I have been putting off cleaning up my ‘office’ room for months. Occasionally another box of stuff will arrive, or I just take things in there and leave the room quickly.
Yesterday was blowing a gale, it snowed in some places. Here it was just cold, grey and windy. Decided to attack the office.
Gretta had some time ago given me a couple of boxes of files and stuff. Started going through them and found Louise’s last diary, her handbag, her wallet, receipts and dockets, business cards of various doctors and a card written to me, and a letter to her from Tom Bass.
Looking through these things, I was overcome by sadness and grief as I remembered the hard years of sickness and our betrayals, my secrets, her secrets eating away at any hope, eating away at louise’s health. I wonder how much I am responsible for her demise. I feel responsibe.
I loved Louise and my deep regret is that I wasn’t there for her at the very end. Because towards the end our love for each other shone like a beacon and overcame terrible obstacles. I had seen her only a few days before and asked her as she lay in the hospital if I would be seeing her again. She said she hoped so.
That bloody doctor always refusing to acknowledge that she was dying right up to the day she died. That morning he rang me and asked me why I had returned to Sydney. I said shouldn’t I have? He said he needed permission from me to put a tube in Louise’s stomach to get food into her. He didn’t say she was dying. I had thought she was going to die so many times before that I just could not know, though I was terribly sad that day.
Anyway memories like that flooded back and I cried again. I remembered things that are so painful yet I never want to forget.
Two things stuck out- one was a card from Louise where she said- ‘I’m sorry for my behavior, it’s me, not you. I need to work on it. Love Louise’
I thought even if it was her I never had a clear conscience and at a deeper level than either of us understood, it was probably because of me, whatever it was at the time.
The other was the letter from Tom Bass and I think it is important enough for me to transcribe it here in case the original gets lost and it’s a bit hard to read. It goes-
‘Dear Louise,
I have been thinking about you a lot, of the enormous difficulty that is confronting you- about how one stage after another your abilities are being taken away from you. Those things that most people take for granted.
Then I thought about the people I have known, who, after an accident or an illness, would say, if it hadn’t been for that happening, this wonderful thing or realization would never have happened.
Then I was reminded of a prayer in my book called the Message Prayer. Page 45. If we believe what that prayer says, we have to say that when god gave you MS he was speaking to you, that he gave you a great gift and you must find out the meaning of it.
There is nothing you can do to change the inevitable affects of MS but there is something you can change- and that is the way you feel about it- and what it signifies for you. The prayer says that god has spoken to you- and only you can discover what that means.
Often when we are given a gift our impulse is to give something back. You may say, but what can I give when I am in this helpless state?
There is something you can give and that is something that is desperately needed in our world. That thing is Love. There are only two things in the world and those things are fear and love. The whole world is in the grip of fear. And there is a desperate need for love- and you can give it. You can pour out that love on those people around you and who can tell where it will go from there.
I can imagine you saying that you could not do that- that you don’t have that much love in you. The love I am talking about is in everything. It doesn’t only come from you. It comes through you.
This may very well be the great gift that god has given because to give love is the only thing you can do.
But it may very well be that the gift given to you through MS has a different meaning for you. Only you will discover what that meaning is.
Louise I am your friend.
Love Tom’
These words are important to me, not because I can understand the concept of the gift, but these two beings, Louise and Tom have gone now.
Well I don’t know about MS being a gift, but towards the end of her life Louise was like a angel of love, stricken with her illness as she was. To me she radiated love. When I walked into the room she and she became aware that I was there she lit up. Louise didn’t talk much then but she did say, and said it often, ‘I love you so much, Cliff’. Being an Axelsen, this embarrassed me at first, but I got over that embarrassment and was soon returning my love to her. In hospitals and nursing homes there is no privacy.
One time I took her to a meeting that was about the plight of young people in nursing homes. There were MP’s and all the top medical dudes there. Louise sat in silence through the whole meeting and towards the end she said in a loud clear voice. “I love you so much Cliff”- it could break hearts.
Why here, in a blog about a house?
The house means nothing except it is the stage I have chosen to occupy, while I sort out my life. It keeps me busy.
Why publish it here? I may have an attention deficit disorder, or, as I know it is only family and close friends, what is more important than the lives of loved ones and things that never get said?
