If Yeats could opt for a tower as a symbol
I have chosen my grandmother's piano.
More than a century old,
it has a decayed elegance,
pitched a semi-tone
below a concert grand.
Its mellow romantic timbre
would have suited Chopin
or Tchaikovsky and not the Bach
and Haydn I imposed upon it.
The upper and lower registers ring
but the middle octaves twang dismally.
Similarly, I am battered,
subdued and of a long gone style.
I resonate to the extremes
of joy and sorrow
but am out of tune
for the commonplace and banal.
The tuner is coming tomorrow.
I cannot speak for the piano
but hold out no hopes
that i will change for the better.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Beyond Recognition
If the observer alters
what is observed,
my coterie of carers
who never take their eyes off me
have changed me
out of all recognition.
I am lost in the outskirts of a maze.
Unlike Theseus who required a thread
so he could retrace his safe steps
to the outside world,
the outside world has dispersed me
so without a thread to guide me
I will never return
to the centre of my being.
what is observed,
my coterie of carers
who never take their eyes off me
have changed me
out of all recognition.
I am lost in the outskirts of a maze.
Unlike Theseus who required a thread
so he could retrace his safe steps
to the outside world,
the outside world has dispersed me
so without a thread to guide me
I will never return
to the centre of my being.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Rigmarole
The M.S doesn’t just steal movement and activities associated with movement, it interrupts other aspects of life: perception of time, language, private space/boundaries. There will be other illnesses that do exactly the same thing, but multiple sclerosis is the one I know about.
Perception of Time
My days are full of regular routines. I do the same thing, in the same way, in the same order, and probably the same time of day, every single day. The rigmarole I have to face before I go to bed this evening makes tomorrow seem a long way off. The rigmarole I have already endured today makes yesterday even further away. If I contacted you four to six weeks ago and you haven’t replied, it feels as if you have been silent for months even though in your busy life with family, holidays, travel and other occupations, very little time has passed. By now, I am at least 150 years old and when people suggest I might live another two or three, they are dooming me to another few centuries.
Language
In recent years I have been learning the dialect of disability. Unlike sign language, it does not have its own grammar and syntax, nor a particular pronunciation. Rather, it stretches the words of the mother tongue.
Thus, I say: “I stand up and walk across the room.” Now if walking means being upright and travelling from A to B, then yes, I walked. But if walking requires lifting one foot off the floor and bringing it forward, I did not walk. I stood up, turned around and slid backwards.
Then again, when you say you have cleaned your teeth, presumably, you mean you moved your arm so that the toothbrush traveled backwards and forwards against your teeth. What I mean is, that once the toothbrush is prepared and I have it in my mouth, I turn my head from side to side, so I move my teeth backwards and forwards across the toothbrush. This does produce the same effect but the words mean different things.
A friend who has to listen to talking books says she reads. I say I walk and I clean my teeth. We are using language out of habit and to be economical. To do otherwise would be pedantic.
The problem can also go the other way. I have said to a new carer: “If you go on doing it this way, you will make me spasm.” She retorts that she is not trying to make me spasm. In order to remove any suggestion of intentionality, I have to rephrase my remark: “Doing it this way will cause a spasm.” Spasms are vicious, like electric shocks and it is difficult to believe that my own body has become so inimical to me. Initially to my shame I was accusing my carers: “What did you do that for?” When I managed to hear what I was saying I could at least apologise. Spasms are an issue therefore, both for my use of language and the way the language is received.
Boundaries and Personal Space
My physical boundaries have been completely invaded. When I cannot dress myself, it would be foolish of me to complain about being dressed. But what I do complain about is people treading on my clothes, wiping sticky fingers on my face towel or touching the nozzle of my drink bottle. These seem legitimate causes of complaint. But lately I have noticed I am also protesting about the way people are removing my very fine hair from my eyes. My physical boundaries have obviously become even more sensitive.
But if they are sensitive, they are nothing in comparison with my psychological boundaries.
Because I am so encroached upon physically, my psychological boundaries go right to the edge of my tree-enclosed property. When you enter the gate, you enter my personal space. You are not given the chance to negotiate where in the room to position you chair so that you can maintain a certain individual distance. You are already trespassing.
