Nanowrimo Day 25 ... working my way back into this silly novel

November 25, 2009
Nanowrimo: Day 25 but really more like Day 15 for me

"But, my love, we've always known when we said good bye that it might be the last time we would see one another," Pat said in the sweet voice she uses when she is showing how much she cares.  She has other voices, of course.  Exasperated, cross, intellectual ... but this time she was using the voice that meshes sweet sound reason with love.

However; we both knew that this parting was different.  This time we were both almost 70 years old.  A transatlantic trip is physically taxing and costs almost $1000.   Pat has cancer... and I am 69.  Who knows what is ticking away inside me waiting to spring out of the shadows one day to drag me back in with it?

This time I said goodbye knowing that it was quite probably really the last time I would hear all of those voices I have heard for over fifty years.  It was likely the last time I could touch her hand, kiss her cheek, make her carrot soup ... tell her with my hands, my actions and my body that I loved her so very much.  I will hear the voices again many times, I am sure, but they will be disembodied voices over a transatlantic cable, unaccompanied by the flesh and blood warmth of breathing in her scent or exploding into spontaneous laughter or a hug.

I wished that our last day together had been better spent.  Pat sat alone in that damned bed without her music, listening to the blare of the telly, waiting for a surgical procedure that never happened.  She was hungry and fed up and in pain because they had stopped all food and drink at midnight the previous night.  She used the cross and exasperated voices more than once during the day, and then, as Pat always did, followed up the scolding with the sweetly reasonable one as she commiserated with a nurse who had to work in such a disorganized hospital whose communication systems were in such disrepair.

Claire and I could have spent the day with Pat instead of walking to the Boots Drugstore on the Holloway Road so that Claire could purchase #7 nail polish for her daughter.  On our way home we stopped at the Marks and Spencer store to buy underwear, also a command performance.  Claire's daughter had ordered her to purchase decent underwear for herself; hers had holey crotches.  That is holey, not holy.  Claire is certainly no Virgin Mary.  I bought some too ... Marks and Spencer is the best place in the world to buy inexpensive underwear.  I also picked up a housecoat ... bright red, sensible and cozy ... looks like boiled wool but is softer.  I knew I would likely never have another chance to purchase such an intrinsically British housecoat.  Then we picked up groceries.  We spent our day putting in time until Pat was out of surgery and awake when we could have helped the interminable hours pass more quickly.

I felt as if I were saying good bye to London for the last time this trip.  I'd been coming here since 1977 and in many ways  know this city better than most Canadian cities ... at least as long as I stay in Pat's Islington neighbourhood or make my subterranean way around the less familiar parts, popping up to explore for awhile, always knowing that that when I find the  red and blue London Underground sign I can descend into the familiar rabbit warren of rail lines with their comforting names and colours and find my way back to Archway station and Pat. 

Things don't change in London the way they do in Ottawa. I know that I can always find fish and chips at the little shop near the station, that the bus and tube tickets are invariably available at the little grocer's, and that the pet food store where I bought dog biscuits three years ago will still be on the same corner, and that its less popular items will be there, just a little dustier.

And I guess I always thought of Pat as being like her city ... she'd always be there waiting for my visits, just a little creakier, a little more tired, a little dustier  ... like me ... but essentially still the same old Pat I'd known most of my life. 

Oh I don't mean that she'd have sat there like a bag of vegetarian dog biscuits for three years waiting for me to arrive.  No, that was the wonderful thing.  She'd have been busily living her life between visits, just as I had, and we'd have been in touch often enough to have been kept abreast of all the important happenings in each other's worlds.  We'd both have grown a little older (and perhaps gentler if not wiser) in the interim, but we'd meet, and the laughter and conversation would flow as if we'd just seen one another the day before.  We seldom wept together, but we discussed everything, and we giggled a great deal.

I can't imagine a world in which Pat is no longer there for me in Islington.

"I don't want to be the last man standing." Claire had said when we met in Pat's kitchen that morning.  She did not look very different from the last time I had seen her.  Of course she looked different.  She was fifty years older.  And likely as many pounds heavier.  And she'd had a stroke.  But I was amazed by how little she had changed.  She was still vibrant and funny and sure of herself.  And still six feet tall.   But it was her eyes that fascinated me.  I could have been looking into the eyes of the girl I had known in my teens.

Claire and I go back as far as Pat and I do, and we share many of the same beliefs that Pat and I have in common, but our relationship has been intermittent (and considerably rockier); not steady like the one I share with Pat.  Pat and Claire's friendship has had the same kind of constancy as Pat's and mine.   I suspect that Pat is the one who makes it happen.  She is a good friend.

It became abundantly clear during this visit that Pat is surrounded and coccooned by the friendships she has nurtured all her life.  If  Pat does not come through this encounter with the shadowy creature, I will be very alone but I will not be alone in my grief.

The meeting with Claire was not as predictable as the one with Pat.  In fact I had no idea what to expect.  I thought she might have been diminished by her stroke eleven years ago, but she wasn't.  She still had strong opinions but they had been a little softened around the edges.   The United Church had replaced dialectical Marxism, and mother love now supercedes all the isms.  Nolan commented on Claire's strange inconsistencies and contradictions.  I suspect we are all of us strangely contradictory creatures, even when we think we are fairly straightforward.

I thought of my grandfather.  He was a man whose happy go lucky reputation was dominated by thoughtlessness and inconstancy ... the profligate who used women ... the Don Juan whose sole mission in life was self absorbed and hedonistic.  And then I learned about a man who was himself used by my grandmother as a rung on a ladder to security.  A man who helped women in need.  A man respected by Eva.

