I remember that one detail. Perhaps it was the last image of it that I had before my alarm went off. They were making my bed. Two women making my bed minutes after I’d already made it, changing the sheets and everything. I was more than a little cross, they should’ve made the other bed, not mine. And by interferring as they’d done, they’d made my bed strange to me, and the cover was the wrong side up. So what is that about?
I am an anachronism at that time in the morning. There I am in my two coats, two hats, two pairs of gloves, waterproof trousers and walking stick and there are they coatless, some in hot pants, lolling about on benches or in alleyways, lost the night before. Still in it, hot with it, giggling. I even saw two girls in matching baby pink tutus hugging their goodbyes under a lamppost. They don’t see me. And I am glad of it.
Sleepiness makes him cross, as it does me. But the sleepiness that assails him during breakfast is different. I try to keep him from falling into it. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is that image of ageing of failing of dying that I am attempting to smother. It is unkind of me. As is my irritation at him when he forgets things. I don’t like this descent. Not in him. I must be kinder.
It was in recognition of Winnie-the-Pooh day and she told us that she was going to go. She wanted to support the other resident who was hosting it. She calls her Jan, and often talks about how she waters some of the plants in the garden, including hers. I think she has a soft spot for her. Nevetheless, it is unusual for her to be sociable. She said that she was going to take her Eeyore along but not her Winnie-the-Pooh, as he was too Disneyfied. She said it went OK, that there were about a dozen people there. And that, though they were offered refreshments, surprisingly there was no tea.
It affects his mood. Sometimes it lifts him, but mostly it makes him snappy and quick to anger, or at least irritation. Was coffee responsible for his lowering of lightness this morning? Possibly. He says tea does the same for me. And he is probably right, though in my case it, according to him, makes me over ebullient. I’d have that any day.
They were tiny, too tiny for the child that they belonged to. I was holding them in my own hands when the alarm went off. I remember the frailty of them and the light shining through the skin. The child, who could’ve been L., was have a tantrum. Holding her hands quietened her. It was a complicated, new moon inspired, dream. I was trying to get somewhere and had failed to find it, twice. Then I found a piece of paper with an address on it. And then there was a photograph. I know that place I said to him (for he was there too), I’ve been there.
It’s funny how reading and writing are virtually impossible to do in dreamland.
I wonder why it is referred to as feeling blue, being blue or blueness. Why that specific colour? Anyway I feel it today. I feel blue. Is it winter, the rain or this relentless, seemingly going-nowhere work? I must just put one foot in front of the other and be brave, and hope that the passage of time will lift me. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
I live with the prospect of his death daily. I cannot help it. I must know it, though I can’t. And so, when he comes into my room in those early hours, still so alive, I am often surprised. It takes me a moment to adjust and be thankful.
I had almost the same dream last night as I had had the night before. There was that same mountain of plastic bags full of stuff to sort out or throw. And in a series of which were those interminable sandwiches that he’d bought but not eaten. In each dream I never get on top of it all. Never.
His voice sounded urgent. I’d just woken him and on opening his eyes he immediately started talking, something about Latin America. It was a trip, he said, that I’d mentioned on my website and it would need to be changed. It seemed plausible, coherent. He was awake, his eyes alert. But it was from another experience, world even. And not mine, his. Is that nonsense? he asked. No, I said, it was just a dream. Just a dream.