To make it harder for you, there is also my much more conspicuous fragility. I have lost so much weight, it is harder to ignore. You have to decide whether to mention the weight loss or ignore it: if you ignore it, you have to decide what to do if I mention it. Are you willing to engage in a difficult conversation or do you think what is required of you is to cheer me up and distract me?
And to make matters worse, I write poetry. Poetry is condensed and cryptic and what is worse, it may well deal with personal feelings. It is a decidedly anti-social activity, which some people may prefer to ignore.
And then again, my hand, like Lear’s, “smells of mortality”. I am so compressed my oxygen intake is limited and so I have to live constantly with the knowledge that my own death could be imminent. As most of my friends are elderly, they also are facing their own mortality but may prefer not to dwell on it. But as another one of my traits is that I am very direct, you may find yourself partaking of a conversation which discusses what sandwich fillings are suitable for a funeral feast, or even whether it is appropriate to cut the crusts off the same sandwiches.
So when you come in the gate, even before you have rounded the flax, it is required of you that you take up a position relative to my directness, mortality, fragility and extended personal space. It is a very great challenge.
Multiple sclerosis has a lot to answer for.
Perception of Time
My days are full of regular routines. I do the same thing, in the same way, in the same order, and probably the same time of day, every single day. The rigmarole I have to face before I go to bed this evening makes tomorrow seem a long way off. The rigmarole I have already endured today makes yesterday even further away. If I contacted you four to six weeks ago and you haven’t replied, it feels as if you have been silent for months even though in your busy life with family, holidays, travel and other occupations, very little time has passed. By now, I am at least 150 years old and when people suggest I might live another two or three, they are dooming me to another few centuries.
Language
In recent years I have been learning the dialect of disability. Unlike sign language, it does not have its own grammar and syntax, nor a particular pronunciation. Rather, it stretches the words of the mother tongue.
Thus, I say: “I stand up and walk across the room.” Now if walking means being upright and travelling from A to B, then yes, I walked. But if walking requires lifting one foot off the floor and bringing it forward, I did not walk. I stood up, turned around and slid backwards.
Then again, when you say you have cleaned your teeth, presumably, you mean you moved your arm so that the toothbrush traveled backwards and forwards against your teeth. What I mean is, that once the toothbrush is prepared and I have it in my mouth, I turn my head from side to side, so I move my teeth backwards and forwards across the toothbrush. This does produce the same effect but the words mean different things.
A friend who has to listen to talking books says she reads. I say I walk and I clean my teeth. We are using language out of habit and to be economical. To do otherwise would be pedantic.
The problem can also go the other way. I have said to a new carer: “If you go on doing it this way, you will make me spasm.” She retorts that she is not trying to make me spasm. In order to remove any suggestion of intentionality, I have to rephrase my remark: “Doing it this way will cause a spasm.” Spasms are vicious, like electric shocks and it is difficult to believe that my own body has become so inimical to me. Initially to my shame I was accusing my carers: “What did you do that for?” When I managed to hear what I was saying I could at least apologise. Spasms are an issue therefore, both for my use of language and the way the language is received.
Boundaries and Personal Space
My physical boundaries have been completely invaded. When I cannot dress myself, it would be foolish of me to complain about being dressed. But what I do complain about is people treading on my clothes, wiping sticky fingers on my face towel or touching the nozzle of my drink bottle. These seem legitimate causes of complaint. But lately I have noticed I am also protesting about the way people are removing my very fine hair from my eyes. My physical boundaries have obviously become even more sensitive.
But if they are sensitive, they are nothing in comparison with my psychological boundaries.
Because I am so encroached upon physically, my psychological boundaries go right to the edge of my tree-enclosed property. When you enter the gate, you enter my personal space. You are not given the chance to negotiate where in the room to position you chair so that you can maintain a certain individual distance. You are already trespassing.
To make it harder for you, there is also my much more conspicuous fragility. I have lost so much weight, it is harder to ignore. You have to decide whether to mention the weight loss or ignore it: if you ignore it, you have to decide what to do if I mention it. Are you willing to engage in a difficult conversation or do you think what is required of you is to cheer me up and distract me?
And to make matters worse, I write poetry. Poetry is condensed and cryptic and what is worse, it may well deal with personal feelings. It is a decidedly anti-social activity, which some people may prefer to ignore.
