Tag Archives: love

Reinforcing the chain. 

12 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by in Emotions, Relationships, Uncategorized

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Being away from people that you love is hard. It’s harder when you get news of their pain, suffering and illness. Every bone in your body wants to do something. Jump into action, help make it right, make them better. But sometimes you can’t. Sometimes the distance that you would need to travel is too great, other responsibilities too much or maybe it is financially unachievable. Whatever the reason, knowing that someone you love and care about greatly is not right and that you can’t do anything about it is heart wrenching. 

9 years ago my Dad moved to the USA.  He has had a few health scares over the years, most of which he has brushed off without any fuss to us kids. This week he was taken into hospital, and it seemed like it could be bad. We found out in the middle of the night (mainly due to the time difference) that he’d been taken in with abnormalities in his breathing and heart. 

There is honestly nothing to make you feel more impotent than hearing that someone you care about as much as your parents are possibly critically ill and yet being absolutely incapable of doing anything about it. I wanted to make sure they were doing all the correct tests, make sure they were doing them promptly, and then reacting on the results. Everything seemed to be taking far too long, for goodness sake, this isn’t anyone, this is my Dad; you need to fix him now. There was also a nagging in my mind that perhaps he is worse than my stepmom is telling me. She could be trying to protect me from knowing how bad he is. 

Most of all I just wanted to see him. Give him a cuddle and tell him I loved him. Of course, I’ve told him that I love him hundreds of times, but it suddenly became important to tell him so again, to remind him. I tried to think back to the last time that I saw him, or spoke to him: what had I said, will he know I care? What if that is the last time I ever spoke to him? The time difference between us often makes it difficult to talk at a convenient time, he may well call as I’m cooking dinner or putting the kids to bed. Did I give him my full attention? 

I imagine how I would have felt if that initial message saying that my Dad was ill instead had said something else, imagine if it had been worse news. Would I have been happy that I had done everything in my power recently to make my dad feel loved? 

This week has made me realise the importance of making sure that I strengthen the chain that holds our lives together. Not just with my dad but with everyone I care about.  I am going to make the effort, go out of my way to let people know that I care. There are a million ways to do it, and they don’t need to cost money or even vast amounts of time. I can call someone I care about for no reason whatsoever, tell them or show them through my words that I’m thinking about them, that they matter. A text or a Facebook message can do the same thing, sometimes it’s not about how or what you say to people, it’s the fact you have reached out to them in some way. I can send small surprises to people I love. I can offer to help them out, pay them a compliment, it doesn’t really matter how or what I do, the important thing is to let them know that I care. That they matter. 

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Next to Godliness.

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in housework, love, Motherhood, Uncategorized

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It’s been a long week. I’ve worked some long hours recently and as a result Paul has been taking on most of the household and childcare duties. The problem with that is that we have glaringly different ideas of acceptable levels of tidiness in the home, and in dress codes for the kids. In my world odd socks are not appropriate attire, (unless it’s 6am and the only other option is no socks at all), in Paul’s world this is not only acceptable but also to be encouraged. Equally, my idea of housework is to actually do housework, his is to hide whatever he can and get the kids to hide the rest.

I’ve got my niece staying with me at the moment, she is two days younger than my eldest and I love her being here. Not only is she company for the eldest, but she is fun and I can pretend I have a daughter without all the hassle of actually having a daughter!! I get the good bits, the cuddles and the girlie chats, without having to 1) give birth, or 2) nag her about the amount of make up that she wears! Anyway, as you can probably guess, life is hectic in my house at the moment!

As the cleaning fairy appears to have given up and left me to my own pathetic devices, I spent a few hours yesterday evening cleaning and tidying up the downstairs, (I mean honestly, no one sees upstairs so why bother?) it actually looked presentable by the time I left home this morning. It would never have passed an inspection by my nana, but hey, if someone (God forbid) visited unexpectedly I could probably pretend I was yet to tidy up and apologise for the mess!

Anyway, I’d mopped and swept the floors, tided up and washed up, put the washing on etc. I went off to work safe in the knowledge that the house looked ok (ish). I received a few missed calls from the eldest during the course of the day and when I rung him back he said he’d sorted out whatever he wanted in the first place. He also asked if he and my niece could go out on the bikes. No problem, says I, be home for tea. It was raining, I told them not to make a mess.

I picked up the younger two and got home around five. I walked into the front room, all was well. It was when I got to the dining room that I started to notice that things weren’t quite as I had left them. The mop and bucket were sitting prominently in the centre of the room, there were a few bits of mud on the floor. The dustpan and brush were on the dining table. Nothing much. A bit annoying but 2 minutes of sorting it out and things would be fine. Then I walked into the kitchen. Ah, the kitchen. It was a sight to behold: first off the bin was open and there were about 50 sheets of kitchen roll covered in some sort of black gunk. There were also the remains of some sort of doughy cooking, which I quickly identified (from the half empty bottle on top of the pile) as burnt pancakes!

