A Year Ago Today

At last he was seeing his doctor.
The headaches had been coming
and going for a month or so.
Something serious was wrong.
He had actually asked for pain-killers.
He never, ever took them. Typical man.
Now he accepted paracetamol without arguement.
Then, it came - the drunken confession
after Jeannie's birthday garden party.
He told me he feared he was losing his mind.
No, it wasn't heatstroke
or a summer virus "for wimps."
It wasn't anxious regret
for his proposal of marriage.
His smiling mask of wellbeing
began to dissolve before me
as he described the the reasons
behind his recent aberrant behaviour.
"I think I am going mad," he said quietly.
"I think I am going crazy."
His mind had been playing tricks.
Gaps and holes were suddenly forming in the road.
Smells and tastes appeared out of nowhere.
Irrational, "deja-vu " events assailed his senses
filling him with apprehension and nausea.
Then there were the episodes
of partial blindness and tunnel vision
as well as the throbbing pain
in his skull.
Lately his is driving had been erratic,
unsafe, even by his own estimation.
Now, whatever the cause,
the consequences were becoming
dangerous to others.
That could not be tolerated.
He took an appointment for 8th July.
It was Friday afternoon,
the day after the London bombs.
The shock of such sudden devastation
still pervaded our mood.
It was very warm and sunny.
Reluctantly, he dragged himself
away from from his building project,
donned a shirt over his
beautiful, healthy looking tan
and went off to the surgery.
Doctor B was great, cheerful,
understanding and professional.
It may be nothing to worry about after all,
but imperative to be checked out by a specialist.
He was brilliantly efficient,
and set up an appointment
with a neurologist at the Western
for first thing the following Monday.
We felt disquieted all weekend, though.
Why the exceptional priority
if there was no great cause for concern ?
We kept very close,
very quiet and still.
That would become our habit
over the months of anguish
that were to follow.

How I miss him in the sunshine.

"There are moments, most unexpectedly,
when something inside me
tries to assure me that I dont't really mind so much,
not so very much, after all.
Love is not the whole of a man's life.
I was happy before I ever met H.
I've plenty of what are called 'resources'...
One is ashamed to listen to this voice
but it seems for a little to be making out a good case.
Then comes a sudden jab
of red-hot memory and all this 'commonsense' vanishes
like an ant in the mouth of a furnace........" C.S.Lewis