And then again, my hand, like Lear’s, “smells of mortality”. I am so compressed my oxygen intake is limited and so I have to live constantly with the knowledge that my own death could be imminent. As most of my friends are elderly, they also are facing their own mortality but may prefer not to dwell on it. But as another one of my traits is that I am very direct, you may find yourself partaking of a conversation which discusses what sandwich fillings are suitable for a funeral feast, or even whether it is appropriate to cut the crusts off the same sandwiches.
So when you come in the gate, even before you have rounded the flax, it is required of you that you take up a position relative to my directness, mortality, fragility and extended personal space. It is a very great challenge.
Multiple sclerosis has a lot to answer for.
This is all there is
One of my friends has trouble with my ideas about the “peace that passeth all understanding”: She requires a peace that relates more practically to world affairs. So I’ve done some more thinking.
A grief that is honoured, and with the obscenity of Paul’s death and the depredations of multiple sclerosis I know all about grief, such a grief does not leave the mind grey and sludgy. It confers a poignancy, the black is blacker and the white is whiter. In such a state of mind, I sat under my cherry tree.
This is all there is:
far removed
from the world's dereliction,
a bee in a foxglove
persistently exploring
with me, caught in the sunlight,
watching.
The peace that this confers, is a peace that offers certainties, certainties that all questions will be answered; it offers connectedness – that I am connected to all living things and am therefore in my right place – a peace that cannot be explained.
If I am “far removed from the world’s dereliction,” I am also removed from the world’s cruelty and greed. So this spiritual state, however tenuous, has an ethical dimension. Although this is no more substantial than a glimpse of a monarch butterfly out of the corner of the eye which, when I turn my head is no longer there, it is satisfying to the heart and intuition.
It is the mind that asks the unanswerable questions. Such a state requires time and solitude, both middle-class attributes, which have no part in crowded, bustling, working-class lives. My response to beauty whether the beauty of classical music, great literature or nature, requires me to inhabit a certain world. I live in this tree-enclosed garden because I inherited money; I have the necessary education and exposure to high culture.
This is one caveat, the other is even more telling. What part would such experiences play in a concentration camp or an area devastated by ethnic cleansing or suicide bombs? How solid can a spiritual structure be, when it is erected on such a flimsy foundation? Does that mean my experience is relative only to me and could not apply to a victim of Auschwitz or Baghdad?
The difficulty is that these experiences are accumulative; they are a reason in themselves and create a yearning for more. You only have to read the later poems of Wordsworth to see his grief that such experiences have vanished. I am nearly 71 and rejoice that I can still be so totally absorbed by the sunshine, a bee and a foxglove.
That I am not the only one to feel this way is attested to by the following poem:
"Folk Tale"
By R. S. Thomas
Prayers like gravel
Flung at the sky's
window, hoping to attract
the loved one's
attention. But without
visible plaits to let
down the believer
to climb up.
to what purpose open
that far casement?
I would
have refrained long since
but that peering once
through my locked fingers
I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.
A grief that is honoured, and with the obscenity of Paul’s death and the depredations of multiple sclerosis I know all about grief, such a grief does not leave the mind grey and sludgy. It confers a poignancy, the black is blacker and the white is whiter. In such a state of mind, I sat under my cherry tree.
This is all there is:
far removed
from the world's dereliction,
a bee in a foxglove
persistently exploring
with me, caught in the sunlight,
watching.
The peace that this confers, is a peace that offers certainties, certainties that all questions will be answered; it offers connectedness – that I am connected to all living things and am therefore in my right place – a peace that cannot be explained.
If I am “far removed from the world’s dereliction,” I am also removed from the world’s cruelty and greed. So this spiritual state, however tenuous, has an ethical dimension. Although this is no more substantial than a glimpse of a monarch butterfly out of the corner of the eye which, when I turn my head is no longer there, it is satisfying to the heart and intuition.
It is the mind that asks the unanswerable questions. Such a state requires time and solitude, both middle-class attributes, which have no part in crowded, bustling, working-class lives. My response to beauty whether the beauty of classical music, great literature or nature, requires me to inhabit a certain world. I live in this tree-enclosed garden because I inherited money; I have the necessary education and exposure to high culture.