I cast my eyes over to the cooker hob. It was covered in smears from where someone (only eldest and niece were home) had obviously made a mess when cooking and had wiped up rather ineptly. The work tops shared the same coating of smeared food. The draining board contained a huge pile of semi clean pots, pans, glasses, and bowls. It was piled up like a game of jenga, ready to topple at any moment! Actually in the sink was a massive over sized sponge, covered in mud and the wall, cupboard door and floor had splashes and slightly muddy puddles. I felt my hackles rising. I’d cleaned this place. It had looked ok. Why did they do this? I was annoyed.

And then I realised something. I was getting annoyed but actually I was looking at this all wrong. I was looking at the mess, what I wasn’t seeing was what is was evidence of. Instead I was seeing it as a bad thing, they had ruined all my hard work, but in reality it was evidence of many things and none of them were bad.

It was evidence they had been cooking, that they had tried to cook something that they had never done before. And they had failed, and continued to try. They had also recognised the mess and had tried to sort it out, because they knew that would make me happy. The smears on the cookers and worktop were evidence that they had attempted to tidy up.

The muddy puddles and splashes were from where they had tried to wash the mud from their bikes, they had tried to make me happy and in the process had probably made more of a mess, but the intention was good. And I was proud of them. They had also given me evidence that they had been out of the house, having fun and not watching TV or playing XBox.

The huge pile of jenga style washing up proved that they’d not only tidied up their own mess but they had also tried to tidy up the breakfast things I hadn’t had time to wash up before I left the house.

Sometimes, people may not always get things right, but the sentiment behind what they do can mean even more than the action itself.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, those two kids will never be His right hand man, however. In that moment they were Angels to me.

Piece of my heart

07 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Emotions, kids, Motherhood

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There’s something that no one ever warns you about having kids. Or perhaps they do, but it is incomprehensible to you before you have them. I mean, I’m sure people told me, but I just didn’t really get what they were saying to me. Maybe I just didn’t want to hear, maybe we are genetically predisposed to not get it. The thing is, you find out. Pretty damn quick, and then you realise that it’s too late.

I didn’t actually plan my eldest child. That would have been stupid. I was 21, in a violent relationship and had a class A addiction. Ok, so I was obviously pretty stupid, but not that bloody stupid as to plan to bring a baby into my messed up world. Kids were not in my game plan, not that I actually had a game plan, but if I had, having a child would have been at the back, something distant, a target for my mid thirties.

I don’t know really why I took a pregnancy test (there was no real reason to seriously consider pregnancy) but I do know that I was alone, my partner was in prison for not paying a fine from years before that had finally caught up with him. I was driving from my house 100 miles to borrow the money to pay to get him out and I stopped and in the toilets of a service station, I pissed on a stick. To my utter terror, two little pink dots appeared. Well, I was utterly terrified when I bothered to read what that meant! I was pregnant. I was having a baby. Within minutes the terror turned to a strong feeling of protection and amazement. I had a baby inside of me. The ferociousness of that feeling was breathtaking. I remember going to pay for the fuel and telling the cashier; I just found out I’m pregnant, and her look of bewilderment at my random imparting of this news.

Within minutes I acknowledged this sudden turn of my life and now my life was completely changed. I knew without a doubt I loved this baby and wanted it, even though I knew that my partner would be furious and a terrible father.

And really, in that life changing moment, I should, in hindsight have realised what it was that I had never been able to realise before, but I didn’t. I focussed on getting through pregnancy, where I would end up with my beautiful baby and my life would be amazing. All I had to do was to bring this baby into the world safely. I still didn’t know the truth.

I was induced into labour many many weeks early due to complications, and then I couldn’t wait to give birth; to meet this baby who was a part of me, as much a part of me as my hand or face of nose.

And then he was born, after an excruciating labour, a long and torturous night, this tiny perfect baby. He was no longer in the cocooned protection of my abdomen. I cuddled him to me and held him and kissed him and stared in awe at his gorgeousness, and then it happened; for the first time. They said that he needed to go to special care. He was too small and unable to maintain his temperature, but it was ok, they were going to sort him out in special care and I could go see him later. The midwife, took him from my arms and as she turned away I realised, I realised this terrible thing that no one had told me about: it was agony. The baby that I had been in sole charge of, that I had nurtured and caressed and been fully responsible for, who was part of me, I was no longer able to protect. I still loved him as much, maybe more, however whereas before he was part of me, now he was separate. I wasn’t solely able to account for his safety and wellbeing. It was like a little piece of my heart was out there alone. Anything could happen to it. Even if I was there next to him, I was no longer able to have the illusion of being able to completely ensure he was safe.

As he got older, it got worse. There is a piece of me out there, every minute of every day, that I can’t live without, and yet over which I have limited control. If anything happened to him I would surely die. My natural instinct is to keep him close, keep him safe. And yet, to be a good parent, I’ve had to try to ignore the flutters in my heart when he walks out of the front door. I’ve had to stem the flow of my own veins and tears when he has been injured or upset. He is a part of me but I’ve had to accept that he is also fully his own self, with his own ways of crossing the road or dietary tastes. He could, one day make a decision that breaks my heart. If anything happens to him it will surely kill me too. It’s like walking around blind, deaf and dumb: at any moment your entire world could come crashing down around you. Your heart ripped away and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can’t even see or hear when it is coming.

