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Despite two big pillows, it still feels head-down, compared to my own bed upstairs. I have stumbled to the bathroom a couple of times in the night.
My wife continues to take sharp, shallow intakes of breath. More husky on her untidy exhalations. Audible, but not yesterday's rattle. Her face is a tragic mask of empty misery. Deeply sunken, dark rimmed eyes. Open, but chemically blind to my presence. Her mouth half open.
Her bone structure laid anatomically bare. By the lack of softening flesh. The 'Matrix' killer robot captured to a 'T' but without any of the menace. Even down to the diagonal, tightly stretched sinews.
It has dropped to 62F indoors. From another, hard, overnight frost. I cleared the ash in the stove. Down into the sharp-edged, pressed steel box under the iron plate. The skill to lift the heavy bottom plate becoming steadily more familiar. I'm using a pair of chisel shaped lengths of kindling now. To avoid making a lot of noise. She hated loud noises. Even after she became too deaf for distant conversation.
Got the stove going properly first time. Using newspaper, lots of criss-crossed kindling. Added a sprinkle of "odour free" fire lighter. Crumbled between clumsy fingers. Turned the primary air lever back down. Once the fire was going well.
I made coffee rather than struggle back down to the floor. The floor is a distant place at our age. Receding further with each passing year. Once its depths are reached it becomes a strictly 2D world. Requiring infinite power to climb back into the 3rd dimension. I splashed my face with water from the vintage, bathroom sink tap in the vintage sink on vintage, cast iron brackets. To remove the sand gathered in my eyes during another restless night combing the empty desert.
I left my wife and my inscrutable laptop. Went up to the more familiar keyboard and comfortable screen size of the PC. Upstairs, in my self-built, dormer window. Swapping my strongest supermarket reading glasses for weaker ones, after a hesitant, fuzzy start. So that the screen could be seen from a more comfortable distance. Rather than peering at the laptop through a binocular, macro lens. I polished the new glasses on my scruffy T-shirt. Dragged out from beneath my waistband. Under my decades old, secondhand, charity shop bought, fleece jacket.
The black coffee has left my mouth dry. Still only 4.30. What now? Pitch black outside. Distant headlights moving, still-sparsely, along the invisible road. Mere toys, forever racing to nowhere in particular. Brief flashes of brake lights on the cars going south. As they slow for the blind bend by the unsold, unsaleable farmhouse.
So close to the busy road that you can readily see the condensation. Between the panes of the old, very unlikely, double glazed, picture window. Letting in the light and the racing shadows of thundering lorries. Into a tiny, front room. Is that a heater? Or a huge dehumidifier? Battling endlessly with age-old damp. There are always those. Far worse off than yourself.
4.45. I can feel a chill on my legs. I had better see if the new stove has decided to go out. It had. The dead husk of the first briquette glows only dimly. Smoke pours out on opening the door. Move the air lever to the right and hope forlornly for a flame to ignite the kindling. Thrown in desperation onto the maw. Open the door again and stab the briquette into sparkling chunks. The recalcitrant kindling finally catches and bursts into orange flame.
Just gone 5.00 Fetch another heavy bag of briquettes from the unpainted back hall. Where cold memories still linger over a spat. Involving vintage, profiled wall boards. I had already rendered the rough walls with fine cement but never plastered.
My wife had insisted on the secondhand, vertical boards to half way up. There were only enough for one wall. I said they looked silly. The hall had remained that way ever since. For over twenty years. God knows what it all looks like now to our recent visitors!
There were many spats back then. Over details of rebuilding the second, unfinished cottage in our life. Eventually I had stopped doing anything much at all. My handyman skills were never, ever, quite good enough. Not compared to the seeming perfection I lavished of my own projects.
Though not before I had laid and tiled new concrete floors. Over weldmesh, DPM, insulation and underfloor heating in Pex hose. Replaced all the old, solid doors with secondhand, vintage glazed doors. To let light into the former inky blackness. Of both, tiny, entrance halls at front and back. I replaced most of the windows. Including building dormers in place of yellowed, bare fibreglass, corrugated roofing panels in the bedroom attic.
Built a full length, lean-to greenhouse from two conjoined, aluminium framed units. Including laying her a traditional, herringbone, brick floor. Bought and fitted a vast, secondhand, triangular, double glazed window in the end gable. Where it had once been an open balcony. Acting, until then, as a funnel for every westerly gale! So that in one storm the roof had lifted off over the balcony. The glass closure solved that problem.
I built a new roof over a thick, rockwool blanket. Whereupon we quickly moved upstairs. As the lower floors remained cold for much of the year. Single block walls drop below freezing in the bathroom. Where I tiled from floor to ceiling. Tiled the floor over completely new, PVC drainage pipes. Profile boarded the ceiling. new toilet, sits bath. All new plumbing. Including hidden pipes to the wall mounted, bath&shower, mixer tap.
The original builder had laid mosaic tiles over sand and there were literally, no joints on the pipes leading out to the septic tank. So that the bathroom floor floated precariously on a pool of stinking shit.
Now, finally, freed of wifely constraint, the vertical boards in the hall went straight out to the shed. That was before she even came home from hospital to die. She would not have noticed the boards were missing. As the two, kindly, ambulance men. Gently walked her through to the newly bare lounge. Unknowingly taking her last, wobbly steps. That she would ever take on this earth.
6.00. Still mostly dark outside. Brighter to the north east. Obscured by high, prickly hedges and the low hill. Warmer indoors now. I bent close to my wife To reassure that she was not alone. Kissed her domed forehead. Told her I loved her and fought back the tears. If only to avoid wetting her face. Hopefully the laptop can tolerate salty water.