And who was Eva?  Was she the saint she seemed to be?  The faithful wife, the tireless fund raiser and selfless nurturer of fallen women?  The Anglican Mother Teresa?  Or was she like Pat, a woman with an ascerbic wit and a short fuse?  Or like Claire with her strong views that brook no opposition?  Did Eva pat herself on the back or did she work her miracles silently and invisibly? One thing is sure, she, like all the rest of us, was undoubtedly fully human, with faults as well as virtues.  The only really unoffensive people are those insipid creatures without any convictions.  And, since I cannot abide them, I find them truly offensive.

A Long Weary Day Yesterday

Pat transferred to the Little Heart Hospital yesterday. I accompanied her in the ambulance. This hospital is very different from the neighbourhood hospital she's been in for the past month. No private room, no windows that open, no relaxed rules, no place to make a cup of tea or heat up a bowl of soup. No chance to have her own radio station on, not even a chance to read or talk peacefully. The peace and quiet and sense of security has been replaced by a blaring television, stiff blue curtains around a bed, a room mate with a grating voice, and a too busy staff. Thank goodness this is simply a hospital in which to undergo surgery, recuperate to the point of going home; not a place to live for months.

It was an exhausting day for everyone. David, Beck and the boys came by with Nolan around 7 and then we all dispersed. David and Beck took all the bags the tiny space could not accommodate and Nolan and I took a series of subway trains home. Our tube station was closed for repairs so we had to go on to the next one and take a bus back. By the time we arrived at Archway it was far too late to consider making a meal at home so we decided to eat at a little Turkish restaurant enroute. It was ten when we arrived back at the flat and I immediately went to my bed.

I felt as if I had been of some use in very practical terms during this stressful day ... and that's a good thing. When you are sick it's nice to have someone take over some of those overwhelming organizational jobs and help you create some serenity amid chaos. I helped Pat get ready to move hospitals, and then when we got to the second one, helped her settle in. After the gear was stored and ready to be taken back home, and out of the way, Pat was comfortably ensconced in the bed with a fan blowing cool if not fresh air, I massaged her hands and feet, and then we sat in companionable silence, talking occasionally, while I worked on Dark Mirror's Christmas socks.

Claire arrived yesterday afternoon and went to bed for the day and night ... I will get to see her this morning at breakfast, I guess.

Pat's surgery is scheduled for this morning some time so we will go back to see her this afternoon after she has been out of the anaesthetic long enough to be aware of company ... and want it.

I am leading a very circumscribed life but I really have no desire to be anywhere else at this time. I will be glad to return to my life at the lake with Kenya ... but I am content being here right now with Pat.

Something I Learned This Evening

Nolan and I went for dinner at David and Beck's (Pat's older son and daughter-in-law's) and I read an interesting article in The Guardian about how fiction is dying and morphing into non-fiction. Wiser heads than mine have accepted the fact that my Nanowrimo novel is not a complete anomaly after all ... in fact it is part of a growing trend to mix autobiography and other non-fiction with invented bits to create a new kind of fiction. Whoo! And here I thought I was just incompetent ... that I started with no idea at all and so had to rely on what was there in my life in order to write anything at all! What a relief!

Nolan and I visited Pat this morning and again this afternoon when we took her a large container of soup I had made for her so that she could eat real food again. Yesterday she was so doped up on morphine that she kept dozing off in mid-sentence. It was very worrying. Today she was in far better shape mentally and I managed to massage cream into both feet and one hand in between visits from a variety of friends, her two grandsons who come every day and wreak havoc (1 1/2 and 3 1/2 ... sweet little boys), and various medical people who pop in and out often.

Tomorrow another Canadian friend from the same era that Pat and I were good friends will be coming for a few days. Claire lives in Peterborough and is enroute to Amsterdam to visit family.

Pat will have surgery in a different hospital on Monday and will return to her home as soon as they feel she is able. This surgery will clean up any remaining infection between the lung and the rib cage and will allow them to ascertain whether there is any cancer in that lung. Then she will be able to undergo chemotherapy once she has recovered from the operation.

I am having a good time ... being with Pat ... spending time with Nolan ... getting to know her family again ... it's all good. Pat and I tease one another and Nolan ... and Ethan, her older grandson asks me for kisses and chooses me to tell him his bedtime story. Tonight I got to read about Pooh and Piglet trying to trap the Heffalump. He is a very gentle little boy and I feel privileged. The baby, Joe, is more direct in his demands and VERY noisy ... but after a good long visit to the park in the rain, he was a dear too.

This is a very short visit but I will leave knowing that Pat is being very well cared for and wonderfully loved by family and friends. If I hadn't come I'd have been worried that she might need me here. Now that I have seen for myself that she is absolutely cocooned in love and that she is getting excellent medical care, I feel much better about things.

I have been watering plants, sketchbooking and journaling in between visits ... no knitting time at all so far. I think I'll take my knitting with me tomorrow. And now it is midnight and I need my bed ... as any of you who know me well will understand ... this is way past my bedtime.

Quick Blog Post from London

I hate flying ... I left home at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, transferred to Tammy's van, and reached the airport at 8:15, took off at 10:15, ate terrible food and watched movies on a tiny screen set about 12 inches from my glasses, and arrived at Heathrow exhausted at 10 a.m. London time (4 a.m. Ottawa time). Then I made my way under London ... three trains ... and arrived at Islington's Archway station at noon. The phone did not work so I couldn't call Nolan as planned. I hoofed it, pack on back, little red suitcase trundling along behind me, and was welcomed with a hug, a cup of tea and the chance to sleep for two hours before visiting Pat for the first time.

More about time together after our visit this morning.