I DON'T KNOW...

April 29th, 2013

I don't really know whether these blog postings are making a great deal of sense at the moment. I just tend to grab a few moments when I can and rattle out the various few words that come to mind in the hope that one day they'll make some kind of sense to me, or, at the very least, I'll be able to read through them and put some kind of chronology to events as they unfolded. This might mean that some of the writing starts in the "here and now" but drifts into the "then" over the course of a few paragraphs, but I'm kind of hoping that they'll kind of make sense when it comes to fitting together the bigger picture some day, but we'll have to see.

After all, as has been pointed out on several occasions, I don't really have too worry about whether I'm getting too intimate or personal because, when all is said and done, very few people read this stuff anyway, and those that do aren't likely to be judging me upon the quality of my prose...

Other things I don't know at the moment are how things are going to turn out over the next few days, weeks or even months. Despite an almost "astonishing" recovery, having been pretty much out for the count quite recently, my mother's situation remains pretty grim. For myself, having "escaped" from the harsh realities of endless visits to her hospital bedside for a handful of days, and been given fairly encouraging updates over the weekend, I decided to drop in for an afternoon visit on my way home, which is where our story resumes...

Perhaps the stark and harsh reality could never quite match up to the images in my head, but pretty much all of the optimism that I had been given during my weekend absence kind of instantly fizzled out of me almost as soon as I arrived back at the hospital on that Monday afternoon after three whole days of not being there in  person, but perhaps getting positive messages about progress and suchlike does tend to form an idea of reality that reality itself, rather brutally, can never quite live up to.

I'd headed off early so that I would have time to find a parking spot or, if none were available, find somewhere within a square mile and hike my way back, but I dropped comparatively lucky and was able to feed the meter for a couple of hours before entering those familiar corridors once again.

Things didn't start well. I got buzzed onto the ward okay, but my sister was not sitting at mum's bedside when I arrived like I'd persuaded myself she would be. It's not her fault. I'd just got the idea into my head from misreading between the lines of all her the messages, that she was tending to be there most of the time.

Instead, when I popped my head around the entrance of the bay mum's been in this past fortnight, I could see that she was spark out and I didn't want to disturb her until I allowed someone to explain how things really are, rather than relying upon my own sense of expectation about how things might be.

Already, as I'd approached the desk, I'd been sternly addressed by a member of staff who, in all fairness, probably didn't know me from Adam, given that I'd not been around for a few days. I was able to counter the unnecessary information that there were "strict visiting times" with the knowledge that my mother had been very ill and that we'd been told we could visit at any time, and I was able to find a vaguely familiar looking nurse who I believed had treated my mother before, and persuade her to allow somebody to come and update me on the current situation before I scuttled back to the familiar waiting room to wait until mum woke up, although a couple of surly treks down the corridor found her to still be fast asleep.

After a while, "real" visiting time began and civilians kept on coming into the room to pick up chairs. Shortly after that, I received an unnecessary reminder from an administrator who seemed to be departing for the day, that it was, in fact, visiting time. I strolled over to the bay again, only to find that a tall, dark and sinister looking figure in black was leaning over mum's bed and talking to her.

This was her church minister, and I scuttled away again, not wanting to intrude upon an obviously very personal moment involving prayer and suchlike.

Presently, as I brooded, my sister arrived and, after a brief updating and a mutual news exchange, we both strolled along to where the minister was in the process of feeding my mother the "five teaspoons" of red gloop she was allowed every ten minutes, and we had a little chat with him (he does have some considerable personal problems of his own to be dealing with at the moment), before he drifted away to see other patients.

Another figure then appeared. He was a chaplain who had, apparently, been "mentored" in his calling by my father back in the day, and seemed another decent enough fellow, and we had a brief and pleasant chat with him about how great a couple my mum and dad had been, back before the dawn of time. In the midst of all this, we also managed to chat a little to my mother who, given the state she'd been in when I last saw her, was alert, awake and positively "chatty" and surprisingly lucid, and, every so often, even prone to the occasional attempt at a grin, even though she tired very quickly and it couldn't be a long visit, and, as time went on, I could sense my optimism - and the good work just "being away" had done for me - crumbling.

So now we start to worry about other matters.

Mum is, quite obviously, still not very well, and in need of a great deal of care. My sister has told me that she has little choice but to return home "tomorrow" at more or less the same time as I head back to work, and, whilst we can have as many "council of war" moments as we like, the truth is that the situation is still not looking all that great, to be honest with you, and, both literally and figuratively, we've all got a long and exhausting road still to travel.