There was a low grunt but it may just have been coincidence. Her 55-year struggle for dominance, over her equal partner, is finally ebbing away. I still cannot find the key words. Which will release her from her boundless cares. From so many long forgotten, utterly inexcusable sleights.
6.30 The nor' easterly horizon is now bloody. I can safely turn off the outside lights now. Safely mix my muesli. Without it seeming far too premature. Add the low fat, organic milk until a puddle appears around the spoon. Ten dunks of the first tea bag of the day. In half a mug of freshly boiled water. Topped up from the cold tap. To save having to wait for it to cool down.
I return from her cold kitchen. To my laptop beside my wife's warm deathbed. Watch her, as she waits and waits. Before dredging up, yet another, very last breath. There are no words which will un-etch the deep furrows. Of uncountable disappointments in her immature spouse.
8.20 I have been talking to my wife for a couple of hours. Begging her forgiveness for every wrong and disappointment. Her eyes suggested she was still in there. That she had temporarily escaped from the morphine fog. They moved and blinked several times as I first approached. Then seemed to lock onto mine as I rambled on. Though her pupils were tiny and not properly aligned with my position.
Later it sounded as if she was either in pain. Or struggling to get in the last word. Though there were no sounds forthcoming today. My own back was in pain from leaning over the bars. So I lowered them. The better to hold her hand. Which had clenched mine. Just now and again. I wanted to believe she was reassuring me that she still loved me unconditionally. Despite everything.
My poor, dear wife grows ever more unrecognisable by the day. The constantly open mouth. The suddenly large, top lip The over exaggerated, hooked nose. The increasingly heavy jaw and horribly visible bone structure and sinews. The vertically expanded, almost male-like skull in the bed offers no glimpse. Of the pretty girl I have loved for so long. This was all, totally unexpected and increasingly shocking. This is much too cruel! For both of us.
9.00 The district nurse has just rung to ask if my wife needs more morphine. As she seems to be sleeping now I must presume not. The nurse says she will call around lunch time. After visiting more distant patients. She had rung to make the most sensible route and allocation of her time. No doubt the visiting staff are all just waiting to hear of my wife's inevitable death.
Yet still she resists the light. Or the enveloping darkness. Depending on your personal beliefs. Or lack of. I was fortunate and was saved from parental brain washing. Both of my parents were far too intelligent to hold any religious views.
9.15 I have just made the all too familiar morning coffee and a toasted roll with marmalade. Once brought to me as if on auto-pilot. Provided without murmur or fuss on my return from my habitual morning walks.
Then we would watch a slide show together of my daily capture of photographs. Almost always of the same scenes but with the changing seasons. My wife no longer ventured out of the garden. The Covid Epidemic worried her. Though never enough to accept the vaccinations. She would carefully wash the shopping where possible. Or set is safely aside to lose its potential for infection over time.
Sometimes I was lucky and would capture deer or other wildlife. I'd also take pictures of any cats I saw on my travels. She was always fond of cats in general. Would even demand I stop the car [occasionally] if she saw an interesting moggy by the road.
It all seems so very long ago now. I haven't had a walk since she became ill. Ironically I had just had new pair of Scarpa walking boots replaced under guarantee. I went the whole winter without them. Clod-hopping along in a heavy pair of snow boots instead. This severely curtailed my off-road walks. So that I stagnated on the same "there and back" route on the same old asphalt to the near-empty lanes.
10.00 My wife just began to show subtle signs of distress. It couldn't possibly be because of my endless talking. Could it? So I called in the district nurse to be on the safe side. Who administered more morphine. Just to ensure she suffered no, preventable pain. The two home carers arrived soon afterwards and attended to my wife's other needs.
10.45 I have returned to my laptop as my wife breathes noisily but steadily. Flat on her back. With her mouth wide open again. No point in pretending hat she is listening avidly to my sorry monologue now. I am falling asleep when I ought to be busy.
12.15 I went upstairs to search for a clean sheet. Where I lay down on my empty bed and fell asleep for about an hour. My wife was still asleep, her mouth open with glazed eyes on my return. The morphine had taken her back again.
Perhaps I had only imagined that she had resurfaced this morning? The random blinks had not been semaphore signals of recognition. Just a simple auto-response to my holding her hand. Her clenching her fingers around mine just more ragged distress signals. On the retreat from the cancer invading her system.
I know what I felt and saw. Before she was forced back under the impenetrable fog of the morphine. Leaving me alone with the guilt of my final betrayal. Locking her in with her evil invader. There are no winners in this battle. Even the cancer will die. As it's host succumbs to its onslaught. Or will be finally routed. In the merciless flames of the crematorium.
The home carers returned. I My wife's contorted face was turned towards me. I had to go off to the bathroom to cry.
After lunch I discovered not one, but two failures on the laundry front. A spin drier full of T-shirts and a washing machine full of washed towels. The T-shirts went on the clothes horse at the foot of my wife's bed. The towels went outdoors to sunbathe, intermittently on the washing line. Must try harder.
16.00 I have spent more hours talking to my wife. Holding her hand. Just rambling about everything which occurred to me. Trying to keep it interesting. One of the home helps said that hearing was the last sense to go. So talking is good. I hope she is right. My wife may well be the unfortunate and involuntary therapist for me. Unable to shut me up for once. The morphine fog seems to have lifted. She is not communicating but seems to be staring at me.
Lack of sleep is catching up on me and I badly need another nap. I am going to try sleeping on the floor beside her bed on the folded mattress, chair arrangement.
17.00 I think I managed half an hour. Then the home help arrived. I got up and made tea and a toasted a roll. As is my wont at 5.00 each day.
I am using up some timber offcuts in the stove from my building projects. Short bits of 2x4 with mitred ends cannot be used for much else except burning. They are very dry from years-long storage. So produce a lot of heat.
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