The stupid thing is, that even after finding this out, after watching a piece of me walking around unprotected, I didn’t ever think that having another child would mean another little piece of my heart walking around, jeopardising my life, as I know it. Or with the third. It just didn’t register, until the very moment that I had to let them go for that first time, and then it would hit me, a part of me was out in the big wide world without me to protect it. And that is huge. That is scary. And so I suppose it is no wonder that no one tells you, or if they do, that you might hear it, but you can’t understand. Because if anyone asked you, at any time, whether you’d like to live with your heart open and vulnerable, the very thing that keeps you alive, unprotected and uncontrollable, you would never ever agree.

Elephant in the room.

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Emotions, Friends, Relationships, Uncategorized

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Death is nothing at all… That’s a line from a popular choice of readings at many of the  funeral services that I have attended. The thing is,  death is a big thing. It’s that elephant in the room, the thing we all know is coming, and yet we try our best not to acknowledge.  We ignore it,  we try not to even speak it’s name, we say someone has passed on gone to meet their maker, become an angel. Very rarely do we say someone is dead, it’s euphemisms all the way.

The thing is, we need to deal with Death. We need to accept it,  after all,  as a friend of mine says, good health is just the slowest possible way to die!  It’s an unfortunate truth. No matter how much we don’t like it, it is one thing we can guarantee. 

I have recently been faced with Death and the dying fairly frequently.  I’ve been working on the ambulances and have seen a lot of ill people. Most of these are old people,  people who have lived full and varied lives,  and are proud, strong and fascinating human beings.  All too many of them have been reduced to the remnants of the people that they once were. Some may be unsteady on their feet,  and so have fallen and injured themselves, or just don’t have the strength to get up. Others may just be weak with age or exhausted from breathing or heart conditions,  many have dementia. 

But it’s not all elderly people who die. My 7 year old son came home today with news of a school friend who died at the weekend. Younger people die too, no matter how much we want to ignore it. And it’s heart wrenching and horribly sad,  and doesn’t bear thinking about,  but think about it we should. 

In my mind, death shouldn’t be taboo. It should be a subject that we talk about, without dread, we plan so many things in our lives, but very few people plan for their deaths. We leave this most important part of life to our family and friends,  people who, with the best will in the world are the least likely to be in the frame of mind to make rational, life or death decisions. 

My Nana was probably the person who I have been closest to that has died. I loved my Nana fiercely,  and she loved us all fiercely back. None of us would ever want her to be in pain or distressed.  She was very ill,  she had been fairly I’ll for a long time. She had COPD and was on oxygen constantly, but she was still firing on all cylinders and bossy as hell!

Then one day, she got a chest infection,  and was admitted to hospital. Despite treatment, she didn’t improve.  The Dr’s wanted to withdraw treatment and in that moment,  I would have done anything to save her. Even in the poor health that she was in, I wasn’t ready to let her die. It wasn’t about her. I was selfishly thinking of myself, i didn’t think that my Nana was suffering and would hate to be like this. I just felt that I could not let her go. Luckily I was able to cry it out,  talk to my friends and family and ultimately, it wasn’t up to me to let her go. Probably a good job,  as I don’t think I would have had the strength. I’d want them to keep her alive, not for her but for me. My Nana slipped away quietly in her sleep early one morning soon after.

The funny thing is that after she died I felt relief. Not that she was dead,  but that she was gone without suffering:  she never lost her mind to dementia, or her independence. She died after a short illness and was peaceful. It took my mum and aunt a lot to allow them to withdraw treatment but ultimately it was the right thing to do. Nana would have hated to be a burden and if she had survived she wouldn’t have had the life she was used to.

And that’s why it is important that we face that elephant in the room, that we talk about death and dying, and give our loved ones an idea of what we want or don’t want to be done to keep us alive. It’s not fair to leave a grieving loved one to make decisions on your life or death completely in the dark. It’s not fair on them,  and it’s certainly not fair on you. As humans we are ultimately selfish.  We don’t like pain,  and the pain of losing someone we think we can’t live without is too much. Some people can’t put that aside and think of the other person.  And that says nothing about them,  and more about being human.

So we should all make our feelings clear. Talk about them,  write them down.  Be unequivocal.  Speak about death, and life,  and the conditions in which we would choose death over life. How much should we be prepared to let Dr’s intervene to prolong our life?  If we lose our ability to choose the best for us,  who do we trust to choose it instead. What do we want done with our bodies when we die, are we leaving them to medical science?  Being buried, cremated?  How do we feel about organ donation?  All of us,  none of us, or only some parts? All of these things are important, they mean that we know what will happen to us, and it takes the guilt and pain and decision making away from a loved one who is in an impossible situation. 

So I’ll start it now: if I get dementia,  or have a stroke or any other condition that means I have no mental capacity and no hope for recovery,  I would like treatment to be withdrawn.  I would like my family with me and I’d like to die. If I am able to,  I would like any of my organs to be donated. I don’t mind if I’m buried or cremated but I’d like a grave that people can visit if they want to. And most of all,  I want my family to know that it is my choice and not theirs. There is no guilt,  it’s what I would want.