The skill of sliding
This has been a week full of changes — and surprises — for me. When my husband took sick last year we had to buy him a hospital bed. The living room became his bedroom. But that did not make him happy. He used to enjoy watching TV; he hated it now. So what was the sense of putting his bed in front of it?
After months of that, I decided to donate our dining room set to Caritas and move furniture around so his bedroom became the dining room. Our unit, being small, has walls of mirrors to make it feel bigger. In the dining room we positioned the bed with its headboard against the mirror wall. That way he could not see his face every minute of the day. That suited him fine.
The doctor — who meets with us through the computer — prescribed many medicines for him. One seemed to provoke hallucinations. He would wake up at night and claim that someone was trying to kill him and demand that I call the police. One day, almost driven crazy by his requests, I decided to stop that medicine and replaced it with StemEnhance Ultra. Like my husband, Loy, I also had a stroke once that completely reversed my personality. I turned into a very quiet person who stared blankly at things for six years. Then a friend introduced me to StemEnhance and after eight months my old laughing personality returned. I know how good it is through my own experience.
Then, almost a year-and-a-half after being in the dining room, Loy wanted to sleep with me in the master bedroom. Finally we moved his hospital bed. To do this we had to move my dresser out and place it in what used to be the dining room. Now the master bedroom is almost wall-to-wall bed.
But the first night was an adjustment night. He fussed. I was used to sleeping on my end of the bed, which was far from his side. Also, I had bargained with him that he could move in with me but he had to respect my need to watch K-drama on the bedroom TV, which had become my TV since he got sick. He agreed but hated it and demanded that I turn it off. I couldn’t figure out what to do that would make things right.
The following afternoon he asked who the man was that he saw all the time. I realized that now his bed was facing the mirror wall in the bedroom. So his caregiver turned his bed around. Now he faced a solid wall. He became happier that way. The greater miracle was I discovered on my own that I had Netflix on my phone and could watch my K-drama without his noticing! Bliss!
We are on his sixth day back in the bedroom and it is almost perfect. But... now I have to slide across the queen-sized bed to be close to him to put him to sleep. He seems to derive much from my being there holding his hand. Then, because I cannot sleep next to him on what used to be his side of the bed, I either have to turn around and slide forward to get my feet on the ground or slide across to get to my side. It isn’t easy to do when you’re as old as I am.
A friend’s driver picked me up to go to her house. First I couldn’t open the door to the van. He had to open it for me. When we got there, he opened the door on the other side of me and told me to slide across so I would be closer to the front door. “Sorry, I can’t,” I said. “I am 78 years old and it’s hard for me to slide. Please open the door for me and I will walk from here to there.” He was apologetic, said I looked much younger. This made me finally realize that given my husband’s new requirements and this driver asking me to slide, I have to learn a new skill: I have to teach myself to slide.
I was there to attend a book launch, a thin second version of Vessel of Voices, written by the same eight women who wrote the first book, but this time about the effect of the pandemic on them. There was a ritual and a giveaway with different cards for each person. Mine was a quote from John O’Donohue: “May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places where your life is domesticated and safe, take you to the territories of true otherness where all that is awkward in you can fall into its own rhythm.”
Isn’t that quote appropriate to my life now? My dresser is in the dining room, my TV set is on my phone, and I have to develop my sliding skills!
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