Letter from Galicia – 4

So how goes our day at this stage of the process? She sleeps well, a blessing, but there must be three or four interruptions to drag her out of bed to go to the toilet so that the sheet remains dry and  she keeps comfortable.. And in between the tossing and turning comes the passing of the middle of the night which is at three o’clock when it is darkest and sometimes a couple of lines creep into the head, a few words which seem to, as it were, to come from some hidden sanctuary, shut away by suffering from healthy life, robbed from the depths, fetched up during that lost moment of the night and dredged up towards the light of day as does Leverkühn in Doktor Faustus. The words are tyrannical. The poet their slave. The pen an automaton and the final result a kind of annihilation. Those few words are what make the struggle through the day worthwhile. The rest of the night passes in fitful sleep.

This, combined with the restlessness of love in decay where its memory takes on the power of a presence in inverse proportion to its manifestation, means many a sleepless night. Or, in other words, the worse she becomes, the more I love her.

Nine o’clock and in comes Nuria to do the necessities: shower, change, dress, toilet. They shuffle about in the bathroom for twenty minutes or so after which she appears looking reasonably presentable for breakfast which I have been preparing the while. Spoon in hand for the cereal, cup of orange juice, glass in hand, tea, cup in hand, toast, will she manage to butter it if you put the knife in her hand, and then the same with the jam. Then in to make the bed and brush the teeth both of which are by now a bit iffy.

The breakfast things washed we sit down to look through some old photos of family and friends she no longer recognises or a puzzle the pieces of which she is as likely to eat as to play with. Then into the car and down to the Centro de Dia in Bueu, our little town on the coast of the Ria de Pontevedra. There she is encouraged through the doors while I struggle with my emotions. A few tears in the car before driving back up and I have a few hours to myself which are strangely wasted. Shower, perhaps, a bit of meditation and a great deal of sitting around. It is almost as if the freedom was simply a time of waiting for it to end. Guilt? The strain of being alone was worse than the strain of her presence and all its difficulties.

Or those two days a week when I keep her to myself, perhaps just to avoid those moment after leaving her to the care of others. Then, if the rain allows, we walk up to the local café and have a couple of cafés con leche and look through the copy of Hello they have there or the local rag from Vigo. Then off to have lunch at a local trattoria, perhaps in Cangas where the food is good and cheap and the parking horrendous. Galicia is a province of the car where the public transport is privately owned and almost useless.

Then home for a siesta and a couple of games bought for 3-year-olds which she fiddles with for a while along with a cup of tea and a nibble. Come six o’clock we sit down in front of the TV with a health drink for her and a beer for me to watch something or other on YouTube. Then supper and a bit more tele – how difficult it is to find anything to watch – and then comes Nuria again for the evening wash and change before going to bed. The average day, you might be thinking of any retired couple except for the Day Centre and the games. And is in fact too true as such a large proportion of ageing couples have a carer most often the closest loved one. ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ This from the Satires of Juvenal is all too true. The help from the government covers perhaps a couple of meals. I sometimes wonder what the government would do if all the carers in the country were to open their front doors and push their loved ones into the street and leave them to the tender care of the social system – under-funded for years and overworked. A thought experiment for the government and the social system absolutely relies on the power of love to prevent it.

Next week a poem to look forward to.