The best and worst times

Monday morning has rolled around again and I have the sense of impending doom that comes with my regular reality check – today’s the day I have to take my husband back to the hospice. He’s been at home for 12 days now, the longest he has been out of either hospital or the hospice since January, and it’s been such a nice break being together and as much in the ‘normal’ family routine as possible.

As much as it feels normal though, there is always a reminder that life is anything but. I’ve just had to interrupt writing this post, for example, to run upstairs with some morphine for Rog after hearing him in so much pain. The good times are there, but they’re punctuated by the bad times.

There have been moments this week when I’ve felt truly happy, for a few seconds at least, when we have been sat together with the kids, sharing a meal, watching TV, just doing ordinary stuff that families do. But it’s at the times when I feel happiest that I feel the biggest waves of sadness, almost like these are the moments you could have, here is the family you should have, but soon it will all be taken away.

I see my husband teaching things to the kids, making them laugh, sharing secret smiles with them – also losing his patience with them as any normal parent would (I do this a lot these days). I see all these things, and they make me happy, I feel all warm inside thinking right, he’s at home and this isn’t happening. Then I realise straight away what’s coming. I’m going to lose my husband and will have to deal with this family life on my own. How will I cope, emotionally and financially? How do other single mothers do it? What sacrifices do they have to make? What do they lose out on – and what do they do to survive?

I’ve read a few posts lately about single parenting but I’m not sure if any of them relate directly to me – after all neither of us has chosen this decision for us to part, and for now, we are waiting for it to happen, sometimes pretending it won’t and hoping so hard that really it might not.

I received a wonderful present from my close university friends this week. A framed print, which reads Courage, dear heart, a quote from C.S Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I’ll keep looking at this to try to make myself believe it, and to try to take strength from it.

I seem to have collected a few prints with quotations on lately, which I love but I’m not entirely sure Rog is a fan. He saw me rearranging some pictures and ornaments in the house the other day and remarked ‘I’m not gone yet!’, as if to say stop girlie-ing the place up Mrs! So he still hasn’t lost his deliciously dry sense of humour.

x Julia

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