Grace Under Pressure

Last night was my first night alone for around 4 weeks. I wrote proudly in my blog about how mentally ready I felt to be alone and how proud I was to reach that place after years of constantly needing to be with someone. What I didn’t factor in was my physical ability to be alone. I have been in the houses of people with disabilities for many years through work or just because they have become friends and I used to wonder why their homes seemed so disordered. I realised after having carers of our own when Jez was alive that it is very rare to meet a carer who looks after your house as if it’s their own. I would often come home and find the aftermath of a meal in the kitchen, and while the most important thing was getting Jez fed I could never understand why people couldn’t simply put things back where they’d found them!

I was always looking for things that for me had an obvious place but were never in it. People never made the bed as I would make it and never cleaned the bathroom properly or aired it out. I strongly feel that people should be cared for in a dignified and caring way. Would they pull their curtains till they were nearly hanging off the rail? Would they leave damp towels and not hang them on the line – even when it was a sunny day? Would they leave someone with soup down their front, knowing they had friends or work colleagues coming round in the afternoon?

Now my priorities have changed slightly; especially since I am at the point where I might need some care of my own. I noticed yesterday how I was creating a little nest on the sofa and gathering things around me where it is easier to have them close to hand. I can no longer move things and bend into cupboards. I can’t always walk across the room and fetch them. Everything is close by and while it might not look nice to the eye, it is more functional for me.

I felt unwell yesterday but was completely sure I could manage alone last night. I came downstairs as I always do at about 8am to let the dog out and get a cup of tea. I was very stiff and painful but had managed to do a circuit of the village with the dog yesterday so put it down to overdoing it. I have always been used to struggling to do things, doing things with pain but working through that pain and managing. This morning was a total fail. I was walking up the stairs, with a cup of tea and a plate of pain au chocolat, when half way up the stairs my back was agony and my leg wouldn’t move. Then I hit the deck. Both knees hit the next step and my face soon followed! There was tea up the wall and on the carpet. The mug was in pieces and I had managed to keep hold of the pain au chocolat, so my priorities were ok. First of all, my back was in complete spasm and I wasn’t sure I’d even get up. So I had to lean on my painful knees and push myself up slowly. The pain was awful. I went back into the kitchen and sat on the stool to make another cuppa. I tried to clean the wall and carpet, but only really managed the carpet. I went back upstairs, had a large dose of morphine and went to sleep. I am not really any worse for wear now 6 hours later although the wall will have to be painted at some point. My brother and his girlfriend have thankfully arrived and are busy feeding me and cleaning up.

I have always wondered about the struggle people have when they have to accept care. It seemed simple to me and although I acknowledged the frustration and in some cases the humiliation people feel I guess it’s like anything else in life; you don’t fully understand it till it happens to you. In the last two days I have soaked the bedroom carpet because I couldn’t get upstairs and close the velux window when it started to rain. I fell asleep holding a full cup of tea which went over my pyjamas, the bedding and the bedside cabinet. Bloody annoying. I haven’t been able to cook from scratch, walk the dog, hang out my own washing or pick up dog shit. I have found it a huge struggle. Yesterday though, when the tea went everywhere in the bed I didn’t really ask for the help I needed. I was embarrassed to ask for help with my pyjamas, or to clean the table or the carpet. I didn’t want to admit I needed anything – and honestly, it is easier to ask for help from some people than others. Currently, my brother is upstairs putting up pictures and tidying. My sister-in-law is sorting the recycling, putting my washing out and cooking my lunch. They have reminded me to take my meds at certain times and kept me safe. I can ask this from them – but it is harder to ask a male friend or a friend who I don’t know as well. People have inundated me with offers of help and I have to accept that the problem is with me.

Then I thought of the phrase ‘grace under pressure’. Last year my friend Mandy and I went to Liverpool to see Elbow and during the concert Guy Garvey asked people about tattooed song lyrics and someone admitted having the words ‘grace under pressure’ tattooed on their back. Guy called him a mad bastard and gave him a big hug. They sang the song and at the time it had the line ‘we still believe in love so fuck you’ and that hit me because it made me think of the hurt of my divorce and how no one would take away my ability to love! For some reason the phrase came into my head this morning and I rethought the lyrics.

‘Grace under pressure

Cooling palm across my brow

Eyes of an angel

Lay me down’

It was then that I realised I had been thinking about this all wrong. I’d imagined standing upright against pressure in a dignified way, but still withstanding, still pushing back against the pressure. Yet, in Guy Garvey’s words I realised that being in need of help and having to ask the people around to help you is s type of pressure. Instead of fighting against the need and trying to do everything myself I should see the people who want to help as angels, trying to place a ‘cooling palm across my brow’. In this admission of being unable to manage I was admitting the pressure and the chaos and with amazing grace accepting the cooling hand of help and trusting them to ‘lay me down’. This afternoon I laid on the couch while my brother cleaned and hung pictures, fed my animals and put out my washing. My sister in law cooked me some chilli and told me when to take my drugs and yelled if I stepped away from the couch. I accepted this with grace instead of moaning, interfering and trying to do things myself. My job was to sit back and accept the help with grace.