This is one caveat, the other is even more telling. What part would such experiences play in a concentration camp or an area devastated by ethnic cleansing or suicide bombs? How solid can a spiritual structure be, when it is erected on such a flimsy foundation? Does that mean my experience is relative only to me and could not apply to a victim of Auschwitz or Baghdad?
The difficulty is that these experiences are accumulative; they are a reason in themselves and create a yearning for more. You only have to read the later poems of Wordsworth to see his grief that such experiences have vanished. I am nearly 71 and rejoice that I can still be so totally absorbed by the sunshine, a bee and a foxglove.
That I am not the only one to feel this way is attested to by the following poem:
"Folk Tale"
By R. S. Thomas
Prayers like gravel
Flung at the sky's
window, hoping to attract
the loved one's
attention. But without
visible plaits to let
down the believer
to climb up.
to what purpose open
that far casement?
I would
have refrained long since
but that peering once
through my locked fingers
I thought that I detected
the movement of a curtain.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Difficult Choices
When I returned to Christchurch after Paul’s funeral, I stayed a few days with a friend who had three younger children. But I was too exposed and vulnerable, found being in a family atmosphere intolerably painful.
Gradually, I came to recognise what was the problem and to know that I was faced with a choice. If I decided, then and there, to shut myself off from my friends’ children, and later grandchildren, I was at the same time, amputating myself. Even a temporary shut down would gather momentum and run out of control. Consequently, I needed to grit my inner teeth and endure the pain, then, and even sometimes now, so that my life wouldn’t be abridged out of all recognition. I have been glad since that I made that decision and that friends can talk freely about their children, showing me photographs and more recently, bringing babies to see me. It has been all very poignant but very enriching.
In the same way, I have had to make a decision about Christmas. The first Christmas after Paul’s death, was a nightmare. By the second one, my father had also died. At a small get-together someone brightly wished me a Merry Christmas. My response must have annihilated her: “There are too many ghosts”. Luckily, one of my friends having overheard my comment rang me a couple of days later and said very emphatically: “HAVE A HAPPY CHRISTMAS”.
This gave me food for thought. I could go on separating myself from Christmas in a self-pitying, histrionic way, or I could take part in the general stream of bonhomie and good will. Christmas is about a birth, a beginning. It is about the human need for hope. I was as much in need of hope as anyone else. I bought a crib, a few Christmas decorations (although I have never wanted a tree since Paul died) and each year have given and received presents and cards. I have not made my friends uncomfortable and I have once more been part of Christmas, although it still does hurt. Christmas day is often quite delightful, but no longer feels like Christmas.
Christmas Pastiche
A skull at the feast is all very well
but not at a Christmas barbecue.
For those of us with amputated families
Christmas is a difficult time.
Memories can console only so far.
We are forced to assume
a mask of cheerfulness
as if the black hole at the heart of us
was decorated with fairy lights,
tinsel and multi-coloured baubles.
It's altogether a game of pretend.
Gradually, I came to recognise what was the problem and to know that I was faced with a choice. If I decided, then and there, to shut myself off from my friends’ children, and later grandchildren, I was at the same time, amputating myself. Even a temporary shut down would gather momentum and run out of control. Consequently, I needed to grit my inner teeth and endure the pain, then, and even sometimes now, so that my life wouldn’t be abridged out of all recognition. I have been glad since that I made that decision and that friends can talk freely about their children, showing me photographs and more recently, bringing babies to see me. It has been all very poignant but very enriching.
In the same way, I have had to make a decision about Christmas. The first Christmas after Paul’s death, was a nightmare. By the second one, my father had also died. At a small get-together someone brightly wished me a Merry Christmas. My response must have annihilated her: “There are too many ghosts”. Luckily, one of my friends having overheard my comment rang me a couple of days later and said very emphatically: “HAVE A HAPPY CHRISTMAS”.
This gave me food for thought. I could go on separating myself from Christmas in a self-pitying, histrionic way, or I could take part in the general stream of bonhomie and good will. Christmas is about a birth, a beginning. It is about the human need for hope. I was as much in need of hope as anyone else. I bought a crib, a few Christmas decorations (although I have never wanted a tree since Paul died) and each year have given and received presents and cards. I have not made my friends uncomfortable and I have once more been part of Christmas, although it still does hurt. Christmas day is often quite delightful, but no longer feels like Christmas.
Christmas Pastiche
A skull at the feast is all very well
but not at a Christmas barbecue.
