The evening before yesterday, I got into contact with my University of Winchester friend whose wife is also very ill so that we could have a discussion of over Meg’s final days and months. We are both of the same mind that Meg had a very peaceful and probably tranquil end to her life being at home and surrounded by family and friends. We both had to speculate how different things might have been were she to have survived another year and her final destination would be a hospital ward or a residential home where, with the best will in the world, she would not have experienced the type of environment that we managed to sustain for her here at home. So all in all, I am very happy that Meg’s final months, weeks and days passed the way that they did and can only feel a quiet satisfaction, and considerable relief, that I managed to play my part in making Meg comfortable and peaceful, in both body and mind, as I actually achieved. Yesterday morning, I tweaked Meg’s eulogy which is now the sole item (so far) in a little website I have created and I am sure the tweaking will continue until the last moment. I have practiced reading out the piece I have written so that I can get the pauses and the intonations in the right pace – and particular manage to cope with a particularly powerful and emotional last sentence of farewell. I am finding that if I rehearse this often enough, I can do it a tad better each time whilst keeping my emotions under control.
Yesterday turned out to be a busy, busy day. I walked down into town and having picked up my newspaper treated myself to the ‘free’ coffee Waitrose makes available to card holders who bring their own mug. Whilst drinking my coffee I was approached by a lady with whom I chatted occasionally when Meg and I went down and sat at the ‘Chatty’ table in the Methodist Centre which is just off the Bromsgrove High Street. In the days when I could get Meg in the car, we used to go to this centre on a Wednesday morning and always found the company welcoming, friendly and ecumenical. But it was too far to push Meg when we had to rely upon a longish walk, pushing Meg in the wheelchair. Seeing I was alone, this acquaintance discerned what had happened and reminded me that was still a very friendly crowd were I to reestablish going to the centre on a regular basis each Wednesday. I may well do this but it is also the day when our domestic help calls around and we have a lot of practical things to discuss with each other and to do. On my way back up the hill, I also knocked on the door of th lady who is a supervisor in our local Asda and with whom I made common cause when we were attempting (unsuccessfully) to fight across local developments that were impinging upon both of our properties. She is in the business of downsizing but indicated a willingness to help with anything that she could in view of Meg’s passing and I may seek her assistance on a catering matter in a few days time.
After I had regaled myself with some coffee, I went across to the Holiday Inn which is only 300m away from the end of our road as I had an appointment with them at 11.30. Actually almost everything of any significance had already been decided but we managed to nail down one or two things. The most important is that they are quite happy for me to bring in my own Cava to provide a toast for Meg as they could only supply Prosecco. I was quite happy to pay what is termed ‘corkage’. Corkage is a fee charged by a restaurant or venue for allowing customers to bring their own alcohol (typically wine, but can include other beverages) to consume on the premises instead of purchasing it from their bar. Now my neighbour who is the supervisor at Asda said that if I could find what I wanted in Asda and bought a fair quantity (some 9-10 bottles) she would pretend it was for herself and have a staff discount applied to it, so I shall almost certainly take her up on her kind offer.
When Meg was alive, we used to visit a special club held in a nearby village where we would meet with fellow dementia sufferers and their carers. There, we met a couple who were fellow parishioners of our church and they had a very interesting daughter who had spent a lot of her life in Mexico married to a Mexican husband. As our son spent a pre-university year in Mexico, then the two families had joint experiences to share. The father of the family had fallen and broken his hip and the upshot after what seemed to be a series of medical misadventures was that he died in circumstances not at all described as peaceful. So over a pre-arranged tea, we shared experiences of the passing of our loved ones and the other family seemed to have had as unhappy a time as it was possible to imagine. I described in detail how Meg had died so peacefully with family and friends and even ex-students around her and then felt a little guilty when I heard the account of the death of the father. But they were quite happy to talk about these experiences. not really having the chance to share these them with anyone before. The surviving wife and daughter are coming to the funeral and the daughter who had an interesting career as a dancer and is currently a teacher gave me some useful advice how to cope with the eulogy. I had heard from another source that the eulogy she gave of her father’s life was inspirational and I will certainly follow some of her advice. After they had left, the front lawn beckoned even though the grass was not looking particularly unkempt. So, I gave it a first cut and then sat on the front garden bench to treat myself to a chocolate ice-cream lolly. This is something I would not normally do as I would popped inside to check on Meg but now things are different. My next-door neighbour, a very jolly and supportive Welsh lady, came and sat on the bench beside me and we swapped stories and jokes. I then carried on and got the second, transverse cut done before going indoors and thinking about tea (more ice-cream!) and watching the cricket on the TV.