I lay in bed and listened to the morning rush-hour traffic.
Rather than finding the noise intrusive, I found it comforting. It was a link
with the outside world and it made me feel less alone. On the nightstand beside
me were the remnants of the mug of tea I had drunk at 2:45 a.m., and the peel
of the banana I had eaten at 4:15 a.m. I felt weary.
I lay there wondering how I was going to fill my day. The
only thing certain about my day was that I would be visiting the nursing home
twice. It was July. I had visited the hospice twice a day for three months
and had now been visiting the care home twice a day for three months. I was
bored senseless with the never-ending routine of it. I knew that Liz wasn’t
going to live forever, but from my perspective there seemed no end to it.
My stomach growled. It wasn’t just sleep I wasn’t getting
enough of. I was living on toast and jam for
breakfast, soup and a sandwich for lunch, and a microwaveable meal in the
evening. I was bored senseless with my eating habits too. I hurtled round my
local Tesco at breakneck speed, grabbing the same food items every week. I just
didn’t seem able to break the pattern. I was like a machine programmed to do
the same thing time after time after time.
And it wasn’t only boredom that was bothering me. I woke up
every morning feeling either depressed, or with a horrible feeling of impending
doom, and it would take a mug of tea, a couple pieces of toast and jam, and an
A4 sheet of written questions and answers to get my day started.
I had found that writing down how I was feeling helped get
it out of my system, and I devised a scheme whereby I would write the question
and answers as if I were speaking to an alter ego, and my alter ego was
answering me. And I spoke the questions and the answers aloud as I wrote them.
For example:
Q: So
what’s wrong with you today?
A: I’m
depressed.
Q: What
are you depressed about?
A:
Who wouldn’t be depressed, given what I’ve got on my plate?
Q: You
can cut that out, that’s feeling sorry for yourself and that’s not going to get
you anywhere. Answer the question.
And be specific.
A: I’m
depressed because I’m lonely. I’m depressed because my wife is dying, and I’m
depressed because I have no one to talk to. Need I go on?
Q: No,
I get the picture. So what are you going to do about it? I always asked myself what I was going to do about it,
because this question forced me to stop and think.
A: I’m
going to stop feeling sorry for myself.
Q: And
how do you propose to do that?
A: By
blocking out negative thoughts and only allowing myself to think positive ones.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Extract from my book WILL YOU TELL HER, OR SHALL I? A true
story. My story. The story of how I lived with the ten-year terminal illness of
my wife. Available on www.booksthepublishersmissed.com
Twitter: Maximillian19
FB: facebook.com/Booksthepublishersmissedcom
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