For those of us with amputated families
Christmas is a difficult time.
Memories can console only so far.
We are forced to assume
a mask of cheerfulness
as if the black hole at the heart of us
was decorated with fairy lights,
tinsel and multi-coloured baubles.
It's altogether a game of pretend.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Prince of Peace
As a young girl, I was delighted to read that Dean Inge had declared: “Originality does not consist of thinking of something for the first time, it consists of thinking it for yourself.”
Here is my ‘original’ thought.
In the Western world, at this time of year there are numerable performances of the Messiah. I have kept hearing about it as a forthcoming event and my niece has just enjoyed singing it.
In a recent dream, I was looking at a television screen with the last section of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ but there was a gap between the last two lines and the last line was incorrect. I was anxious that people would get the wrong idea and asked a carer to write in the correct line. But what I chose came from the chorus “For unto us a child is born”; the line now read “Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
What sort of world would there be which contained a Prince of Peace? Before I had even turned six, there had been Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Obviously, there has been no peace in my generation, nor in any generations that has preceded me. Peace is either arrant nonsense or needs to be considered from a different dimension. Belatedly, I remembered “The peace that passeth all understanding” which must be a similar state to the Dao, nothing to do with peace in the Middle East or Northern Ireland.
Dreams
Another area of life which requires us to think in another dimension is dreams. (For me, dreams contain considerable meaning.) Some years ago, I read a book detailing the dreams of a young woman dying of cancer. Her dreams pushed her to increased self-awareness and furthered her spiritual journey but did not deal with the cancer nor her approaching death.
In the same way, my dreams ignore the multiple sclerosis. They may have me in a wheelchair, stumbling, lurching on elbow crutches, standing or even walking but the dream itself has no connection with my condition. The nearest to a connection has been a dream which pointed out that I was struggling to keep in touch with my feminine side and this flaw in my nature might well be attributed to the responsibility/will power/control required of me by the M.S.
It would appear that the unconscious has no interest in our state of physical health but instead, extends us spiritually. What use is an evolutionary process towards spiritual growth that ends at our death?
Both these instances illustrate a view of the world which is not binary, not this or that. Instead, they emphasise this as well as that. Thus, M.S. is a heinous thief but has given me the gift of time wherein I can cherish my inner life and make contact with my own creativity. Paul’s death is both an obscene fact, but eventually my being forced to acknowledge life’s fragility bought me to an appreciation of the present moment and the belief that I was required to receive the beauty of the world both for me and for Paul. I had to make up for the fact that he wasn’t there any more
Not this or that, but definitely, this and that.
Here is my ‘original’ thought.
In the Western world, at this time of year there are numerable performances of the Messiah. I have kept hearing about it as a forthcoming event and my niece has just enjoyed singing it.
In a recent dream, I was looking at a television screen with the last section of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ but there was a gap between the last two lines and the last line was incorrect. I was anxious that people would get the wrong idea and asked a carer to write in the correct line. But what I chose came from the chorus “For unto us a child is born”; the line now read “Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
What sort of world would there be which contained a Prince of Peace? Before I had even turned six, there had been Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Obviously, there has been no peace in my generation, nor in any generations that has preceded me. Peace is either arrant nonsense or needs to be considered from a different dimension. Belatedly, I remembered “The peace that passeth all understanding” which must be a similar state to the Dao, nothing to do with peace in the Middle East or Northern Ireland.
Dreams
Another area of life which requires us to think in another dimension is dreams. (For me, dreams contain considerable meaning.) Some years ago, I read a book detailing the dreams of a young woman dying of cancer. Her dreams pushed her to increased self-awareness and furthered her spiritual journey but did not deal with the cancer nor her approaching death.
In the same way, my dreams ignore the multiple sclerosis. They may have me in a wheelchair, stumbling, lurching on elbow crutches, standing or even walking but the dream itself has no connection with my condition. The nearest to a connection has been a dream which pointed out that I was struggling to keep in touch with my feminine side and this flaw in my nature might well be attributed to the responsibility/will power/control required of me by the M.S.
It would appear that the unconscious has no interest in our state of physical health but instead, extends us spiritually. What use is an evolutionary process towards spiritual growth that ends at our death?
