All There Is To Do

This piece is about my attempt to comes to terms with my mother's illness, Alzheimer's Disease, but has often been of great comfort to people coming to terms with other things including death, offering comfort and the realisation that alongside the pain, it also offers us a gift in the form of an opportunity for reappraising our priorities in life.

All There Is To Do

As her illness prevents much further participation in life, I realise my mother has done all she came here to do; nothing more; nothing less. For me, the expectation of this or that fulfilment leaves me empty, looking for what shouldn’t be and ignoring all that is and was; failing to acknowledge the contribution she has been to me and so many others.

Seeing that all there is to do in life is what we do in life and that there is peace without expectation gives us the freedom to get on with life with a sense of urgency and not to take for granted that there’ll be another tomorrow.

There will always be things that we do not have time to do and we can either fight it or accept it. Then all there is to do is to be unreasonable and not put off till tomorrow what we can do today: how exciting and dynamic: even if tomorrow doesn’t come, we know we savoured every moment of life and squeezed every last drop there was to get. And then there is peace.

Tears of Fading Possibility

As I walked to work one day in Islington, London, I passed an infant school and suddenly the sadness of being childless that lay buried beneath the surface erupted into tears and I chose instead to head for a coffee shop and write these words to ease the pain:

Tears of Fading Possibility

I cry for the child I will never have; for the gentle gurgling of a baby I will never hear; for the innocent, questioning eyes that will never bestow their love; for the little hand that I will never hold, walking to school for the first time; for the Christmases I will not host as Santa; for the grazed knees I will never soothe as the easy tears flow; for the parental wisdom I will never impart to the encyclopaedic sponge; for the teenage growing pains I will never curse and endure yet secretly cherish; for the trials and tribulations we will never share and overcome together; for the aching heart with pent up love never to be spent; for the deep and understated social belonging through parenthood; for a life pregnant with fading possibility.

And yet I wipe my tears for the life ahead, for what I may enjoy, that I may no longer mourn and instead make my life rich by my own unique gift.

Little Windows of Hell

In the following piece I share with readers what I saw as I peered deeply into my mother's eyes when she was struggling with Alzheimer's Disease. The unspoken fear could not hide the intense feelings through the "windows to the soul":

Little Windows of Hell

As I penetrate the confused mind of my mother through her frightened eyes, I see beyond the lies and nonsense that flow from her lips and experience her naked fear and desperate loneliness.

Those eyes that once were pure, fearless innocence as her own mother bore her are now well worn conduits of vulnerability and sadness. What started out a free unboundedness, full of life, now conveys hopelessness and the prospect of impending death.

She covers her plight and desolation by a contrasting mixture of fawning niceness and vile anger and bitterness as her powerlessness drains the last life blood of her fading personality.

Rare glimpses of her real self are a delight for her and all of us who adore her, a relief from the seemingly never-ending suffering and a joy to witness. Her hunger for human intercourse and the temporary transformation when she finds someone to listen to her are testimony to her love of people and her last remaining hope, maybe her only reason to live.