Thank Goodness for Words

It never ceases to amaze me just how much work I can find to do around the house as I pick up my pen and notebook to start writing. I began this entry about an hour ago since when I have managed to de-scale the kettle, put a cleaning agent into the dishwasher make a light lunch and have a general tidy up around the kitchen. Enough! I cannot put this off any longer.

I have written many times in previous journals but found it much easier to get into the writing mood when I was working. What a strange word that is. Working. “When I was working.” It gives the impression that retirement is nothing but doing what you want to do whenever you want to do it and work is a word only associated with what you did before you reached retirement age.

Of course that was how it was meant to be but in reality nothing could be further than the truth. It is only the nature of the work that has changed not the absolute amount. Well if anything the amount has increased exponentially especially when caring for a loved one who has that most debilitating of diseases, Alzheimer’s. I find that the chapters of life called ‘work’ and ‘retirement’ should in all reality be reversed. Unlike Parkinson's Law where "work expands to fill the time available for its completion" Binsie's Law is "time contracts to ensure that planned work cannot be completed to any level of personal satisfaction."

In hindsight it is all too obvious that the life I led before I took up ‘retirement’ was merely time spent at my place of employment as opposed to work, which I now have.  Of course that time had to be spent productively, giving the employer a return for their money but in all reality it could not be defined as work.

So I now write about my real work as a carer for an Alzheimer’s patient. Interesting word that, patient. In the context of an Alzheimer’s sufferer it becomes an oxymoron if used an adjective. She was patient; calm, composed, even-tempered. No. Patient in this sense can only refer to the person who is receiving medical care. Patience is something that my wife now has very little of and is what I need more than anything these days. Well patience and a night’s sleep on a regular basis.

Shirley is now at the stage where much of reality is beyond the limits of her comprehension and she lives in an ever-collapsing world that exists only in her mind. I am all too aware that Alzheimer’s sufferers experience the same shallow depths of life that regress ultimately to a complete emptiness even though she may still be ‘legally’ alive. There may well come a time when she refuses any food and is doubly incontinent.

At that point we will no doubt move into the final phase but for now we have the mood swings to handle, although the pendulum never completely swings all the way back from anger and despair to the joy of being alive. When the demons are out of her head, the ones who call her fat, threaten to kick the cats or steal her clothes from the wardrobe, she is at best tranquil rather than happy. So we are in a downward spiral of despondency with little respite.

Anyway, I will not go on here about the various behavioural traits of the Alzheimer’s patient. Suffice to say that I live now to look after Shirley and that for me work began the day after I retired. Maybe that’s why Shirley and I were drawn together 20 years ago. I can’t say that I enjoy the work and that job satisfaction motivates me. In all honesty it is a grind especially when all I ask for is an even break in being able to maintain a normal lifestyle myself. Well as normal as it ever could be from here on in. Maybe this is selfish of me who knows. It does not mean that I love Shirley any less but I do wonder who the stranger is I now live with.

Thank goodness for books and writing, the things that have become more important to me now in the search for my own normal life. 

Must go Shirley has just come into the lounge to continue the argument she was having in the bedroom mirror.