Both these instances illustrate a view of the world which is not binary, not this or that. Instead, they emphasise this as well as that. Thus, M.S. is a heinous thief but has given me the gift of time wherein I can cherish my inner life and make contact with my own creativity. Paul’s death is both an obscene fact, but eventually my being forced to acknowledge life’s fragility bought me to an appreciation of the present moment and the belief that I was required to receive the beauty of the world both for me and for Paul. I had to make up for the fact that he wasn’t there any more
Not this or that, but definitely, this and that.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Living Will
A living will is all right in theory. I don’t want you to intervene to save my life… in five years time, next year, even next month. But how about the day after tomorrow? I had always had a feeling that I would have wanted to retract, but then something happened.
A few weeks ago I had a laryngitic bug which went down into my chest. I don’t often get infections and when I do the M.S. plays up a treat. I say that it doesn’t like not taking centre stage, or to change the metaphor, I have only a limited number of troups and if I have to deploy them elsewhere that leaves my flank exposed. My flank was, metaphorically speaking, very exposed on a Saturday and Sunday when I couldn’t get the doctor. The M.S. went through the roof. Normally, I can move my right elbow up a little but then, I could not do that, I could not drive the wheelchair, I could not clean my own teeth. All that I could do, was turn my head to left or right against the headrest. I spent the evenings drifting in and out of a Brother Cadfael DVD.
The next morning, despite the fact that I had a hideous, phlegmy, chesty cough, the M.S. had returned to what it regards as normal. The doctor came in the evening, tested my lungs and found the infection had got down to my trachea but not as far as the lungs. Because of the living will, he asked me what we should do. The M.S. was picking up so I said to him that a carer from seven years back was on her way to New Zealand from England and I didn’t want to die without seeing her, that a dear friend had just had a tragic loss and I didn’t want her to have any more grief at that time, but he said I needed to consider me. But my will to live had been restored and I didn’t want not ever to see again the early evening light painting the upper branches of the walnut tree pink and gold or the white roses at evening coming towards me out of their arch as the greens of the garden merged into two dimensions; I wanted to finish my current book; I had many friends I wanted to connect with again. If he had asked me on the Sunday I would not have spared a thought for the walnut tree, roses, book, friends. Nothing mattered and I could have quite willingly slipped into death.
I find this astonishingly comforting. When I get pneumonia and I say when, not if, advisedly, given how the compression is restricting my breathing, then the M.S. will reduce me to such a state of nothingness that I will not mind the dying. I will not be dying with a great urge left towards life. I am immensely reassured.
A few weeks ago I had a laryngitic bug which went down into my chest. I don’t often get infections and when I do the M.S. plays up a treat. I say that it doesn’t like not taking centre stage, or to change the metaphor, I have only a limited number of troups and if I have to deploy them elsewhere that leaves my flank exposed. My flank was, metaphorically speaking, very exposed on a Saturday and Sunday when I couldn’t get the doctor. The M.S. went through the roof. Normally, I can move my right elbow up a little but then, I could not do that, I could not drive the wheelchair, I could not clean my own teeth. All that I could do, was turn my head to left or right against the headrest. I spent the evenings drifting in and out of a Brother Cadfael DVD.
The next morning, despite the fact that I had a hideous, phlegmy, chesty cough, the M.S. had returned to what it regards as normal. The doctor came in the evening, tested my lungs and found the infection had got down to my trachea but not as far as the lungs. Because of the living will, he asked me what we should do. The M.S. was picking up so I said to him that a carer from seven years back was on her way to New Zealand from England and I didn’t want to die without seeing her, that a dear friend had just had a tragic loss and I didn’t want her to have any more grief at that time, but he said I needed to consider me. But my will to live had been restored and I didn’t want not ever to see again the early evening light painting the upper branches of the walnut tree pink and gold or the white roses at evening coming towards me out of their arch as the greens of the garden merged into two dimensions; I wanted to finish my current book; I had many friends I wanted to connect with again. If he had asked me on the Sunday I would not have spared a thought for the walnut tree, roses, book, friends. Nothing mattered and I could have quite willingly slipped into death.
I find this astonishingly comforting. When I get pneumonia and I say when, not if, advisedly, given how the compression is restricting my breathing, then the M.S. will reduce me to such a state of nothingness that I will not mind the dying. I will not be dying with a great urge left towards life. I am immensely reassured.
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