Tired, stressed and planting seeds

Where last weekend I was elated at having Roger at home for some quality family time, this weekend I am tired, teary and tightly wound. I’m sleep deprived and struggling to find any positivity in our situation. On Tuesday, I took my husband back to the hospice after our mini break at home. He was feeling good – his pain had eased, he could move more than he expected, and was positive about how good the good days might actually be. But cancer is unpredictable, and the next day he woke up feeling groggy, sore and sick, and it looked like another infection had started to develop. So we’ve had a rough week, feeling the ups and the downs acutely and it’s taking its toll on us both. Thanks to our daughter, I’ve had to get up in the night several times and had many very early mornings. Thanks to our son, I’ve had lots of added stress at home as we’ve been falling out and I’m struggling to cope with his sometimes challenging behaviour. 

I promised myself I wouldn’t write a moaning ‘I’m so knackered I could cry’ kind of post, but I’m struggling to find my brave face this week, instead looking in the mirror and seeing a tired version of me. There are extra wrinkles round my eyes which once I would have blamed on too many late nights and laughter, now I know it’s from too much worry and crying.

People keeping asking me, how are you coping? Are you making time for you? Well I’m not sure if I’m coping, but if I am it isn’t through choice, just necessity. Time for me is so scarce, but mainly because every minute I’m not looking after the kids I want to spend with Rog. Once I’ve put the children to bed, it’s usually going on for 8.30 and all I want to do is sit in silence for an hour before collapsing into bed. 

I read a post last night on Leigh’s excellent blog Headspace Perspective. In it, she said when you’re grieving your body uses up 70% of its energy on just getting through the day, rather than the usual 30%, leaving little space for managing everyday tasks. Thinking about this has made lots of sense to me but it doesn’t go very far making things better. I do, however, accept I need more rest if I going to get through this and yesterday managed to squeeze in a bit of a power nap during a visit to see Rog at the hospice! Time well spent for both of us I’d say. 

At home, I’ve been pottering a bit with the kids and as I wrote in my last post, we have been watching our caterpillars as they grow. We’ve also spent some time in the garden, digging out the old plants and weeds and sewing seeds. There’s something therapeutic about gardening, don’t you think, maybe it’s the focus being on the new shoots coming through. Anyway, we planted some wild flower seed bombs, which were a gift from my lovely blogger friend and mum of three boys Hayley, who writes Hayley From Home. The tiny balls of clay have seeds inside, and you just sprinkle them on to the soil and wait for nature to do the rest! The ultimate kind of gardening if you ask me…

X Julia

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