the very same things she had admired a day or two before, and also on previous days before that. It was touching though, as we searched for the goldfish in the pond, exclaimed over the frogspawn that was there and marvelled at the birdsong in the air.

But, as the day wore on, old worry guts emerged and took over somewhat, to the point that, I pretty much bit John’s head off when he offered to help me prepare the evening meal. Oh, dear!! Why do I do that?? No idea, but note to self: must find an hour for respite each day on my own …..

Made a lovely stir-fry for our meal, but it didn’t go down well with Mum as the vegetables had some resistance to the bite. So, John and I ate ours while I cooked Mum’s for another 20 minutes – which ruined the lovely, juicy steak in it……I could have wept. And wept some more, as the constancy of distance between us and our family is brought into focus each time we have some form of contact with them. They are all doing a sterling job of keeping in touch with photos and chatty video-links, but it’s not the same……

And it never will be the same for many families in the future, and particular families now who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 – 1,789 deaths so far, including a 13 year-old boy – or who are anxiously supporting a family member with the virus – over 25,000 infected that we know of. Dear Lord, comfort us all.

And here’s a comfort, from Charlie Mackesy’s book, The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse, which I recommend to you:.